Travis T.
Yelp
We arrived about 6PM on a Thursday as a party of 8 and sat at one of the large picnic tables outside. The scenery was lovely, as always, and was accompanied by a warm breeze blowing from the west. They did seem a little busier than I expected for a Thursday evening, so we were patient as we waited for a server. When she arrived some time later to take our drink orders, I ordered their house-made root beer.
Somewhere between 25 and 30 minutes later one of our party went into the bar and had to remind the server that we still had not received our beverages. The beverages came out about 3 minutes later. I found the root beer to be a delicious flavor, though unfortunately it tasted a bit watered down and didn't have much carbonation - what a shame since the flavor was so nice.
Around 5 minutes later our server returned to take our meal orders. Nearly everyone in our party ordered a burger and fries. Our food arrived 40 minutes later. Yes, 40 minutes.
Everyone cut their burgers in half with the supplied steak knife and found that their meat was medium-rare, at best. Several of us enjoy a medium-rare hamburger, myself included. However, the food was cold, the meat inside the burger was cold, and there was far too much "red" for several of our party to eat their burgers. I touched the hamburger inside of mine and found it to be the same temperature as the top of the bun - room temperature.
We had been waiting to eat for well over an hour at this point. So, in desperation, several of the guests pulled out their cold, undercooked meat, put it aside on their plate, and proceeded to eat half of their burger as a cold, meatless, veggie sandwich. Every person at our table (except one) left the other half of their burger untouched on their plate.
When the server returned some 30 minutes later with the check (the first time we'd seen her since our food arrived) I mentioned how disappointing our hamburgers were. She apologized and retrieved the owner. He looked over our table, saw our plates with 1/2 of a hamburger on each one, and said "So, no one liked their hamburgers?"
When we revealed why we were disappointed, he explained "I grabbed those out of the window myself as soon as they were put up there. They shouldn't be cold." Nevertheless, he apologized and said he would make it right on our bill. And to his credit, he did remove nearly half of our bill - very commendable. After 10 more minutes one of us still had to go inside and find our server and ask them to run the card.
Now, I can understand an unexpectedly busy evening service. I can even understand being short on waitstaff. But sending out cold food, not asking if guests are ok with undercooked meats, and hearing excuses as to how our complaints shouldn't be true - that's several steps too far. I'm afraid this is the last time we'll eat at Caldera. Drink? Yes. Eat? No.
The fries were tasty though.