Mother's Day Brunch May 2023. We drove in from Boise for the single worst dining experience of our entire lives. We were there a few minutes before the doors were unlocked and so we were the first people sat. It started upon entering the restaurant with breathtaking panoramic views of the canyon with the morning light reflecting from burnished wood surfaces, when the server led us though a door in the back of the restaurant into a dank, disused service hallway and into a connecting event hall with disgustingly dirty carpet, haphazardly placed tables with old used-to-be-white tablecloths thrown on top, a couple menu cards, and zero ambiance whatsoever. One of the chairs had a booger crusted on it if that counts as ambiance.
We ordered drinks shortly after being seated - I say 'ordered' and not 'enjoyed' because we never received them after 30 minutes (remember, we were the first people sat so presumably there wasn't a rush prior to our order).
A good third of the pile of plates at the front of the buffet station were dirty (bits of dishwasher-dried-on food stuck to them), so after finding an acceptably clean one I wandered through a lackluster potluck of side dishes comprised mostly of mac/cheese and potato dishes that looked like they'd been shipped directly in from the hospital cafeteria leftovers. I settled on cold smashed potatoes, even colder stuffing, some mac/cheese bits (the only good part of the entire morning) and headed over to get some prime rib (the ham looked like they found it on the 'last chance' rack at a roadside butcher - no thank you!), and WOW was I about to be disappointed. After digging through the bundles of red napkins wrapped around dirty silverware to find something passably clean, I was trying to use my butter knife since they didn't have anything else to saw through this RAW (not medium rare and certainly not up to 120 degrees) chunk of gristly...well I guess it could be technically called prime rib, but it was mostly silver skin and uncooked fat; it could seriously have used the au jus that wasn't present to give the otherwise bland, undercooked, overly-fatty lump of beef some flavor. Truly, at this point it was just disrespectful to the cow. My wife decided on the breakfast side of the buffet and her experience was not any better. We're talking previously frozen breakfast foods: luke-warm weirdly colored 'sausage', greasy limp bacon, cold french toast and pancakes, and boxed muffins/desserts.
After a half hour waiting for our drinks in our dreary converted mess hall I journeyed back through the weird hallway into the actual restaurant (which again, is breathtakingly pretty) where I tried to flag down a server. I asked about being seated in the actual restaurant (which is where I was led to believe my reservation was originally) and I was very rudely told that it was not possible. I asked to speak to a manager to check on the status of my drinks (remember them?!) and I was told there was not a manager on staff at that time and I was welcome to wait at my table in the dungeon for our drinks.
This was nowhere close to what was represented on the website. If I would have known I was driving 2 hours each way to sit in a musty, dirty-carpeted room at a table with no décor and booger-crusted chairs only to be exposed to either helpless or rude staff to try to choke down disgustingly underprepared food off of dirty dishes with nothing to wash it all down, I would have laughed! And to sell this experience for Mother's day of all days? That's just straight up mean.
I cannot fathom what the general population of mothers has done to make this restaurant hate them so very, very much, but rest assured, the message was received loud and clear. read more