I had a coupon from the Entertainment Book for buy one meal, get one free at Raw Bar. We went to the restaurant around 6 PM on Thursday night. It was pretty much empty. Actually, it was only us and another table of two in the dining room. As we are waiting for 10 minutes for someone to approach our table, another employee was chasing a little girl around the dining room and she is screaming - which of course echos off the empty dining room. Our server approaches our table, we order our iced teas, he places two bottles of iced tea on the table for us to open and pour. I start to ask him questions about the menu. His discription for everything is "it is good". Not that great of a tableside manner but that's okay. We order - Blackened Shrimp appetizer, 2 Caesar salads, Mussels, Blackened Swordfish. He delivers the salads - it is good. He delivers the Blackened Shrimp - it is good. We are now looking forward to a good meal. Unfortunately, when they deliver the meal, my Blackened Swordfish is neither blackened nor resembles swordfish. It looked like they took a Gordon's fish from the freezer and grilled it until it was harder than a hockey puck. I tried to eat it -- it was entirely unedible. So I put my fork down and waited until the server came to check on us. I waited and waited. We asked another server to get our server. She said she would. She never did. Then we saw our server laughing and chatting in the bar. My friend got up and got him. He said they would remake it in a minute. 20 minutes later, they bring me poached swordfish on an appetizer plate - great presentation (sarcasm!) and the wrong thing! At this point the manager - Tony comes over to the table. I explain the situation and tell him to just take it off our bill and forget it. He tells me no we will get it made correctly in a minute. Mind you, my friend is completely done eating. So we sit there ... waiting and waiting. Tony sends the Bar Manager, Gene, over to offer us drinks complements of Tony. We order two more ice teas. I excuse myself to use the ladies room. Gene returns to our table and pours the ice teas. However, as he is pouring the ice tea, he is talking with the other table and pouring the tea onto the table - missing the glass - and pouring tea all over my chair. Thankfully I was in the restroom, because it would have been all over me. My Blackened Swordfish finally arrives and it is good. I wish they would have gotten it right the first time so my friend and I could have eaten together - instead of each having to eat separately. So the bill arrives. And can you believe that they have the nerve to still charge us for my Swordfish??? And they give us each a coupon for 15% off our next visit. My friend is furious, she gets up to find Tony to tell him that we are not paying for the swordfish. He takes it off the bill - now remember, we had a coupon anyway, our bill is the same as it would have been if we had a pleasant experience. Then Gene came over to the table to bring the adjusted bill (removing the charge of the swordfish) and he brought us a coupon for a free bottle of wine for our next visit.

WE PAID OUR BILL AND LEFT THE 15% OFF COUPONS AND THE FREE BOTTLE OF WINE COUPON WITH THE CREDIT CARD RECEIPT. DUE TO THE ENTIRELY AWFUL EXPERIENCE - BUT MORE SO - DUE TO THE ACTIONS OF MANAGEMENT, I WILL NEVER RETURN TO RAW BAR AGAIN!

There are so many better restaurants in Chicago!