Google for some reason won't let me post this; it was written with that site in mind…read more
If you're going here to revel in the antics of Samantha and the other cute barmaids, read no further; it seems like you'll have a good time. If you're coming here to eat, though, read on.
I was part of a 16-set whose reservations were made *three* days earlier for 11 a.m., when the Switch opens for brunch on Saturday mornings. About 14 of us showed up. When we entered, we were told we had the back space all to ourselves ... only to find the tables had not been arranged for such a large group. We helped the staff, which is to say one of the attractive young women probably among those mentioned by name in many of the other reviews, put them together--by which it would be more accurate to say we did it for her.
Said waitress was the *only* person working the *entire* front ... there were a few other people near the bar. And none of the cute barmaids. This young woman had to do *all* the waitservice *and* all the bartending. There is absolutely no excuse for letting this much service fall on the head of a single staffer with this much advance notice. They had *three days' notice* that they'd have a big table at Saturday's open. That's more than enough time to get someone else to come to work. That they did not suggests that someone was too busy writing emoji-laden one-word responses to Google Reviews to let this be brought to his attention, or that it was and he didn't care because he needs a little help making this month's boat payment.
If this had been the only problem, I'd have left a generally favorable review. But instead, it got worse.
A friend in the group who has plenty of restaurant experience themselves and noticed these same deficiencies ordered some iced tea with his breakfast--only to be told there was none available. Uh, OK ... these things happen.
Immediately afterwards, I ordered coffee. A few minutes later our cute barmaid returned, and said with some evident surprise that ... there wasn't any. Really? On a Saturday morning when you advertise and serve an extensive brunch menu, you have somehow forgotten to restock something so basic? This is Restaurant 101.
As my omelet was being prepared (it was good ... the food is the only thing that got a star here), the same cute barmaid came bouncing out to inform me that ... there was no whole wheat bread to toast for the side I had ordered. Would white be OK? Yes. But I was beginning to feel like the Switch's business model was the cheese shop in the Monty Python sketch, and did something I would never have imagined myself doing before: announced loudly that that would mean another star off the Google Review. I guess Mr. Owner was too busy keeping up on *his* strategy of responding to every single review in order to intimidate people from posting what might be more generally bad experiences from which lessons might be learned to actually check his stocks, much less order more (However, maybe there's an upside to this ... if people want to shoot each other in the future, there won't be any bullets available).
And while this experience was not the fault of the cute barmaid, who I should say I still tipped (albeit modestly), since she was indeed polite and charming and (importantly) apologetic the whole time, especially again given that she had to do all the front-end work by herself, she did make one significant error my restaurant-veteran friend noticed. Another of our number had his drink delivered without the lemon wedge that was supposed to be in it. She (yet again) apologized, and came back with several lemon wedges to choose from ... held in *her bare hands* when they should have been in a bowl or on a plate. This is an actionable health-code violation, and the only reason I'm reporting it here rather than to Goshen is that, for all the aforementioned reasons, I don't want her to get into trouble and get fired.
When I told my wife about all this, she said that a) she would have stormed out and gone to Dunkin' Donuts (which, for her, is saying something) when the coffee wasn't available and b) $14 for even a well-made omelet was way too much given this display of incompetence.
So, Mr. Owner, if this the "trying our best" you bragged about in your response to one of your other dissatisfied customers (and FWIW it seems like those reviews have become more common in the last year or so), you are falling far short. As Yoda told Luke, "do, or do not ... there is no try". Maybe you should consider hiring someone to actually run the house and just limit yourself to being the social-media manager you have clearly always wanted to be.
The Switch Inn? It should be Asleep at the Switch Inn!
