Trademark - An American Brasserie — Restaurant in Alexandria

We arrived in Alexandria late and hungry so we decided to try the hotel restaurant. We ordered the Soft Warm Pretzel Bites as an appetizer and shared their Trademark Classic Hamburger. The Pretzel Bites were very tasty and buttery when eaten straight but they also came with a honey maple mustard and a chipotle cheese dipping sauce that were fun. I wouldn't have minded having a few more pretzels but there was way more sauce than we could use. The hamburger wasn't anything fancy but was truly delicious. I typically tend to enjoy burgers but not get too excited about them. This one was tasty enough that we had to return the next day to settle a craving. As long as we were there to split the hamburger again, we also added the Mussels Diablo and their Balvenie Whiskey Flight. The PEI mussels came just the way I enjoy them best, in a savory broth with andouille sausage and grilled bread. The Balvenie Flight included a nice pour of their older DoubleWood, Caribbean, and Port aged Scotches. They were served on a wooden tray that had a chalk label indicating which was which so I didn't need to tax my memory. There was also an eyedropper of water and small glass of ice for experimenting. The DoubleWood and Caribbean were very good but the Port was in another league. This restaurant is nice and quiet with friendly service...

Had lunch and attempted to have breakfast here.

Lunch: service was slow. The restaurant seems to get busy for dinner but pretty slow and otherwise so though we were one of two parties in the restaurant it took us a while to be seated then to have our food ordered. There is no host so you walk in and wait awkwardly in the middle for anyone to notice you.

We ordered soup and two lunch items. Soup was chicken noodle, served just barely warm. My partner ordered Salmon, it was fine, but not great. I ordered the fish and chips, which was excellent! And a coffee….The bill came out to 80 dollars. I cannot fathom that price point for the lunch service we received. I understand it’s a part of the hotel so typically has higher prices but wow. Shocked.

Begrudgingly I attempted to go to breakfast today but gave up when no one would seat me for more than 5 minutes. I couldn’t view the pricing options for breakfast online due to their website having errors. The room service app doesn’t work to order food either. I couldn’t tell what the breakfast options were, though it seemed like a buffet style was served and possibly some other options. I wanted to see prices before I tried again but after the service was so uncaring I left.

If you are at the hotel and must eat here, I do recommend the fish and chips, but your...

The food is good here, but the effort put in to making food of good quality gets ruined by the terrible service. We had a reservation at 10:30, and it took the lady 10 minutes to come over to greet us and another family that was also waiting. As we waited, we watched her bus tables, grab things off of table and walk around mindlessly. She seemed very scatterbrained. My guess is it’s because of the lack of servers and bus boys on shift. We counted three servers while we were there, one being the bartender. Quite a few walked out and a lot of people were grabbing sugar, creamer etc. off of other tables because the servers couldn’t have cared to bring it to us. I was also hoping for a refill on my orange juice (which was in a cup that could maybe hold 3 shot glasses full of orange juice) which never happened because the second we got our drink orders they never came to check on us ONCE until we were ready to pay.

With that being said, I know servers have it hard. So whoever does hiring and scheduling, PLEASE put more people on the clock. These people looked stressed out of their minds just because there were not enough hands to grab things and serve them for every customer on a SUNDAY MORNING (aka the busiest breakfast day...