JING, Happy Hour
I freaking love a good Happy Hour. Give me some discounted cocktails and sushi apps & I’m one happy girl. JING in Greenwood Village has a fire HH starting at 3pm and they’ve done a great job setting up heated outdoor dining in a large tent with numerous legitimate heaters.
BUT on another note, the HH we just had at JING was - unfortunately - DISASTROUS lol.
We arrived at JING at 3pm and we were seated outside in the tent right next to a heater. It was about 40 degrees outside but we were warm AF and V comfortable in the tent. JING has this outdoor dining thing down.
We started with some cocktails; JING offers $6 Grey Goose cocktails for HH #score.
As soon as we started ordering, things started to get weird. Our waitress - let’s call her Lisa (I don’t feel comfortable using her actual name because in the end we weren’t sure what exactly was wrong with her) - seemed really out of it. She was swaying while she was taking our orders and made us repeat what we wanted multiple times.
Our first round of Grey Goose cocktails come out and Lisa is spilling them, EVERYWHERE.
She spills all over the table and right on my leg while setting my drink down and goes “SORRRRY. The bartender fills them up really FULLLL, so I spill sometimes. But it’sss ok because they’re FULLLLL.”
This is when we got a solid hunch that Lisa probably wasn’t sober. Her motor skills were clearly off & her speech was slightly slurred (poor thing was so sweet though).
We then ordered appetizers: Crispy Crab Rangoons, XO Shishito Peppers, a Spicy Yellowtail Roll, a Crispy Tuna Roll, & Shrimp Tempura. Lisa attempted to remember our order without writing anything down and came back about 5 minutes later to re-ask what our order was so she could write it down. She also let us know that they were out of Shrimp Tempura and that she was supposed to let tables know that before we ordered.
Lisa came back with our food shortly after. All the appetizers were delicious!
The Crispy Crab Rangoons are made with cream cheese, crab mix, and served with a solid chili plum sauce. YUM.
The XO Shishito Peppers are blistered Japanese peppers generously coated in XO sauce and dusted with panko. These peppers have an awesome spicy kick to them!
The Spicy Yellowtail Roll is made with cucumber, mango, carrot, and topped with chili aioli. This roll was our favorite and we quickly devoured one and then ordered another.
The Crispy Tuna Roll was fresh & beautifully presented.
During our meal, Lisa was going down hill quickly. She was stumbling all around the tent and she actually FULLY ran into me in my chair - TWICE - while trying to walk by. She also kept forgetting our second round of drinks we had ordered by this time.
When we ordered additional apps: a Spicy Yellowtail Roll and more Crab Rangoons, Lisa forgot this order and we had to remind her about 10 minutes later that we had ordered more food. When Lisa brought the additional apps out, she sat down the Yellowtail roll and then full on smashed half of the roll with her forearm while trying to clear some of the finished plates.
Maddie let Lisa know she had just squashed our roll and had chili aioli all over her arm. Lisa looks at her arm and goes “OOOOOOOH.”
Lisa then proceeds to takes off her mask & starts wiping/rubbing the spicy mayo up and down her arm with her plastic gloved hand…the plastic glove wasn’t going to absorb anything so it was just getting messier lol.
We then asked Lisa if we could get a replacement roll since we wouldn’t eat the pieces that had been touched/squished. Lisa agreed to get this for us, thanked us for being so nice, said that she loved us, then dashed away.
Lisa came back to the table about a minute later and asked what we needed to be replaced. #OOF! So we rehashed the story of how she had smashed our sushi roll with her arm. Lisa then remembered the mishap and runs out of the tent to put in the replacement order.
Lisa came back to our table a couple minutes later, takes off her mask, bends down and whispers right in my ear “My coworker is coming to talk to you”.
LIKE? WUT LOL.
I lean away and look at Maddie and Kali stupefied as this lady is in my ear hole with no mask on lol.
I say “Ok…that’s fine!”
Lisa then offers us dessert. We order a chocolate toffee cake and Lisa speeds out of the tent again.
At this point - Kali, Maddie and I knew we had to say something about Lisa. A Bartender - Kayla - came to our table with some free cocktails (we’re not sure if these cocktails were to make up for the ruined sushi roll or what but they were very much appreciated!).
When Kayla came out, we immediately let her know that Lisa was not ok and should be sent home in a Lyft/Uber. Kayla was SO on top of it & said she knew Lisa wasn’t ok from the second she arrived (which had been about 5 minutes prior), that Lisa had been taken off the floor and that a new server would be with us shortly. Kayla gave us a strong apology and seemed very in control of the situation.
We had asked to see a manager before Kayla came out so the “manager on duty for the day” came over and apologized as well, but she certainly didn’t seem to have have the same managerial chops Kayla did. The “Manager on duty” had been actively working in the tent while Lisa was stumbling, bumbling around and hadn’t done anything…it took Kayla arriving for the situation to be properly assessed & action to be taken.
The manager on duty brought our table a $50 JING gift card as an apology which was appreciated BUT, that didn’t even cover the total for our HH. I was really shocked they wouldn’t fully comp our meal and that they wouldn’t give gift cards to each of us individually. Lisa didn’t get pulled off the floor until the final 15 minutes of our meal so the majority of our happy hour was spent being scared/mortified of and for our server lol. We also never got our replacement sushi roll from the one that got squished nor did we get our dessert.
HOWEVER, I have dined at JING numerous times and we’ve never had anything like this happen before. Their food and service are normally great & despite poor Lisa’s spiral, we still managed to have a good time!
We will certainly be back and I’ll chalk this instance up to an unwell waitress and a slow acting manager with inadequate customer care chops!
JING Denver
Located in: The Landmark at Greenwood Village
Address: 5370 Greenwood Plaza Blvd, Greenwood Village, CO 80111
Health & safety: Mask required · Temperature check required · Staff wear masks · Staff get temperature checks · Staff required to disinfect surfaces between visits · More details
Reservations: resy.com
Order: seamless.com, grubhub.com, doordash.com