My husband and I stayed at the Magnolia this past Saturday night as a weekend getaway from San Antonio and to catch Les Miserables. Everything was fine, except for the service. We pulled up and the valet was on his cell phone and didn't seem to want to help, so instead of valeting, we just asked where to park. He told us to go around the corner to park in the city garage and paid five bucks, but after we checked in the desk clerk told us about the twenty dollar valet overnight parking. So we decided to go with the overnight parking, instead of taking our chances staying overnight in the city garage. The valet outside failed to mention this option to us and we lost five bucks. The front desk clerk was not very friendly and just checked in us in and gave us our key, without even mentioning the milk and cookies that night, the live jazz playing that night, or the free breakfast. He did give us tickets for free cocktails from 5pm - 7pm, but it was already after 7pm and we were only staying one night. Why give us tickets for something we missed?

We ate at Azuma, a Japanese restaurant that night which is two blocks down on Texas. The food at Azuma was outstanding! I highly recommend it. We went back to the Magnolia and listened to the jazz band in the very crowded bar area. The bartender wasn't very friendly and the waitresses walking around, never once stopped by our table and asked if we needed anything else. The milk and cookies from 9:00 - 10:00 pm are out in this area as well. Which is nice, except for the kids. The jazz band was really good. In the room that night we found a menu listing late night snacks that were available from 11pm - 6am. We called to order the cheesecake, because we had decided to pass on the dessert at Azuma to eat dessert in our room. We called the number on the menu, only to be told that the kitchen had closed at 11pm and they were out of everything on the menu. The kitchen transferred us to the front desk, who then transferred us to the hardly-present, unhelpful consignor, which only told us that he had outside numbers.

Giving up on the hotel and being dissappointed, we called 411 on our cell phone and got the number for Sambuca's down the street. My husband called in an order for a creme brulee and chocolate cake and went and picked it up himself. The desserts were wonderful. Sambuca's is a really fun place with great food, as well. We missed the free breakfast the next morning and tried to go find an open place on a Sunday morning for breakfast and couldn't find anything. We settled on eating an apple for breakfast and eating a very enjoyable lunch at Mingalone's at Bayou Place before the matinee. The hotel did have the New York Times available in the lobby. Overall, the hotel is beautiful and a nice getaway in the theatre district of Houston, just don't expect a friendly staff or great service. It seemed to me that service was not a core value of the Magnolia or encouraged by management.