Alpen Restaurant & Bar — Restaurant in Beech Mountain

Not great. Decor is a little dated for one. Secondly, took about 5 minutes to be greeted at the door. To add, service was not great, idk if it was because the band was going on or what, but took an hour to get food. Next they didn't have my first choice the Top Sirloin. So instead I had the Cuban Special ($25) - "Cuban" Pulled Pork, White Rice, black beans, and plantains. Pork was white, no color, like it had been boiled in water for hours (not slow cooked but literally boiled in water), also there was almost more onions than pork. It was incredibly salty, as was the white rice. Black beans were swimming in gray water like they had just dumped them out of the can and then microwaved them for a couple minutes. Plantains were ok..... Anyways, for the place to take an hour to get the food and then for it to be inedible was pretty disappointing. I'm from Florida so maybe my standards for Cuban food is high (idk I'm just trying to find reasons to help their case). But IMO if a restaurant claims to have an "authentic Cuban" special, then i guess I was hoping they would deliver, especially after they didn't have my first choice. I was far from impressed. Also one of the steaks ordered from my party was not cooked to the correct temp, the Med Well was Med Rare. So for the price - the service and quality of food was not worth it. 1/5 not...

We had a horrible experience here! We were there for 1.5 hours, and all we had received in that time was our appetizer and drinks. Horrible service!! The stuffed portobello mushroom appetizer was good, but that is all I can comment on their food. After waiting over 40 mins for our meal to arrive, we finally paid for what we had gotten and left. Our waiter didn't even check in with us to apologize for the delay, ask if we wanted more bread, etc. The manager didn't even offer to comp us on our appetizer. There was another couple that got seated behind us shortly before we left. We saw them the next night, and they commented they also had to wait a very long time for their food, and were getting ready to walk out when their food finally arrived at their table. They had gotten some of their items comped that night, but again, it wasn't offered to us! After that night, we found out that they are running two restaurants out of one kitchen, the other one being a pizza joint. If that is the case, they need to hire more cook staff or stop this practice! It's compromising their business, and it also negates their claim of being a fine...

We walked into the place and the manager or host told us that it's going to be quite a delay since there's going to be 20 people coming soon that had a reservation. I said are they here now? No, he said, they're coming soon. I said well we'd better sit down quick and make our order so we can get ahead of them. He wasn't too pleased but he sat us anyway.

The waitress was wonderful. She put our order in right away, brought out our meal that was delicious, and we were finished by the time all the guests arrived.

I did not appreciate that first guy because I felt that he didn't value my patronage as much as he valued the 20 people coming in.

Now, the reason I gave it three stars was because of him, and the fact that my bill was $174 for five people two were children. I supposed the dollar signs were in his eyes thinking that there were four times as many people as us and how much money he would be making.

We probably won't...