Amazing food, not-so-good service

I just came back from lunch at the Butcher's Steakhouse with my 3 colleagues. I think they would agree with me that the food was absolutely wonderful. I ordered a meatball sandwich, which came with a drink and a dessert - all for 58RMB, which is a good value. The General Manager Kenneth chatted with us about the food and some of the food butchery items for sale. He even came by and gave us some tasty dip to try with our french fries, so we had something besides ketchup to use.

However, the food took a bit too long to come out - we were getting pretty hungry after waiting for what seemed to be a long time. I can't say exactly how long it took for the food to come out, but I can say that it was longer than what it should have been (I think everyone has had that feeling of how long is too long). Given the fact that the restaurant had only been open for 2 weeks so far, I can let this one slide a bit. However, what I cannot let slide is the fact that 15 minutes after we ordered our food, I noticed that other customers were getting up and going inside (we were sitting outside on the wonderful 2nd floor patio) and serving themselves salad. One of the waitresses saw me noticing this and came to our table to let us know that she forgot to tell us that we were welcome to help ourselves at the salad bar. This was a bit disappointing, especially since we were pretty hungry and the food was taking a long time to come, so it would have been nice to have been told about the salad right after we ordered our food. Also, my colleagues and I each ordered a main dish, as well as a hotdog as an appetizer for the 4 of us to share (because it was recommended by the GM Kenneth but none of us ordered it as a meal). We explicitly told the waitress to bring it out before the main meal because we wanted it as an appetizer. She spoke great English and there was no way she didn't understand what we said. However, as is too often the case in Beijing, our request was not filled and the hotdog came out at the same time as everyone's meal.

Overall I liked the place, as is too often the case here in China, they need to do better training when it comes to their waiters and waitresses.