I always feel conflicted by writing negative reviews; however, we had such a terrible experience celebrating my birthday yesterday at Saddlehill Winery in Voorhees, and with the subsequent response from management, I felt compelled to caution against going with a large party, or frankly at all. I have been once with friends which was also a bumpy experience, but then went with my husband for our anniversary and had a lovely time. As such he chose Saddlehill for my birthday dinner.
Full transparency we were a party of 11 who requested if we could have separate checks (not each individual though) We made this request at the start of the meal and asked the waitress how she wanted to do this and she wanted to do it by seat number. I had never experienced that, but she seemed so sure, so we trusted her.
That being said ultimately the issues was the service.
The service during the meal was frankly awful. For a venue that tries to portray themselves as an upscale experience it was one of the worst service experiences I have ever encountered.
For the sake of trying to be as brief as possible (though so many errors it's hard):
Our drink order was placed and there was a long wait before we ordered food. We were missing a drink.
When we did order food, she only was willing to take our appetizer order.
She did not return to take our entree order and our appetizers came out- we were missing one item and also delivered one item we did not order. We notified her that our appetizer was missing and she did not offer to place the order.
We had to flag her down to order drinks, ask for water and ultimately to order our entrees. This task, being in a semi-private room, proved difficult.
She never cleared the menus from the table
We had to ask for our appetizer plates, serving plates, and empty bottles of water to be cleared from the table before entrees arrived.
We had to find our own spoon for soup and napkins when our entrees arrived.
One entree had to be sent back twice for being made incorrectly.
A 2nd plate of an entree we ordered and received was almost delivered to our table.
She brought out "mini checks" while we were still finishing our entrees and asked us to check for and correct any errors - which we did at her request- and returned them to her.
She never offered us dessert or coffee at that point. And because to me checks = end of meal, I had to ask her about our cake that we brought. "I didn't know about any cake but I'm not kicking you out" She came back and said she found the cake.
We asked if the table could be cleared before the cake came out- No one cleared the table and she brought the cake.
We had to ask other servers for a knife, plates, and silverware or the cake. I cut the cake and she comes in and says to me "I won't charge you the cake cutting fee since you cut the cake"
Then when the MULTIPLE bills came (with the system she orchestrated- literally putting a single diet coke, cocktail or entree on individual bills in some cases) everything was a jumbled mess that she expected us to figure out- we never got a master receipt to correct the errors amongst ourselves. She took each bill to ring out individually then which then resulted in some members paying more than they owed and some paying less. She then complained about us "being too much" as she was walking around without realizing a member of our group was behind her.
A friend feeling bad about my birthday experience (and trying to correct her bill) tried to speak with management last night and ultimately was dismissed. A staff member I spoke with today seemed apologetic and stated she would escalate it to her boss to call me in an hour. I ultimately had to call again as no one called me back after several hours. I could tell he was defensive and annoyed the moment we got on the phone, and he cut me off several times as I was trying to explain what happened. He stated he was there last night, but made several errors about what we experienced. Management then proceeded to accuse us of requesting individual checks for each item (we did not), accused us of saying "we only want to pay for what we eat" which we did not, defended her service, but then made an excuse for her about "it being very hot yesterday". He also suggested we should have a "spending limit" of how much each person can/will spend when going out with a group if we need multiple checks. If the restaurant had said we can only split the check X ways we would have figured it out as a group, but she said she could accommodate separate checks and informed us how she would like to do that. We know what good service is, and definitely what it isn't. read more