Booted from Brunch at Blaqhaus (But It Was Good)

The entire 5 years I’ve been living in Los Angeles, working in the Food & Beverage industry, and enjoying a plethora of food and beverage entities in my leisure, this is something I’d never seen, let alone had happen to me..

I didn’t want to tell this story, but it has to be told

I’m rather torn because I’m a longstanding advocate of the, more recently popular, initiative to buy Black and shop small. This is the idea to patronize Black-owned establishments and spend your money with independent/local businesses, in effort circulate dollars within our communities. Participating in this type of spending is a way for all of us, at an individual level, to contribute to a more equal economy (less money to the ultra-wealthy, more money to the not-so-wealthy). I’ve done my fair share of research, and understand how powerful where you spend your dollar is, causing me to avoid saying anything that may discourage that dollar from being spent Black.

I’m rooting for everybody Black

Issa Rae is me and I am Issa Rae. I’m rooting for everybody Black — now, while it’s popular; 10 years ago, when I was still a kid in school before it was even a thing; and 10 years from now, however the trend may go.

The same wrong I would tear a hole in Cheesecake Factory for, I’d let slide from a local Black-owned restaurant. Aside from being rightfully biased, I’m aware of the challenges small businesses face, where large chains and corporations are wildly advantaged. When reflecting on my experience at an establishment, I grade them for where/what they are. I’m not going to sit in a fast food, fried chicken joint and say, “ugh! Maestros would never do this.” Well, duh, [expletive]!

BlaqHaus NoHo is an “Upscale Southern Restaurant”

That description, “upscale”, is the first to come up on their website summary when I type BlaqHaus into my Google search engine. That’s the way they describe themselves. Being that’s where/what they are, that’s the lens thru which I was extremely disappointed by what transpired during my visit.

It was going pretty good… until we were kicked out

This past Saturday morning, one of my girlfriends calls me saying she’s craving something savory. I was still in my bonnet with no plans of going anywhere, after having worked a NYE party and not getting home until the wee hours of the morning. But, with a few more nudges from my girl, I was up, sliding into some clothes and slicking my edges.

for southern brunch, chicken and waffles is a go-to of mine | photo: Black Restaurant Week

We were going to go to one of our regular spots, My 2 Cents, another Black-owned restaurant in Los Angeles touting tasty Southern cuisine, but found out they were closed for the holiday. To stay in the same realm of food offerings, I suggested BlaqHaus. My girl immediately declined. She did not have fond memories of our first visit.

This was us giving them a second chance.

The first time we went to BlaqHaus was back pre-COVID. There was a minor wait after checking in for our reservation, but it didn’t compare to the eons we had to wait for our food once we’d gotten seated and placed our order. Service was extremely slow, and I don’t mean “the kitchen missed part of the ticket, but we’re getting an extra well done burger going for you now” type of slow. That’s understandable, it’s a longer cook time, but not that long. No, it wasn’t that. It was a “the chef went to go find a cow to butcher, as soon as he gets back, we’ll get your burger started.” We didn’t make a fuss. We sat, we talked, we waited. The place was packed. We were being understanding. Then about an hour in, we had to know what was going on. We were told they had a back-of-house staff shortage, so basically one chef was doing everything on her own. I felt that struggle, and didn’t hold it against them. (I still included them in a previous post about best brunch spots in L.A., and didn’t say anything about the slow service.)

“Come onnnnnnnnn,” I pleaded with my girlfriend from her passenger seat, “let’s give them another try. They’d only recently opened then, they had some kinks to work out.”

She reluctantly put BlaqHaus into her GPS and we made our way to North Hollywood.

When we pulled up, it was MUCH more open space than our first visit. We smiled, hoping this meant wait times wouldn’t be long. We’d booked the next available reservation online, 2:30pm, but decided to see if they had room to take us early, and to our delight, they did!

