My wife and I looked forward to our evening at Cuttlefish with great anticipation, having a great love of oysters, especially. So I'll cover the food first, before I get to the service, if you can call it that. We ordered 15 oysters with three crude, shrimp, albacore, and yellowtail. The assorted oysters were good, but apart from the Washington State oysters, nothing special (a note: we've tasted Galician oysters in Spain, and Cancale oysters in Brittany, so maybe we've been spoiled for life, but we've had much more distinguished oysters here in the US). The only crudo we would order again is the shrimp, citrusy and understated. The other two were overly sweet and over the top; the raisins and pomegranate drowned the delicate taste of the fish. Our pasta dishes were both excellent. My wife enjoyed the manila clams and calamari over taglialini, with hot chiles. I had the spaghetti with Dungeness crab, sea urchin, and prawns. It appeared to be a small portion when served, but it was rich, rich, and incredibly delicious.\n\nNow to the ahem...service. It's said that dogs have no conception of time. Neither do the hostesses at Cuttlefish or anyone serving food. We were told the wait for our \"reserved table\" would be five minutes. A half hour later, the hostess was nice enough to bring us and our fellow \"waiters\" a glass of Prosecco. We were finally seated at a quiet table on the outside patio. No one came. Finally, we were served water, although mysteriously, the waters disappeared within the next ten minutes. We had to ask that a waiter come to our table. He seemed surprised that no one had served us and said that he would take care of us if no one else did. Huh? We placed our order for the oysters, and then, who appears? Another waiter. We told him that we had finally been served. The first waiter then appeared, and they appeared to argue over who would be serving us (it's always nice to be fought over in a nice restaurant). The wine steward did a nice job, although there was no ice bucket for the white wine, and we had to ask for one (c'mon! you're a seafood restaurant...I'll bet you sell a bottle or two of white wine). I won't bore you with the rest, but getting anything required work and patience, up to and including the bill. Our waiter never came back to present the check, or thank us, say goodnight (isn't that what they normally do to end the evening on a pleasant note, and also encourage a nice tip?) I really can't remember who brought the bill back.\n\nSo, to be fair, some excellent seafood pasta dishes, ok oysters, very nice heated patio, and really bothersome \"service,\" and I use the term as loosely as one can. For $180 for two with a 13% tip which I though was really generous (I normally leave at least 20%), I expect a lot more, and I'm sure you do too.
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