Mary Murphy Steakhouse — Local services in Buena Vista

Our night was going well at Mount Princeton Hot Springs. The gentlemen at the hot spring was nice and hospitable, offering his assistance with navigating the property and ensuring we had a great time. We even had a room booked for a friend's birthday, with resort guests treating us as we were...just guests.

However, when we wrapped up our time at the hot spring and decided to have dinner at the steak house, our experience at Mount Princeton quickly went south. Our server, Amanda, treated us as an inconvenience through the duration of the evening. From basic questions, to placing our order, we were met with an attitude and seemed to upset her throughout our entire stay. One of my friends who traveled from Florida had even had a comment directly to Amanda, stating that she was rather "smart" with us through the evening. A comment she allowed to roll off, with no remorse. I had made a comment to Amanda, and she mumbled something under her breath to avoid me hearing what she had to say, but to get her point across that she clearly did not care what we had to say.

After spending nearly $300 at the restaurant, and after wrapping up our evening, we made it a point to tell the bartender, as we were walking out, that we believed Amanda needed some hospitality training before being allowed to serve even one more guest. The bartender became defensive, not acknowledging the feedback we had provided and seemed to defend her actions, which he had not even witnessed first hand. I immediately sensed some sort of "conflict of interest" between the two of them, as he was not at all interested in the feedback we had to provide.

Not to be a Karen, but at this point, we asked to speak to the manager. The manager, Tomas, came out, asking what what commotion was about. He listened to our concerns, and as we were explaining the situation, Mr. Bartender felt the need to pop-off and defend Amanda, once again, even referring to me as "bud" in his statements. I turned around, stating to him that I did not appreciate the way he was addressing me as a customer, only for him to reply "ok then, friend."

It was in this moment that we realized that Tomas, Amanda, nor the bartender actually cared that we patronized their business. The 5 of us almost felt ganged up upon, as our server had a facetious attitude, the bartender was empowered to openly disrespect me, and the manager stood there and did absolutely nothing. As we were leaving, Amanda made a comment to the extent of "one of you has had too much to drink." Interesting that she made this comment, as she had no problem serving these drinks, expecting to get a tip off of us. And she would have gotten it too, had it not been for her piss-poor attitude the entire evening.

With so many amazing attractions nearby, you expect a higher level of service from a place like this. We could have chosen any other mountain town, but we chose Salida and Mount Princeton. I am humiliated that I brought my out-of-state friends to this establishment, only to be treated like absolute garbage by everyone from the servers, to the bartenders, to the management. As I am sure you can imagine, we will never patronize this business again, and I hope that if you choose to do so, you do not get Amanda as your server, nor Tomas as your manager on duty. Because if you happen to have a bad experience, you can bet on getting ganged up on by the entire staff and made to feel like a burden and not a guest.

As a whole, we have visited Mount Princeton many times over the years. But you can bet anything that we will never visit again....

We stayed at the hotsprings resort for our tenth anniversary, and given that the resort is a little remote, we ate here out of necessity twice. The first time was for dinner, and we arrived for our reservation and were seated right away, which was great. However, after we sat down, it took a solid 15-20 minutes for our server to even greet us. We ordered the spinach dip as an appetizer, which was really runny and the "crostini" that it came with were literally Lays potato chips lol. Not with the $15ish it cost by a long shot.

Then it came to the mains, and to say they were disappointing would be an understatement. My steak was completely raw. Don't get me wrong, ya girl likes a good medium rare, but this was fully raw, like it had been on the grill for maybe 45 seconds to get a barely there crust. I sent it back, obviously, and it took almost 15 minutes to get it back. By which time, my husband's meal was cold because he was sweet enough to wait to eat until I had my food as well. When they finally brought my plate back, it was better, but the cook was suuuuuper inconsistent and there were still parts that we inedible because of how raw they were. Ridiculous for the $60 price tag.

We decided to get a Creme Brule to share, and it was pretty good, but it was tiny. So that, paired with one glass of wine and an old fashioned, and our meals, we spent over $180 for a very mediocre experience and %50 of our meal being inedible.

The next day we went again for breakfast, which was again, incredibly disappointing. We arrived at about 8:45 and again, it took over 15 minutes to be greeted by a server once we were seated. We were then told that they were "out of pancakes." At breakfast. 45 minutes after the breakfast service started lol.

So, we ordered things we didn't want, and it was the breakfast equivalent of Debbie Downer from the SNL skit. And it cost us another $50 😂

Overall a very disappointing aspect of the resort, which has so many lovely things to offer. The restaurant just kind of sucks, plain and simple. You'll have a better meal if you just stop at the little general store and grab a Hunk of Hunt Brothers Pizza, which we did for dinner on the second night, and it was...

We made a reservation for 730. We had to wait for about 10-15 minutes to be seated because they were preparing a table for someone without a reservation. We were seated on the patio, while we waited- the table without the reservation got water and apps before we were even greeted. After literally 20 minutes of not being greeted I went to the host stand to ask for someone to come address our table.

Eventually we had a waitress named Laura come out to attend to us. We did place drink orders and food orders at that point. The calamari was great, drinks were good. Once the steaks came out we had two cooked incorrectly. We grabbed Laura and showed her the steak that was supposed to be med-rare (more like med well) and she said "That is definitely not med rare", then asked if we had somehow "switched our meals on accident" we all ordered differently so no. She took the steak, and then came back in 5 minutes and asked my friend if she had "looked at her steak with her flashlight" ????????? What???????? We then had to explain to her that med rare is a warm red center and not light pink....the steak was finally taken back. When she came out with the new one, she did not bring a replacement fork with her. Had to wait for her to come back to grab another set of silverware, when the steak was cut into, it was still entirely overdone. My friends stated that she just wasn't going to eat it and no need to make another, the waitress just said "ok" and took the plate away. Took us another 10 minutes to see her, where she came back and said "sorry I should've asked if you wanted anything else, oh and you guys don't have any waters sorry".

She took two out of four drinks off of our bill, did not charge for the steak, and gave us two free desserts. The cake was stale the cheesecake wasn't horrible. We were never visited by a manager, I don't feel like at this price point this service was acceptable whatsoever. We will recommend against going here, and I know I will never visit again. Would've rather eaten the pizza at the...