Woman who visited her city’s ‘hottest’ new restaurant shares scenes from her ‘disaster’ experience

People usually prefer to eat outside to try new cuisines and also, avoid the hassle of cooking a meal at home. Some are also willing to spend extra money for a fine dining experience. But it turns out that some restaurants have set up their prices too high for no reason and still have abysmal service. Texas-based food blogger Jane Ko (known as Koko)–who goes by @atasteofkoko on TikTok–recently shared a video highlighting a really bad experience she had at "The Guest House," a new restaurant in Austin. The video has received nearly 300K views and 32.2K likes on the platform.

Koko went to the restaurant on time as she had a reservation at 8:15 PM. Her group was shown to their seats 15 minutes late at 8:30 PM. The group also did not get their entrees for a long time. She shared, "The restaurant interior was stunning, but the music was so loud that I was screaming at my friends to hear them and they were sitting right next to me." The group received their menus and discovered that it was plagued with grammatical errors throughout. There was mention of "steak tartar" on it, which confused Koko quite a bit.

She criticized how the restaurant was selling caviar toast for a massive price of $42 and roasted onion for $15. Curious to know if the roasted onion had some special method or ingredients that made its price so high, she asked the waitress about it. Shockingly, she discovered that it was "literally" an onion that had been roasted and was being sold at $15. Koko hilariously comments, "Which might have been the most amazing roasted onion I would have ever had in my entire life, but I would have no idea because our food never came."

They finally got their appetizers, a mushroom pizza and steak tartare. She said, "It was okay, it was not bad, but then after that, for two hours, our entrees never came." The group began to get quite hungry and asked servers if their food would be served soon. They would supposedly go to check on the status of their food and never return to the table. One of her friends broke her wine glass, which the staff saw but did not bother to clean up.

Koko remarks, "We had glass all over our table and no one cared." The group decided they had enough and tried to talk to a manager to share their troubles, but nobody showed up and the staff just maintained an ambiguous stance about their food. So, they finally gave up and left the restaurant, with Koko being very hungry since they only had appetizers and some wine. She concluded the video by mocking the restaurant's byline, saying, "I don't know about it being Austin's newest destination for elevated New American dishes if they never come."

People were quite appalled to hear about Koko's dining experience and chimed in with their thoughts in the comment section. @arcanadagger said, "The prices look astronomical. Still, I wouldn't go to a restaurant within four weeks of opening for this reason! I appreciate your honest review!" @akh2ogeek2 commented, "The fact you waited three hours is unreal. I'd be out at an hour and a half at the most!!"

You can follow Jane Ko aka Koko (@atasteofkoko) on TikTok for more food-related content. Also, be sure to check out Koko's Instagram and website to find amazing places to eat in Texas.