Carl J.
Yelp
November 18, 2017. If you bill yourself as high end hotel and the rooms are relatively expensive you need a restaurant to match the rooms. We were there with family who are local and it was just prior to Thanksgiving week. There were eight of us including two children. The food was mostly SYSCO, cold, late, and the service was poor. I worked in restaurants for six years in high school and college from bus boy through room service, dining room waiter, bellman and filled in as a line cook and this place's food was poorly prepared. The hostess had no idea of her job and just hung around the front entrance. The waitress was nice enough but hampered by a slow kitchen. If there was an executive chef he must have been off and the line cooks must have been drinking. I know there was no expediter. Simple things:
1. Bread should be warmed (they have machines that do that) and a variety is appropriate. How hard is it to throw in a little cranberry or walnut bread, perhaps a scone or small biscuit, or hard bagette. I know they have no pastry chef or baking staff. The commercial rolls were a little below Golden Corral and the butter was rock hard (again they have machines that regulate the temperature of butter).
2. When a hamburger ordered by a seven year old is sent back because it has blood running on the plate, don't send it back out still rare. Here is a clue. Most children generally don't like to eat blood in their meat. There is a reason its a kids menu. Kids want simple food, that they have tried before and is not threatening.
3. Poor (late, slow, inconsistent) service was explained away by the staff by having a banquet party scheduled somewhere in the hotel. Here's a thought, bring in more people to work or is this the first banquet to ever book in the hotel.
4. Try to bring most of the food out at the same time especially if its over an hour between ordering and service.
5. Try to bring most of the food out somewhere between suitably warm and hot as the food would dictate.
6. The bison soup was home made but lacked salt, flavor and anything to distinguish it from beef soup. And nothing says high end like two little packs of cellophane wrapped Nabisco crackers on the side of your plate.
7. When you order the "chef's special" (in this case fried chicken) you assume it's somehow "special" or at least fresh chicken (not pre-cooked and breaded), hot and possibly juicy. Alas, this chicken fell off the back of a truck already breaded for the convention oven and had that Banquet TV dinner taste that I remember from my Mom's hurried efforts to feed her kids. It was also the size of an undernourished quail.
8. The room was noisy, crowded and awkwardly arranged. The bathroom had a "college bar" quality to it.
I have read the other reviews and wonder if I was in the same hotel. I assume the rooms are great and they would have to be to make up for the food and service of the dining room. The chef, most cooks, banquet manager, food and beverage manager and whoever trains the wait staff need to go somewhere else.
