Danielle "Dallas Foodie" G.'s Profile

It's only been open for 16 days, but this place is a gem in the rough of Lowest Greenville! The owner was super friendly and gave my friend and I a rundown of their fresh, natural, local food concept. I saw a cage-free omelet and lots of gluten free foods on the menu, plus a few unique items. Local and gluten free is very admirable, but does it taste good?

YES!

The applewood smoked bacon was phenomenal--salty, apple-y, juicy. I have never enjoyed limp bacon more than crispy bacon, but this limp bacon could whoop crispy bacon in any taste test.

The sweet potato hash was a medley of said bacon bits and well-cooked sweet potato. Yummy, but not what we thought "hash" was going to be.

We had a gluten-free chocolate cake (see pic), which was pretty good but not the best cake ever. We happened to notice a bottle of Dude, Sweet Chocolate bourbon chocolate sauce on the counter when we ordered, and the owner let us taste test that and drizzle it all over the cake plate. The combination of bourbon and chocolate cake was just the right touch! We hope they serve it this way forever in the future.

We also ended up with a "we accidently cut an extra piece of this apple cake, so here you go". Score! This one was SUPER moist and just the right hint of apple and cinnamon with a light whipped topping. We told the owner how phenomenal the apple cake was compared to the chocolate, and he asked if he could touch our leftover chocolate cake, then said the chocolate was slightly dry only because the cake was 2 days old, so he took that one off our bill. Double cake score!

I can't wait to go back and try a full meal. I also confirmed they have free wi-fi, so I will be working from here in the future.

I also bought the deal from Living Social, and I booked it for my birthday. I have a busy schedule, so when I booked it I specifically asked how long it would take and they said one hour.

I ended up spending TWO HOURS there. They don't do the mani and pedi at the same time, so I don't know how they figure one hour for them to be done separately. I spent probably 15 minutes waiting past my appointment time before they started, and the rest of the delay was due to my manicurist having to redo seven of my nails twice, and one or two of them three times (I lost count). This was because the polish kept bubbling in the UV light, lint from her towel kept sticking to my nails (duh, get lintless towels), and she kept missing spots or bumping into the finished tacky nails. She also clipped my skin in two spots so that every time she cleaned my fingers or redid the polish it burned the open wound. I left with a few imperfections still in my nails because I didn't want to be there any longer! Normally imperfections wouldn't matter too much to me, but the special shellac they use lasts a minimum of 2-3 weeks, so whatever job you get you have to live with for a long time!

My girl was so far over her time I'm pretty sure she skimped on my leg massage, which is the part I was most looking forward to after watching so many others get really good ones from the other ladies. I ended up having to cancel the activity I was supposed to do right after getting my nails done because they took up way too much of my time. :-(

Aside from the timing and mess-ups that could theoretically not happen to every customer, there were other key things I didn't think were up to par:

1. On the outside, this place is hard to find, and it looks like it should be the office of a small industrial business instead of a cute nail salon.

2. On the inside, the place looks like they rented a previously-used room, didn't cover up the evidence of the last person's decor, and just set up some furniture so they could start doing nails right away. I was so taken aback by the "work in progress" look of the interior that I asked if they recently moved in, but they said they've been there for one year! Case in point: Home Depot D.I.Y. track lighting installed in the drop-tile ceiling, right over the yellow stained outline of the old light box that obviously to be there.

3. No sign on the front door, no reception desk, no waiting area. I observed every person who walked in had the same first reaction as me, "Um.... is THIS Celebrity Nails?"

4. Smallest selection of polish colors I've seen at any nail salon.

5. D.I.Y. pedicure chairs. They bought some really comfy reclining leather office chairs and put a bowl of warm water at the base. No massage controls.

I used to recommend Lee Harvey's to people, but I definitely won't be anymore. What they did to me was not cool, and technically illegal. But hey, who's going to sue over a free meal and drink, right? Of course not! Instead, customers who have been wronged can tell their story on Yelp, and hopefully Lee Harvey's has a cool owner who will read this and apologize.

So I won a contest they had for a free drink and entree, but they gave the prize to someone else based on a rule that was not posted or referenced anywhere (I looked, and they couldn't offer any evidence either). Imagine the excitement of winning something for free and then having them make up a rule and give it to someone else! I was shocked, but I thought, "hey, they're a cool place, they'll make this right." So I immediately brought their mistake to their attention, but their reply did not acknowledge their mistake or attempt to remedy it. Quite the opposite, actually. Then a piece of the evidence that I had won *mysteriously* disappeared from their web page so it looked like I hadn't won. There's no way to know if Lee Harvey's or someone else did this, but it just made the whole situation look that much more shady.

