Situation: We had a group of 11 people. Made a reservation 5-6 days prior. Mentioned it was a birthday celebration. Reviewing the menu, pricing, and ambiance, we expected great service, great food, and a great experience. Live Jazz Band at 8pm.
Overall: We had a extremely disappointing and inexcusable experience. Start to finish, we were there for 3 hours!!!!!! We arrived on time. At the time, it was NOT busy. We were seated promptly. The service was atrocious: had to repeatedly request things, water, drinks, plates for the appetizers, and the drink orders took forever. Waitress had to double check and come back for a repeat on our drink orders on more than one occasion and forgot to bring someone's drink twice. (she came back to double check drinks requests with only one or two drink requests). When asked for just a couple of minutes more to decide on entree decisions, at least 20 minutes passed before she returned. When our appetizers came, there was a double order---her mistake, which at the time our waitress said she wouldn't charge us and that she would leave them. It was put on the bill. After two hours, we were told our food would be ""a long time"". When asked how long was ""a long time"" we were told they weren't sure, but it would be ""a while"" When asked to check, waitress never came back to let us know approximate time for our food. Shortly after, we asked if they had bread, and the response was, ""would you like some?"" I'm sorry, but in any fine dining restaurant, that's a given and when your party has waited 2 hours + for dinner entrees, it should be obvious, that we'd be hungry and that bread would be offered, without having to request it. We had to ""bus"" our own dishes. They were not taken as our drinks emptied, appetizers were done, and had to move them to a nearby table, where they stayed for the duration of our stay. Some were picked up but half (at least 10 glasses) were there when we left. When dinner arrived, the soups came with dinner. Typically, it's served in courses and not with dinner entrees, unless specified, which 2/3 were NOT requested with dinner. Some of our food was luke warm, while the soup was hot and acceptable. When mentioned the food was cold/luke warm, we were asked if we wanted them to take them back and reheat it. Response was no thank you due to unpredictable timing of redelivery. Never an apology about it. Never offered anything in return for the ""long"" wait. I have never, in my years of dining in various upscale restaurants, experienced this type of service and disappointment. We were told that dinner would be a wait, two hours into it, due to a show in town. We had a reservation and this was NEVER mentioned, not even as we sat down. By the time we got out of there, it was 9:30 pm. Our plan was to meet 10 people out after for drinks, plus numerous people in our dinner party were going to come too. No one from the dinner party wanted to go out at that point and we were over an hour late to our second engagement. Not only was it a disappointment, but it affected my husband's birthday plans and experience.
Location: In a very cute part of the Stockade in Schenectady.
Menu: Unique but also offered standard items. Food was good for the most part. Three entrees were either cold (shrimp) or luke warm. Mashed potatoes were excellent and chicken fingers were excellent. It's pretty hard to mess those up though, all things considered.
Beer: Mentioned as having a very good Hefeweizen by a local brew master (who's won numerous awards) but seemed to have a very bad batch. Too cloudy and too yeasty. Porter and Stout were very rich and full bodied.
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