Thomas C.
Yelp
Adam Weitsman, owner of the largest privately owned scrap processor on the Northeast, and owner of several Skaneateles restaurants along with his wife Kim, opened Mexican restaurant The Elephant and the Dove in 2019. The restaurant's name is derived from Mexican artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, who were married and nicknamed the elephant and the dove.
Weitsman said his goal was to offer hearty portions at affordable prices in a more laid back environment in the 7,500-square-foot historic building at 9 Genesee St, which is spread out over 3 floors.
My wife and I went to Elephant and the Dove for the first time for our 10th Wedding Anniversary, and unfortunately did not have an enjoyable experience.
We were told a 45 minute wait, which we expected a wait, although I thought it was odd a restaurant of this size didn't take reservations. We went back to our car to wait, as it was after 6PM and the village of Skaneateles is pretty much shut down at that time. We were texted a table was ready about 20 minutes earlier than expected.
We were brought up to the top floor to be seated. There were several open, cleaned and set tables on both floors, so we wondered why the wait, but no biggie. The place was nicely decorated and definitely very Frida Kahlo inspired.
We didn't see a server for 20 minutes. By that point, we knew what we wanted for an appetizer and main meal, so we ordered both at the same time. My wife ordered a margarita with jalapenos. We received the drink about 10 minutes later, and my wife was not happy with it, as she said it was extremely watered down.
Our appetizer of 2 empanadas took 25 minutes to come out. While they had decent flavor, they were lukewarm on the verge of being cold. 30 minutes after receiving our appetizer, we received our main dishes, which we were also disappointed with.
My wife ordered the fish tacos with a side of Mexican street corn and I ordered a chorizo burrito with verde sauce. My wide enjoyed the street corn side, but said her tacos were dry and flavorless. My burrito had very little chorizo in it to the point where it was undetectable, but it was also overpowered by the flavor of the rice, which honestly tasted like a bagged rice side you can buy at the grocery store. We were going to get desert as well, but passed since everything else was subpar.
Service was okay. As I said, it took a long time to be served even though there were plenty of open tables the entire time we were there, our server was nice but we only saw her twice while we we there, and the woman who filled our water seemed in a bad mood as she didn't speak at all and slammed our water glasses on the table after every time she poured.
We definitely felt it was overpriced for what we were served. We would not return or recommend.
*UPDATE* The manager, Sierra, reached out to me through Yelp and asked me to call her. I did, and we had a very good conversation. She was very nice, professional and apologetic and understanding, and offered us a refund and promised to make a return visit worth it for us.
I'm very appreciative that she reached out and wanted to make it better. I did mention that I would not change my review, as this WAS our experience, and she agreed and said she wasn't expecting me to, she just wanted to make up for our night. So while I'm not changing the review, I did want to make an update to say that I appreciate them taking customers experiences seriously and attempting to fix issues, because those things matter and make a difference as well.