UPDATE: I was contacted very professionally by management and I want to add that MoonShadow has great potential and I would like to go back and give this place another chance.
I really wanted to love this place because the menu looked great and the atmosphere was quirky and cute, but our first experience here was a huge disappointment.
We were in Deep Creek for a bachelorette party and made reservations for brunch at 10:30. We arrived early and were seated at 10:17 as a party of eight, although they had to make different seating arrangements because they mistakenly made our reservation for a party of five. No big deal. The menu wasn't very large, but I was excited by all of the delicious possibilities. After giving our drink orders and waiting anxiously to place our food orders, we noticed that the three other tables/parties that arrived much later than us were giving their food orders ahead of us. Odd because the dining room was not very large, so we felt overlooked by our server as he went around attending to the other patrons. When we finally ordered, all of us ordered some pretty standard brunch options - some variation of toast, eggs, potatoes. I don't eat meat so I just asked if I could order the breakfast plate without the sausage and bacon because all of the other elements were great. The server responded "Just so you know that's probably the worst thing you could order on the menu." The comment caught me off guard so I asked why is that, and he responded "Because if you don't want meat it's pretty much loaded with meat." Okay, except that it also had eggs, toast, and potatoes, so I wanted to have those items and just leave off the meat or sub it with something else. They don't have any sides or a la carte options listed, so I wasn't sure if I could piece together my own meal.
Anyway, we placed our orders without any other fuss and then proceeded to wait. And wait. And wait some more. At this point an hour had gone by and our food was nowhere to be seen, but the three equally large tables/parties who arrived some time AFTER us had literally already finished their food and paid and LEFT. So at this point we obviously noted the extremely long wait. I am usually very understanding and patient in service situations, but we were left in a mostly empty dining room at that point, tired and hungry and anxious to get on the road after what we thought was going to be a simple breakfast stop. When our food finally arrived, incomplete (as I got my eggs and toast but was waiting on potatoes and my friend got her plate without an english muffin), two of our friends didn't even get their plates until I was about almost finished eating my eggs and toast. At this point we FINALLY spoke up and approached the bar to ask about the ridiculous wait time on breakfast items and for our two friends who didn't get their food at that point. The woman at the bar explained there was some mix-up or whatever and that it took a bit longer. Okay, so nobody could have approached our table to simply apologize and offer an explanation? It was frustrating that we had to initiate that comment ourselves instead of the server/manager approaching our table voluntarily to give us a quick update and explain their error.
The woman at the bar apologized and offered to discount the meals, so we accepted that without any further question or argument and would've been satisfied to leave it at that and move on. We cleaned our plates in five minutes and then waited for the checks to arrive (yet another unnaturally long wait), but when they finally did only ONE of the EIGHT checks had a small discount on it, and all of the checks had automatic gratuity added for a party of 8+ (even though we had been seated at two separate tables of 4 and 4). When the server came back to collect our checks, I spoke up about the discount to ask why only one person received it when we all had the same experience and were speaking up about the collective experience as a group. He went back and added the discount to I believe three other checks and then the remaining party was still charged full price. Again, no apology or acknowledgment of the situation was ever made, and judging by other reviews I've seen now it appears that this is a common complaint.
It's a shame because the food itself was good overall, although my friend's english muffin that eventually came out was toasted to the point that it was almost inedible. I really love trying new places and great food, atmospheres, and service, but MoonShadow sorely missed the mark. I wish I could say I'm eager to return and try the rest of the menu, but the lack of service was so disappointing from a place with a lot of potential. In the future, please be open and honest with customers about order mix-ups, errors, etc. We finally left the restaurant around noon, so almost two hours were invested in trying to get breakfast and receive very poor customer service. read more