TL;DR This dining experience is my new standard for poor quality and disappointment.
Our server asked if we would like to start with a round of pop overs. Most restaurants offer bread as a courtesy so we said sure. Well they were 12 dollars for two pop overs. Really? you sneak in a $12 order of bread and present it as if it were free?
I had the bourbon lemon smash and she had the Hemmingway. Mine was nothing more than a smashed lemon and some bourbon. it tasted like a child made it after watching his father make one from a distance the night before. It was a joke. Hers wasn't too bad, but was too sweet.
We read the menu and saw that the prices were a bit high. We were in a tourist area and in a nice hotel, so fine we get it. High prices are not an aversion to us, in fact we like when we see high prices, do you know why? Because it signals that we are in for a treat, prepared by people who not only know what they are doing but really care about the experience. This was clearly not the case.
Lobster stew. A bowl of it cost 32 dollars. It was not only much smaller than the word "bowl" would lead you to believe, but also devoid of any lobster meat at all. There were a few shreds but nothing on the order of what the price would indicate. Really? In Maine the best you can do is some creamy broth and lobster dust? The broth itself wasn't even good, it could have been out done by Campbell's. For 32 DOLLARS?
The Flatbread was billed as a brie and arugula flat bread with apples. this was a $26 appetizer. For that kind of money we were expecting something good. There was no brie whatsoever on this thing save for the shine of what might have been melted down brie applied sparingly with an airbrush. The apples were cut into chunks far too wide to be easily eaten and were overcooked. The arugula was about 7 tiny, shriveled pieces that looked like they were from the bottom of a bag that had been in the fridge too long. The bread itself bore the tell-tale marks of neat perforations that only occur if the bread is made in a factory. Indeed, it looked, felt and tasted like Naan from a bag.
The baby spinach salad was 21 dollars. I ordered it with the side of shrimp. This was a 20 dollar add on. $41 for a salad.
41 dollars for a salad.
6 obviously raised in China, frozen shrimp that were added to a pile of spinach which looked and tasted like it came out of a factory bag with a sprinkling of cheese and an uninspired dressing. I knew upon sight that these were frozen shrimp, not fresh, not farm to table. Frozen. From China or Thailand. Chewy, rubbery, cheap. The menu says that they are inspired by fresh ingredients from the coast of Maine to provide a true taste of Maine. I don't buy it. This crap? Are you kidding? You could find a better shrimp salad at an Applebee's. In Kansas. Costco brand frozen shrimp is a far better item than whatever this was.
They call themselves "farm to table" but honestly, it's more like freezer to table. This was quite simply the greatest rip-off I have ever experienced not just in a restaurant, but anywhere. I am struggling to think of the last time I had paid so much and was so disappointed.
Moreover, we asked for wine to be served with our food, and that did not hit the table until we were done eating. The server dropped the spoon for her "stew" and he did not return with a new one. He also failed to bring us two share plates as he said he would.
My girlfriend works in the industry and we are not ones to complain. When the bill hit the table, it said 183 dollars. Does the above sound like a 183 dollar meal? So we asked for an itemized bill and that's when I realized the shrimp were 20 dollars. We asked to see the manager because we wanted to address these issues.
We were told that the manager was busy managing both the hotel and the restaurant and she could not see us.
Wow.
I mean... Wow.
While at the bar the manager came to us and apologized for the experience and offered us a dessert on the house. We declined and my girlfriend explained what was wrong, and that if they want to charge these kinds of prices they need to up their game. We both came away with the feeling that she did not care in the least. She said she would talk to the chef about it, but I don't think this was a one-off bad night. The food that came out was not in our opinion any kind of anomaly, but standard business.
Given the nature of our complaint does a free dessert sound like a good idea? What we would have preferred was some sincerity about just how bad and embarrassing that meal was. We did not get that. We did not get what we paid for. What we got instead was a permanent answer to the question "what's the worst thing you have ever ate?" read more