Marie-Anne B.
Yelp
My partner and I had been traveling from Seattle and wanted to treat ourselves to a special night. Our stay was started off by being greeted at the desk with a gentleman who could barely smile. We had lots of luggage and he sat and watched us struggle to get it all up the stairs, never offering to help. The hostess and server in the dining room where very nice, unfortunately when we had legitimate concerns about our meal, instead of sending the Chef or manager over, the waiter was put in a position of embarrassment by having to asking us what we should have been served per the menu description, and then having to come back to us a second time to give us the lame excuse given to him by the chef....which was "our menu description maybe isn't accurate, as our chef serves all parts of the animal to eliminate waste" (we ordered a veal chop and got two veal stock bones with a little meat). My partner and I truly felt bad for the server being put in this position and he was very nice, so we decided we would take it up with the manager the next day. Saying the food was sub-par is generous. Having spent my life working in culinary, I appreciate the Chef's desire to reduce waste, as our industry can be terribly wasteful, but you don't lay that on the customer, and you word your menu appropriately....as it is lying otherwise and that's a kind of fraud in our industry! Then there was our experience with checking out.....we approached the front desk and stood there for about 5 minutes while two girls in torn sweatpants stood in the little closet behind the desk talking about their schedule issues with the woman at the front desk, all three of them looking at us standing there the entire time! When the front desk attendant finally decided to help us check out and asked how our stay was, I replied with "not very good"....her response...nothing!....not even an "I am so sorry to hear that", she just went about her way checking us out!!! My receipt only reflected our meal (which was wildly expensive) that we had charged to the room, but not the actual room charge, so I asked for a receipt to reflect all of it. The response I received was that because we had paid for the room through a travel site, she could not get that information! WHAT???? At this point we decide we would reach out to the general manager personally through email later, as we assumed, he would be concerned about the lack of hospitality we had received and our general dissatisfaction. We were wrong, this establishment does not care! I have since sent several requests, via email, to have someone reach out to me and have received only responses saying that a "reference number has been attached to my request", but that is it. My partner posted on yelp, and 6 weeks after the post the manager of the establishment, Nicholas Squire, has responded in such poor fashion that if I were the owner of the Four Columns Inn I would be questioning if this young man knows the definition of hospitality....not once has he even given a simple apology for our concerns!!! Anyone who has chosen this field as a career knows that most things can be defused by a simple "I am sorry". Both my partner and are executive chefs, myself 25 years and counting and my partner 23 years and counting. Combined that is a total of 48 years, roughly 200,000 hours working in kitchens of restaurants, hotels, country clubs, yachts, and non-commercial food service.... I can honestly say that neither one of us has ever had an experience from a high-end establishment that truly lacked so much from start to finish! If the manager ever decides to respond to me or my emails, maybe he will have brushed up on the true meaning of hospitality before he does, but if not, I will be glad to help educate him.
In short, we will never be returning to this establishment. I am from Seattle and will be telling everyone I know to avoid this establishment, and my partner who is from that part of Vermont, intends on telling everyone he knows that this is an establishment one would be wise to avoid!