Cornerstone Restaurant & Bar — Restaurant in Aspinwall

My husband, daughter and I went there for dinner tonight. It had such good reviews and I truly don’t understand why. We walked in, and was greeted by a young blond woman who said “hi”. And I said “hi”. And then we stared at each other. She stared at me like I walked in on her in the bathroom or something. Then an older blond woman came over and asked if we wanted to sit in the bar. Because my daughter is 3 (and she was hungry), I said sure. So we’re off to a weird start. The bartender comes over, we order for our daughter, and we look over the menu. And then he’s gone for about 15 minutes. He comes back, takes our orders. My husband gets the penne, I get the squash. My husband asks if it’s spicy, the waiter tells him there’s a tiny bit, but really not that spicy. My daughter gets cranky (again, she’s hungry), and at most restaurants at this price point they put out a little nosh, so we thought there’d be bread or something on the table. My husband goes up to the older blond woman and asks for bread. He said she was a little curt with him, but I wasn’t there. I say to my husband in front of the waiter “would you split a root beer with me?” The waiter leaves. We’re confused, because we didn’t order a root beer, so we figured it was a crapshoot whether he was bringing it or not. He returns with the root beer and two frosted pint glasses. Which is very nice, but there’s no ice. Whatever, but a little annoying. 7 minutes later, the bread comes WITH her meal. Her meal is great - we ordered her steak medium, it’s a little well in places, but she liked it. So we wait. And wait. She FINISHES her steak. And if you’ve ever eaten with a 3 year old, you understand how long of a time that is. She eats her fries. We’re sitting there, our booth was next to the door - which stayed open - and at one point there were a million flies. The old blond lady says “oh yeah, they’re horrible” and walks away. Bizarre! 45 minutes after we’ve ordered, our food comes out - mind you - this was PASTA and a SQUASH. My husbands pasta looks gross, it was obviously made a while ago and stuck under a heat lamp. And they’d put some Parmesan shavings over it before it went under the lamp - so it was not appetizing at all. For mine, the filling, which was just mushrooms and spinach, was hot, but the squash was cold. My husband takes a bite - it’s super spicy. I try it, and they must have thrown peppercorn in by the handfuls or something. It was inedible. So we just sent them back and that was that. We told the waiter how bad this experience was - I give a LOT of grace to restaurants, especially with staffing shortages, but they had three people seating people. It took them 7 minutes to bring a kid some bread. Anyway, he apologizes, tells us we won’t be charged, etc. we say thanks. He disappears again, and we’re getting ready to go. He returns about 5 minutes later with a bill for our daughters steak. That was fine, but don’t say “obviously we’re not going to charge you, have a good night” AND THEN RETURN WITH A CHECK. Oh, and a $25 gift card. Like we’re ever going to return. Substandard would be too nice of a word for this place. What’s the absolute worst part, is the reason we choose this is because we wanted to walk over to the park. Because we ended up being in this crap house for almost TWO hours, the sun started setting. So we left, after two hours, still hungry, our evening ruined WITH A BILL. Truly horrible service and bad food (except for the steak & fries, they were good!). AVOID! GO...

My friend recommended this place for lunch because her prior experiences have been positive. The name of the restaurant suited OUR experience...we were put in a Corner and thrown Stones. After being seated and had our orders taken, 45 mins wait went by with no food in sight BUT yet others that came after us and seated were served. Oh, at 1230pm on a Sunday afternoon- they ran out of chicken/waffles and brisket, really? The manager Rob, if that is his real name, did not come outside to apologize for the "kitchen being backed up" or anything; my husband went inside to get the check for the drinks we ordered and noticed many empty tables.  The manager went up to my husband and offered nothing for our inconvenience. NOTHING. The waitress, Brooke, appeared to be flustered- I guess she was having a bad day - but thanked my friend for HER positive energy while the 4 of us that were with her, I guess, were not as positive. Would you be "positive" if you waited 45 mins for your lunch and no one came to your table to at least apologize for the inconvenience? I personally spoke to the manager and his body language showed that he really didn't care if we left. He said that we were "seated too early" and that he already went over this with my husband and that he apologized. I let him know that it appeared everyone else is having a good time except for us, we were miserable... my words didn't phase him. Poor excuses matched the service we received= POOR. Managers like him should not be working in this industry at all. I've seen restaurant managers go out of their way to make their customers feel welcomed. Rob did no such thing. I hope the owner of this establishment reads this and fixes this problem so others do not experience this awful service. If your establishment is as popular and has great reviews, make sure you're stocked with the popular food items and hire managers that care. My family and I are definitely not coming back and my friend that suggested this place will no longer be returning as well, nor will her family...

Been here three times. First time we had brunch and it was great. Second time we had dinner and it was ok. I liked my chicken dish well enough, but my fiancé didn’t really like his pasta dish. We chalked it up to his palate and him not paying enough attention to the description. Got Bread pudding for desert and it blew my mind!

Tonight we got dinner for the second time. I got the seared tuna dish, which was prepared well, but not well-balanced. More of an issue with the recipe; everything was prepared perfectly. Dark miso made the whole dish too salty. Fiancé got the other pasta dish this time with asparagus. Whoever was in the kitchen forgot to cut off the woody ends, which really ruined the dish. But whatever…the concept and the rest of it was still better than the pasta he got a week or so before so still a positive in his book.

Then desert time. I’m excited because I rarely get desert but this place has an AMAZING bread pudding that I loved last time and planned to get again. Whoops. They’ve changed the desert menu and have gone from some of the most inspiring deserts to the some of the most banal. Cheesecake, ice cream, some gross strawberry tiramisu amalgamation…my fiancé ordered it to go and maybe he’ll report back that it was better than it looked.

Place had a lot of promise, but based on the trajectory, the recipes will probably get more boring and the cooks less educated. I told the waitress before we left that the chef forgot to cut off the woody ends of the asparagus and she said “is that it?” And I said “yep, that’s it,” and then left. I wasn’t trying to get money off the bill; it had just been paid and was waiting on the table. I wanted to let them know so the cook could be more careful and the place could stick around longer. I genuinely liked it; it was becoming a regular place for us. But her response kinda did it for me. Between the hit or miss food, the downgraded menu, and the waitress who could care...