High prices, low quality, poor service. The decor and ambience are coupled with prices that lead…read moreone to believe this is a high end establishment. Breakfast this weekend proved otherwise. Go to impress parents or similar if you are a college student. For quality and price, based on our experience, would not do again.
Overcooked eggs, grudging portions, mix and match plateware that just confounds (bacon and eggs in a bowl - really? but only for one person in the party?). The menu is also misleading. The fabled "hash of the day" turned out to be just a pile of ordinary unremarkable overcooked and unseasoned home fries. The same side everyone else had for free, but costing some part of the wallet-stretching $21 in the context of the all-in "165" breakfast - two overcooked over-easy eggs (no seasoning), a slice of thin sourdough bread cut in two, a pile of indifferent home fries and two of the smallest pieces of bacon you can imagine. $8-12 in any self-respecting diner in the country, and typically made with far more care and flavor. When asked how plain ordinary home fries were a "hash of the day" when they were also unmentioned sides for other dishes, the waitress shrugged and said "it's a KIND of hash. We call that hash here." Touche. Should have asked more questions. And the toast is a single piece of seemingly storebought sourdough bread cut in half (no evidence here, just disappointment being expressed). No substitution, no extras. Pretty much no butter, either. Another member of the party had the blueberry pancakes, Thick and heavy, and unremarkable, once again. Any diner does it better - for half the price.
Timing was a serious issue too. The dining room was somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 full. 3-4 tables in other words. Still took well over 45 minutes to get food. Watched 2 pairs of other diners come, order, eat, pay and leave as we waited, Food came cool with no explanation or apology for the long wait.
Small complaints perhaps, but at this price, they are making bold claims and utterly failing to match up. Breakfast should be a lay-up for places like this. The ingredients cost almost nothing and the work involved is strictly short-order, simple, fast-turn work in a relatively uncrowded dining room. No reason to go light on ingredients or on flavors. Breakfast is an easy meal to wow in aplace like this, and New England has traditions to uphold - and yet the establishment clearly did not see the point in putting in the effort to match their prices, decor, or location.
The capper was watching the tables cleared by a surly teenager in stained board shorts and stained tshirt and sneakers with unwashed hair in a beautiful dining room. The young man clomped in and would withdraw 1-2 plates at a time before stomping out, taking over ten minutes to clear a single table.
Overpriced and under-quality. It's for tourists. Beautiful building, though.