We walked up to the host stand within a few clock strokes of 1:15pm. They seated us right away, we were greeted by our server quickly, and ordered drinks. Being silly, my girl snapped a picture of me giggling while I had my phone out looking at the digital menu, trying to decide what I wanted to eat, and sent it real-time in a group text. The timestamp on that texts reads 1:19pm. When the server returned with our drinks, we placed our food order. We were cheers’ing, after the server walked away with our food order, by 1:26pm, as captured by my InstaStory filter.

I know you may be thinking, “okay, T.K… that’s enough details, get to the part where they told y’all y’all had to leave.” And you see, I feel you, I know I’m long winded, but the details matter in this case.

Our food hit the table at 1:55pm. I have had to soothe unhappy patrons, while I’m working, when their food takes a half hour to come out. I’ve also had to encourage patience in my peers when we’re out to eat together and the food hasn’t come out in a shorter time. At the last luxury hospitality group I worked for, servers would be reprimanded if they didn’t notify a manager that their table hadn’t received food within 18 minutes of putting the order in (because to them it should’ve been out 5 minutes ago at that point).

This ain’t that tho. This restaurant isn’t those, and those people aren’t us. Waiting 30 minutes for food isn’t something, I, nor my friend, would complain about. We were chilling. We were thankful to have our butts in seats, and glad the food came out in a FRACTION of the time it did our first visit.

our food came out plated beautifully

We’d told the server when we ordered that we wanted to order two entrees and split them both. I get half of my friend’s entree, my friend gets half of mine. When she came back to check on us, as is standard within moments of food hitting the table, my friend reminded her that we needed two small/share plates. In the meantime, we snapped pictures of our food and posted videos to our InstaStory. We didn’t want to begin eating until we had the plates to split the food in half, that way my used utensils would only touch what I’m eating and vice versa.

I asked for a refill on my 20-dollar bottomless mimosa. The server responds, “okay, and how would you like the check?”

“Together. We’ll put two cards and split it equally down the middle.” I responded, ignoring the fact that there was still food on our plates. We still had forks in hand. We were actively eating.

She dropped the bill as we continued to nibble. She returned after some minutes and refilled my mimosa.

Our server was a thicker girl that my friend said favors Lauren London in the face. A very petite, chocolate brown girl comes and picks up our bill; mind you, she hadn’t done anything for us our entire visit (— which I point out because it’s strange. When servers help each other, they handle a task such as refilling drinks, or clearing empty plates. Picking up another server’s check from a guest is the last thing you do as a fellow server, unless that server or that server’s guests requests you do so, because each server can only close out their own guest check.). I specifically remember the deeper-complexioned girl because she was our server our first visit, and I remember that from complimenting her perfect little frame.

Our server returns with the checkbook in hand and a slightly confused expression. My brunch date tries to nod the girl away discreetly, but then reveals, “I was trying to surprise her.” Under the table (I assume), she’d taken my card out of the checkbook, so when it was picked up, it only had her card in there. (Side note: It’s usually me doing something like that, so it was so touching for someone to do it to me for a change.)

a look inside the space | photo: NoHo Arts District

Our server looks at the checkbook in an, “oh!” type of way, but not as in “I ruined the surprised.” It was a an “I don’t even know what y’all were talking about” type of “ohh.”

When she came back with the transaction receipt, I had to ask. Why was she looking confused about there only being one card in the booklet if she didn’t even know (or care) that there was only one card in the booklet?

She told me her look of confusion was caused by another server coming to her with the booklet saying “your table was trying to flag you down,” claiming that we were waving the check in the air. Now if the little dark skinned one really told her that, she ought to be shamed for being so cute telling bold faced lies!

They went from hinting that they wanted us to leave, to flat out telling us we had to leave.

A back-of-house staff member came out of the kitchen, in full kitchen garb, approached us saying we’d exceeded our stay way beyond the 2-hour limit and that we need to leave. I don’t know whose face was more bewildered, mine, or the one looking at mine from across the table. “We’ve been here that long?,” she wondered aloud.

