Matty B's - September 7, 2007

Her perspective: C-

I made a reservation for our anniversary dinner at one of our favorite places, Matty B's, in downtown St. Paul, via opentable.com. There is a section on the site to put in special requests, so I put in that is was our anniversary and we would like a booth or at least a quiet table. They called us a couple of days in advance to let us know that they did not have any booths available due to a wedding reception that was taking up that whole side of the restaurant. I was glad for that level of service so we wouldn't be surprised when we walked in the door. It's what I expected from them.

However, when we got there, the only tables that were being seated, other than the wedding party, were in a room that was still quite open to the rest of the restaurant. We were given our choice of table, and we chose the table farthest away from a group of four rather loud ladies. Unfortunately, that meant that we could not get away far enough from them. They were being disruptive to our nice quiet anniversary dinner, they were so loud. We stayed, hoping that they might quite down once they started eating.

To our dismay, once the wedding party arrived, the din in the restaurant was akin to going to Friday's or your local sports bar. We were only barely aware of the food as we were so distracted by the noise.

We got an appetizer of bacon-wrapped, blackened shrimp. Some of the bacon was burnt and it seemed a tad overseasoned. William got a meatloaf that he's had before and it was decent. I had a halibut that was quite good. They did buy us a dessert since it was our anniversary, for which I chose the Bananas Foster. It's very hard to find a restaurant that will do a flambe since it tends to be a fire hazard if the one who's preparing it is inexperienced. It was fun to watch the chef prepare this flaming dish tableside. However, it didn't have much flavor to it. I've had much better.

All in all, we were disappointed. Had we realized beforehand that it was going to be that noisy in there, we would have gone another night or gone somewhere else. This is not necessarily the restaurant's fault. They did inform us that there would be a wedding party and we should have realized that it would be loud, being that our own wedding wasn't that long ago. We would have appreciated it, though, if the hostess had been thinking along those lines and asked us if perhaps we would like to come in earlier to try to avoid that party or if we would like to reschedule for another night that wasn't that busy, especially since I had specifically requested a quiet table. Keep in mind that September 7th is not our actual anniversary, the 10th is, so we have no problem celebrating on a different day. I know not everyone is that flexible, but I would rather go out on a Friday night to celebrate when neither of us have to work the next day, than stay up late on a "school night."