Last week, Maria Hines won a James Beard award for Best Chef: Northwest for her all-organic Wallingford restaurant Tilth. In comments on Slog, there was celebration:

Yay! Tilth is my favorite restaurant in Seattle.
Posted by cedarthvader

...and, Slog being Slog, there was (well-put, reasonable-sounding) griping:

Has the service improved? I went there several months ago and had a very nice meal...and slightly aggressive service—not bad, but a bit pushy. Friends have related several experiences with very opinionated servers, and problems with getting orders to the table and the right stuff on the bill.

Was that a glitch? Isolated incidents? Common fare? I liked the place enough to go back, but the stories have been detailed and frequent enough that I'm reluctant.

Posted by GlennFleishman

I'm inclined to agree... The servers hovered over our table in a fashion that made some of us (party of 6) kind of uncomfortable. And I don't really need a verbal presentation with every course.

I only spend this amount of money on a meal 2 or 3 times a year and I expect to be blown away when I do. It didn't happen here.

The place is just too precious.

Posted by codswallower

I've been twice. The service was not good the first time, but not bad enough that we couldn't smile and laugh about it. The second time I went I...was horrified by how bad it was.... our coffee and water was never refilled, our waitress was rude and not particularly knowledgeable and the food was really uneven: the pulled chicken and biscuit was amazing, but the truffled egg I got was essentially inedible because of the amount of truffle oil poured on it — a weird problem since the stuff is so expensive. It's one of the only two times in my life I haven't left a tip...
Posted by Jigae

Now Maria Hines responds:

Hello!

I wanted to thank those of you who left constructive comments in regards to the James Beard Award post that Bethany wrote. More specifically to the comments about service. I definitely had some issues with my service team about 10 months ago.

We had experienced a huge business increase due to an article that Frank Bruni from the New York Times wrote* about Tilth early last year. Unfortunately, I did not react to the increase in business quickly enough. It wasn't until the middle of summer that a couple of guests had emailed me about their underwhelming service at Tilth. Fortunately, they wrote very constructive feedback with detailed information about their experience. This is so helpful to a business owner, because it allows us to take this information back to our team, correct the situation and make us grow.

It became evident that my service staff was spread thin and became a bit prickly when under the stress of being overwhelmed. I take full responsibility for not having the foresight that was needed to make sure all our guests needs were taken care of.

The best thing to come out of it though, was developing the strongest service Tilth has ever had. Since the end of last summer to the present time, Tilth's service has become consistently friendly, warm, knowledgeable, and efficient. Please know that every constructive comment is heard, thought about, talk over, and positive changes are made. I really appreciate it. Please let me know personally if you come in to Tilth and do not have a great experience, or if you wanted to share a great experience too!

You can email me at Mhines@tilthrestaurant.com.

Maria Hines, Tilth

* The piece listed Bruni's top-10 new restaurants outside of New York. Of note, he had service quibbles with Tilth even then: "But there’s a self-satisfaction about Tilth that seemed to inform—rather, infect—a few servers, who sometimes acted as if they knew what was best for me. One of them, entrusted with choosing the dishes for my group, made decisions that showed he hadn’t really listened to our clearly stated preferences. Another chided us for asking that our French chenin blanc, from a solid list that wisely doesn’t confine itself to local output, be put on ice. Their behavior was incongruous at a restaurant with an otherwise generous spirit..."