Dune — Restaurant in New Providence

My husband and I dined mid-June for our annual summer stay on Paradise Island. We’ve been every summer for 15 years and this restaurant about 6 years. We travel as a family but our twenty-something kids now have less time with their jobs to join us. Dune is our very favorite spot. We started coming here when it belonged to the exclusive “One and Only” Resort” group. At that time the food, atmosphere and service were all Outstanding. Unfortunately, with each visit we have seen changes that have diminished the quality. First, the interior design changes from Indonesian rich dark woods to tending gray hues aren’t as lovely. The huge tent that was added blocking the restaurant beachfront glass windows during Covid has ruined the fantastic ocean view from the dining room. White tablecloths in the dining room were removed for the pandemic and haven’t been replaced…miss them! Recently, this property was acquired by the Four Seasons. The quality is far less than “One and Only” standards, and below Four Seasons standards, too. Dinner dress has been loosened to allow sneakers, flip flops and ripped jeans; Elegant resort-wear, collared shirts and Bermuda shorts used to be the requirement. But this visit was even more disappointing. The service was poor. First of all, it’s nearly all men working in the dining room, I may have seen one woman on the floor; Why? Next, the restaurant is understaffed. Gone are the support staff that assist the head waiter to assure water glasses are full, bread is brought to the table, finished dishes are removed or used silverware is replaced. The waiters are to be doing this in addition to explaining the menu, taking orders and checking on you through your meal. We observed some really amateur mistakes: the table top lighting was brought to the tables interrupting our meal during the middle of the evening and they weren’t even lit up.This should have been done before the restaurant opened. It took over 30 minutes from our being seated getting menus for the serving of water glasses and we had to ask if there was bread being served even after this. We had to ask for water more than once. Our waiter came to remove our dinner plates with a dirty dinner plate in hand from another table, Yuk. Our dessert utensils were handed directly to us versus replacing them on the table. But what was by far the most unprofessional was that we sat at a corner low back sofa style booth directly adjacent to the open kitchen. (There is not a bad seat in the restaurant). The staff would deliver items to our table by reaching between us from behind and across the back of the booth and set them on the table; So bad. Clearly the staff are being poorly trained; we don’t think they are even aware. From what we know from our many years of visiting PI, we have no doubt if properly trained they would take pride in their work and deliver top quality service. I find it sad that such a lovely and special place as this private beautiful hotel has been acquired by a hotel group that is not up to the standards it deserves and preserved over the years. It’s nice to visit places that don’t cut corners but instead value and pay attention to the details and beauty of dining. Lastly, I will add that the functional tent with the plastic eisenglass(sp) panels has been replaced this year with a more permanent tent structure which is of excellent quality to the property. However, it will never be as beautiful as without it. Also, I read many of the recent reviews and the complaints about poor service are all in keeping with our experience. The menu is very good, the food is still deliciously prepared. Order fresh local seafood items and the banana cake dessert. The grounds are spectacular; stroll about the hotel and grounds, explore and experience this hidden gem. Please elevate service of the dining experience to its earlier premium quality and bring back the table cloths and the dress code. Oh, and walk the beach back to Atlantis hotel...

Since google limits the characters on reviews I'll have to condense this review immensely. Go see Trip Advisor for the full story. I have been coming to Dune every year since 2013, and since 2016 my wife and I come to celebrate our Anniversary here since we got married over at The Cloisters and can see the grounds before we eat. Key takeaways from our experience in June. After letting our waiter know that I have been sober 2 years and neither of us would be drinking he lets us know how he drinks from 10AM-5PM every day and was still hungover (it is 7PM). When we ordered, our waiter informed us that from our reservation notes he knew my wife was a vegetarian, and that the chef was going to "create magic in the kitchen" for her and gave no explanation as to what this would be. This was uncomfortable due to the fact we felt we had no choice in what she could order, but seeing as we were at such a nice restaurant it had to be great. The next 1 hour and 45 minutes we saw our waiter 2 times. Once to ask for more bread and the status of the appetizer (neither ever arrived) and once when our main courses were delivered almost 2 hours after we sat down. The beef tenderloin was cooked to the point of almost being inedible, which I assume is why it took almost 2 hours to get, and the "magic the chef created" was the most plain plate of steamed vegetables you could imagine. When we mentioned we never got the appetizer our waiter told us "I was so focused on the magic the chef was creating for the vegetarian dish I forgot". An absolute joke. We were uncomfortably forced into ordering dessert for the appetizer mishap after insisting we wanted the check. I gave up arguing and ordered something. By this point it's 10PM and any hopes of a nice Anniversary dinner are over and all we want to do is get out of this place. We ask for the check again, and instead of bringing it we are greeted with the most boisterous "Happy Anniversary" serenade and chocolate cake. Nothing better than having the entire restaurant focus their attention on you when you've spent over 3 hours having a disaster of a dinner. To top this whole experience off I was given the wrong check and didn't notice until after my card was charged. It took another 15-20 minutes and 3 attempts from the manager to get this check right. Of course the appetizer was on there, and even better they had charged me for the "celebration dessert" that we didn't ask for. Not to mention that magical plate of vegetables was $40. Over 3.5 hours after sitting down we we're finally free of this place and able to move on with our lives.

TLDR: You could get better food at a Red Lobster and to say the service was that of what you get at McDonalds would be an insult...

The dune has in the past been one of the best restaurants on the island. Casino royale was filmed there and for the past 15 years I’ve grown up here and had a great experience. It is a different place now while the food is great I could have had better service at mcdonalds. To start off we arrived at the restaurant 15 minutes early because they have a cancellation policy of $50 dollars a person. We walked to the hostess stand and waited in line. They then proceeded to ask the people behind us about seating and skipped us in line. They were sat immediately. Just because we were young adults it took them 10 minutes to come back to us and were nonchalant about us getting our table. We sat at the bar to get a drink while we waited and had to come back to the hostess stand 35 minutes after our reservation to be seated. The hostess then said we can seat you outside (when our reservation was inside) or we can give you a table inside in 45 minutes so we sat outside. The second we sat down we waited for 20 minutes to get water then proceeded to have a waiter who eye rolled and treated us like we didn’t exist. He just assumed we wanted the panna water without asking which he then we were charged $50 for the water. The entire dinner he was a complete dick and it took him over an hour to bring out the check. After the way we were treated we asked to speak to the manager because I had been there so many times and it’s never been this was. The manager was very nice and really tried to remedy our experience. However, it took him another hour to get us our checks because either him or the waiter messed up our checks 3 times. The waiter then waited in the back lounge and we saw him pointing at us cursing and throwing his arms up in the air because he was told on for his terrible service. I really felt like this place was the flagship restaurant in the Bahamas but honestly in our entire week here this was the worst we were treated. I’m disappointed in the way this restaurant has gone but just know it’s not the same place you...