Excuse me? My response was that confusion where you’re also a bit offended… becauuuuuuse, WHET?!

“Yeah, we have other people waiting,” she tried to clean it up after noticing my reaction. I glanced towards the clearly visible host stand, with no one around, the open walkway, and the less-than-packed parking lot, then back at her with my eyebrows squeezed together, my eyes squinted and my lips slightly parted. She knew what my face was saying. “Well, we have other reservations booked that’ll be coming in,” she continued to try to clean it up, but it was too late.

She told us they needed the table right then. My friend that I was out to brunch with is very non-confrontational, unlike me, and started to hit one of those, “oh, we were just leaving.” Girl, no tf we were not. I’ve barely even sipped my newly refilled 20-dollar bottomless mimosa. Because I’m working on being more agreeable, and I see my friend shifting in her seat, I decide to compromise.

“Okay, may we finish our drinks at the open space at the bar?” I asked. She gladly agreed, “oh sure, you can take it there, we just need this table.” I guess that made her feel less bad about giving us this unexpected boot.

My friend has already closed the drawstrings on her mini Prada backpack, has it in her lap and has said to hell with her bloody Mary. I politely take my time eating the last few bites of our catfish and grits entree, and then I begin grabbing my purse. As I’m putting my bag on my shoulder and sliding out of the booth, the same girl in the apron comes out of the kitchen and says, “actually… sit down. You want a shot?”

We let our butts fall back onto the seat, and neither of us say. We look up, once again, confused. “How’s tequila?” she continues her offer. “You actually have 16 minutes left.” With what seemed to be a genuine disposition, she tells us to enjoy and walks away.

I clicked my phone screen. It said 2:54pm.

Our server, the one that favors Lauren London, comes back flustered and says, “I’m so sorry about that, I’m getting y’all Don Julio.”

at Blaqhouse NoHo — my dear sweet friend, Shirley, that treated me to brunch as a birthday surprise

My friend and I are suckers, so when she came back with our complimentary shots of top shelf tequila, and she seemed like the job was putting her thru it, we added extra cash to her tip. It’s important to note that they’d already added an automatic gratuity to my friend’s card, in the amount of about $20. Then all I had on me was a 20-dollar bill. I put that in the booklet. Then on top of that, my girl put another two five-dollar bills in the booklet, saying “happy holidays.. I feel bad, they tried to sabotage her.”

I don’t know if her co-workers had really conspired against Ms. Thick Lauren London, or if she was in on it too, to get more tips (if she was, it worked), but what I do know is that I don’t like it.

Baby, give me upscale if you’re giving me upscale

That whole debacle was a mess that could’ve (and would’ve) been handled better with a better service team.

The lack of professionalism and decorum was deplorable for an “upscale” establishment with 17-dollar cocktails.

Oh, T.K., since you know so much about hospitality and the Food & Beverage service industry, how about you tell us how it could have been handled better? Chiiiiiiiild, I could write a whole essay, it would have to be its own blog post, but mentioning something about a time limit before it was time to kick us out, instead of blindsiding us, would’ve been a great start.

I’ve had brunch that came up to $150 for two before, not too long ago, at SoHo House, actually. In addition to stunning views and a luxurious environment, SoHo House has superior service. I’m not comparing the two restaurants, per say, because they’re in two totally different categories, I’m just giving an example of where brunch for two has come out to a similar cost and my mind wouldn’t even question it based off the experience I had.

If you’re going to present yourself as upscale, and you’re going to attach an upscale price tag, please have some upscale service; that’s all I’m saying.

Y’all still go check it out for yourselves

Though I don’t plan to rush back to BlaqHaus, I’d still recommended this spot to someone looking for a weekend brunch in Los Angeles with traditional Southern (style) cuisine. The food was tasty (and plated well), the music selection was one you couldn’t help but sing along to, and the vibes were cool (until we were told we needed to leave of course).

image: USA Restaurants

BlaqHaus NoHo
11671 Victory Blvd
North Hollywood, CA 91606