The free food/drink I won isn't important anymore. I just hope the person who was representing Lee Harvey's to me before wasn't the owner, and that the owner will admit they did something wrong and show good enough customer service to remedy their mistake. I gave the original person a lot of opportunity to do that before I posted this but they didn't take it. They turned the whole situation into one where a former customer doesn't want to go to Lee Harvey's again and is telling her friends not to go either.

I know you're not supposed to look a gift horse in the mouth but what I am supposed to think when my free food to make up for the other bad experiences is still not right, two times over? Here I sit again wondering whether to rate this review a 2 or a 3 because my experience was both positive and negative, not really "A-OK", it's just that 3 is the average of 1 and 5.

So after my last review the owner reached out to me and was very nice and apologetic. She said they are working on consistency and sent me a gift card. I'd love to believe this because the food (when prepared correctly) is really good. So today I got the Lark Creek Chicken Salad to-go, which I have been doing probably about once a month all year anyway.

I called at exactly 2:14PM (checked my phone log); they said it'd be ready in 15 min. I thought that was a long time considering this is the slowest part of a restaurant's day and sometimes they've had this order ready to-go in 10 min. Then I arrived late, at 2:35PM. Three employees are behind the counter in the kitchen and no one is looking my way for what felt like forever, probably 3-5 minutes. The nearest one is on his cell phone. The others are sweeping the floor for shift change. My order is usually waiting on the counter even if no one is at the counter, but my order is no where to be seen and it's now been over 20 minutes since I called. A waiter stops by to enter a transaction on the register next to me and asks if I've been helped. When I tell him "No" he looks at the others in the kitchen and says something about how they should be helping me soon. He walks behind the counter and passes them but doesn't point me out to them, then he walks by me again without a word. I look at my phone to check the time, it's 2:42 and still no one has helped me and my food is no where in sight. You have got to be kidding me.

I yell out "HELLO?!"

They all jump. The guy on his cell immediately hangs up and tells me he had just clocked out, but my food should be up any minute. I think, "wow, it was supposed to ready at 2:30 and it's still not done at 2:40?! It's just a salad with grilled chicken."

At 2:45PM my food comes out- 30 minutes after I called, 20 minutes after it would normally be ready, 15 minutes after it was promised, and 12 minutes after I had been standing there waiting to be helped. Thankfully I wasn't in a hurry to eat before I went anywhere.

When he brought my salad over with the popover I- having learned from a lot of prior experience here that they almost always forget the condiments and utensils for to-go orders- noticed there was no utensils or strawberry butter for the popover. I didn't need utensils this time so I only asked for butter. At this point I was internally fuming, so when the guy said he'd get my butter and also offered to get me a free drink I accepted the drink. I don't know if my gift card hand-written by the owner tipped the guy off or if they really are trying to improve their customer service, but that made me a bit happier that at least he was trying to make up for things without me even complaining. Then he asked if I needed utensils too, so at least he didn't totally forget that part either.

When I got home there was no butter in my bag. Sigh. He must have forgotten when he went to go get my free drink. I knew I should have checked my order again before I left. *kicks self*

This reminded me of another time I got this salad to-go when I was super hungry and rushing to straight an event, so I forgot to check the bag before I left, only to discover while on the road that they didn't give me utensils. I was starving and couldn't eat my dinner! I contemplated how one could stick their face in a salad and eat it, but that wasn't going to possible in the car. I think I ended up finding some plastic silverware in my glove box, thank god.

I suppose the good tasting food makes me keep forgetting how desperately consistency is needed here. :-/

I went back at a busier time of day (right after 6PM on a weekday) and my experience was almost as good as the first time, even though it was with a different employee! The lady I had before was there again but she was already with another customer so I got a different girl. She intuitively found the same problem area I had before and worked hard to resolve it. She spoke English well and didn't talk to me so I could work on my iPhone. I liked that.

Again, they were very accommodating of my special requests- this time it was to let me cut and file my own fingernails while they did my pedicure. She offered to do the cutting part for free which I agreed to, then they gave me a new emory board so I could file to my heart's content while she did my pedicure. They also gave me wine again, and it was an excellent red of an uncommon grape variety I haven't heard of before.

I got the upgraded "spa pedicure" for just $30, which includes the hot towel wrap and I'm not sure what else was different, but that's cheap no matter how you slice it! Overall it was a great repeat experience, so I will keep going back here!