The Lodge ~ Bad Service AND They Poisoned Me!

I need to share the bad experience I had at a place called, The Lodge. It's on Rea Road and Colony (where Rea actually turns into Colony), in the Harris Teeter shopping center. There's also a Mai Sushi, which I desperately wish now, we would have gone to instead. Nathan and I met up with a Twitter group, which met at 6:00 in the evening, which is way too early for us. I'm still deep in my work at that hour and need time to clean up and get out the door. We got there about 7:00 and the group was still drinking and talking, there were dirty plates in front of some members of the group, multiple empty glasses in front of individual people, water cups that had never been touched had large water rings around them – the table was basically a mess. Nathan and I sat down at the corner of the table that was right at the entrance to where the servers passed in order to reach a wait station or to enter the kitchen. Our server as well as others walked by us many times, without acknowledging us. We were obviously trying to get attention by making eye contact, following someone's movements with our heads as they walked from one end of the room to another, etc. More than ten minutes of this went on until we finally, almost had to grab her and say, "hi! We just joined this group!" She said she'd get to us in a minute. She had menus in her hands but didn't give them to us and instead, walked all the way to the hostess stand at the front of the restaurant, deposited them there, then walked all the way back to our table, turned the corner and went behind the wall to the wait station. She went to other tables carrying one or two things at a time back and forth, still ignoring us until finally I caught her and asked for menus.
Eventually, she came back and we explained my food allergies, and pointed out one of the items I wanted to eat, she bolted off to the kitchen to see if it was safe. We could have saved her time if she would have LISTENED because we always give the server a few options to check out. "If appetizer A isn't safe, see if appetizer B is, if not check out C…order whichever one won't kill me. If none are safe, bring me a salad but first, check the dressing." Sure enough, she came back and the option wasn't safe for me. We gave her a couple more options to check on and she came back saying, "the spinach and artichoke dip should be safe." I said, "SHOULD BE?" She corrected herself and said, "well no, he (kitchen person) said it is ok for you to eat. So is the blue cheese dressing."
We ate and left and shortly after getting home, I started to feel the familiar itch of an allergic reaction. My eyes, mouth, lips, and throat all started to alert me that something I ate had not been safe. Either they didn't check the label closely enough, the word "SPICES" might have been on a label, or someone wasn't careful with cross contamination – but somehow, I ended up scratching my skin raw, I sat swollen lipped, asthma sneezing, runny nosed, itchy eyed, and miserable the rest of the night. Luckily, I didn't need a trip to the hospital.
We received the worst possible service (dirty glasses and dishes stayed on the table until finally, a server with some sense came over and helped us out by cleaning up for us), her attitude was such that we were interrupting her evening, plus someone in the kitchen did not take my life-threatening food allergies seriously. This is why I cannot stand places like The Lodge where the manager or cook won't come out and speak directly to me. I understand places get busy and I don't expect it every time but this place was not so busy that manager shouldn't have been doing their job and visiting tables as they're supposed to. The server should have let the manager or kitchen manager know about it so they could talk to me directly by making a table visit. Since I never saw a manager while we were there, I suppose that would have been impossible.