I am by no means one to spend my time leaving an unflattering review. However, as a Daytonian, I feel obliged to my fellow residents to briefly sketch my first and, God almighty willing, last experience with this piece of garbage restaurant.
My wife and I were meeting a couple who are close friends of ours for dinner on a week night. As it is a restaurant attached to a hotel, my inclination was to enter through the hotel lobby, which was itself, poorly informative on its own. The front desk was unmanned for approximately 30 seconds, and once a semi- professional front desk receptionist (or they could have been a manager for all I know) appeared, they informed my wife and I that to enter the rooftop restaurant, we had to exit the hotel, and use an entrance to the side of the building.
Peculiar for sure, especially since there seemed to be an elevator there in the lobby. This will come into play at the end of the evening.
Once my wife and I made it upstairs, we were blasted in the face by a hodgepodge yet sterile environment. But that was to be expected - this is, after all, a restaurant that evidently caters to the new Dayton Yuppie class who presumably want the atmosphere of living in a more trendy hip place. The patrons were thus primarily youthful types showing off their bodies because they're young, so why not. There were also your Oakwood/Beavercreek types, which, if you don't get it then forget it.
I would say we were underdressed, but we weren't. There were dudes in white dress shirts and navy pants and brown oxfords or white trainers (a look that never seems to die). Mixed with them were ladies who looked like they wore their yoga pants to bed before falling out of it in the early evening in a vapid stupor to grab a 15 dollar poisonously tasting cocktail. There were, of course, the geriatrics, head to toe Ralph Lauren. This is all to say that downtown Dayton does not have a dress code.
Yet when we were escorted to our seats, a square table in the back of the bar in a section that looked hilarious bare-bones when contrasted with the rest of the ostentatious yet Simulacrum-Sanitized atmosphere, I couldn't help but to feel as though we were not favored by the restaurant staff. This was only emphasized further by the fact that nobody in the restaurant had ever been so high up and were thus propelled to go on an evening constitutional on the balcony, allowing a Hellish blast of air each time the door opened. Dreadful in 90 degree heat.
Given the heat, the water in a carafe was very much appreciated when brought by the server. Excited for a refreshing cool glass of water quickly turned to soured disappointment when our carafe - and all subsequent refills - were room temperature at best. Dayton's tap water had a more refreshing taste than whatever the Foundry was pouring.
Our server was fine. I have nothing unfavorable to say of them, other than that they seemed a little absent, but it was a busy night - so busy that they had to seat patrons near the blast furnace balcony doors. So I hold no ill will there.
Now on to the food, the primary reason to ever go anywhere and do anything as a species. In a word: bland. In a couple more words: they have no business charging such outrageous prices for food that was so flavorless that it far exceeded White Castle on the bland-o-meter. My wife's dish came out cold, which is laughable for a restaurant that's trying very very hard to seem laudable. My wife's cocktail tasted like poison, or maybe concocted by a college freshmen assembling a drink from whatever they could get their nimble little fingers on. I myself could not finish such an atrocious creation, and alcoholism runs deep in my family.
More blasts of hot air prompted me to dive right into the balcony with my friend, to at least check out the atmosphere. It was as spartan and bland as the food itself. The balcony was infested with little pests taking instagram-worthy posts of the sun setting over a city whose character is being gradually stripped away by Columbus-based developers and restaurants like The Foundry.
Back inside and receiving the bill. Again, too pricey for what you get. But we paid, sat for a while, and talked over more glasses of lukewarm water. The conversation the four of us brought to the table was certainly the most savory thing of the evening.
Finally deciding to leave, we boarded the elevator which took us downward. To the lobby of the hotel. The very same lobby that the front desk agent advised us to exit and go around the building to get on the same elevator to get to the rooftop nightmare. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why we were given the most convoluted route to the restaurant, except for either we were not the "right clientele" or else just general hotel employee incompetence. But given the experience, it was probably both.
This is about as far as Yelp will let me go. In short, go to the Arby's a few blocks away. You know what you're getting. read more