Jen J.
Yelp
To be fair, we did have a large group of 14. But also, we were in no hurry and had no timeline. So when the waiter mentioned to us that he was the only one serving our table and that he would appreciate patience as it might be a little slow, we were happy to accommodate....the first time. But every time he came to our table, he reminded us that he was the only one working the table. We heard it at least 8 times. He actually did a very good job with what he had to work with, but the restaurant's system just doesn't work for a large group. The servers mix the cheese fondue themselves, so when there's a table ordering 5 cheese fondues....it can get stressful, and we understood that. But when one of our party ordered a second champagne, which comes in a small bottle with about 2 glasses worth (one of which I actually drank), his response was "you want ANOTHER one?!" and it sounded very judgmental.
We ordered the Italian cheese fondue, thinking it would be basic parmesan, asiago, Romano type cheeses, but it had a slightly spicy flavor to it that was more southwestern. Maybe we would have been happier if we'd ordered the more traditional swiss cheese, which another family in our party ordered and they liked. Very little bread was served with the cheese, but the apples and vegetables were fresh.
The steaks were all served on a very hot stone, every single one of which was 1/4 missing. It didn't really make much difference in cooking the steaks, but it didn't feel like a $50 steak service because of that. (as a side note, cooking my own steak at a restaurant is not my idea of a good time - I can do that at home for a lot less and it just feels awkward. But I'm not including that in my opinion of the restaurant). The baked potato side looked delicious - a very generously sized potato. On the other hand, the mashed potatoes was a small scoop of school cafeteria mush with 5 tiny baby carrots. The tiny amount of mashed potatoes next to the giant baked potato was a joke - and we laughed and laughed about it. (I wish I'd taken a photo) At some point during the main course, the wait staff ended up opening up all the doors - we were seated in a side room, and the ventilation couldn't keep up with the smoke from the steak stones. It was fine, we weren't cold but if that's the restaurant's style, the ventilation system should be designed to keep up with it.
Our reservations were at 7:15 and we were seated on-time. A few of our party told the waiter they would be ordering only the cheese fondue, and then dessert fondue (no main course). So when he brought our bills after the main course, without even offering dessert, we were very surprised. Afterwards, as we were leaving, we realized they closed at 9:00 - it was almost 10:00 and that's why he was kicking us out. But if you can't accommodate a group that size in 2 hours, you shouldn't agree to seating them. We did order dessert and he had to redo the bills. The chocolate fondue was pretty good, although we were not given forks or dessert plates so it was a bit cumbersome. Especially the slice of cheesecake, which was about 50% of the dessert that was meant to be dipped into the chocolate but couldn't hold up to the heat at all so just crumbled in. If we'd been given a spoon or something, we could have drizzled the chocolate onto the cheesecake and done it that way.