We have lived in Charlotte for almost 4 years and always wanted to go to this place, but were put off because they only take reservations for parties of 6 or more. Last night, the two of us decided to walk in early (about 6:00 P.M. on a Friday night, our date night) and were immediately seated. We were put in a back room containing two large, long tables and a few tables for four. One of the large tables was already filled with about 20 people, and the noise was deafening. That entire room apparently has nothing on the walls or ceiling to absorb noise. We noticed that, at one of the tables for four, people were getting up and leaving without ordering. Even worse, the place has a lot of young children who were constantly running around and getting in the way of the waitstaff which, by the way, was excellent.\r
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We started with two Ketel One on the rocks. When ordering a second round, we were told they had run out of Ketel One--at 6:15 on a Friday night. We then split a Waldhorn salad, which was good. We both had the sauerbraten with spaeztle and red cabbage. The meat was dry and the spaetzle didn't even look or taste like spaetzle. From our experience, spaetzle are dumplings pressed through a sieve.. This stuff looked and tasted more like doughy noodles. Since I love Black Forest cake, I took a piece home. It was tasteless, and the fruit center was nothing more than filler. This was represented to us as ""home made.""\r
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The owners of this place are represented as having been culinary-institute trained. We can't believe it. We have eaten at restaurants owned and operated by culinary-institute graduates and the food tasted nothing like this. We cannot, therefore, understand the rave reviews. We also cannot understand how culinary-institute graduates (if this is actually so) could serve this stuff. To each his own, I guess.\r
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