Stony Lake Inn — Restaurant in Benona Township

To start off, I was hoping for a nicer dining experience, which was probably the wrong take for this place. The first thing that hit me was the servers attitude, lack of care or concern, by far not the biggest issue. I honestly can't believe how bad the food was. One of the sides I ordered was coleslaw and it came in a big soufflé cup.... that's pretty unprofessional. We ordered the things that they say are their specialties, the Chicken Alfredo and the Lake Perch. The chicken alfredo tasted like canned Ragu alfredo, incredibly buttery and distasteful and the chicken tasted like it had just come out of a can. Honestly I wish I was making this up, my wife LOVES alfredo and she couldn't finish it because it was so bad. I got the Lake Perch as I figured it would be good to try a proclaimed specialty, at $24 it was just about their highest priced menu item and I wanted to see how they made it. I am sorry I did. The batter was decent, but that's all it was. I was hoping they would find a way to draw out the flavor of the fish, instead they completely buried it under the heavily seasoned batter. Oh yea, and it took them 40 minutes to bring out our food, they weren't even that busy at it was after 8pm when we visited. The steak fries were decent, they seemed freshly done. If you want a bar experience, this is probably fine, but way overpriced. Don't ever come here hoping for a good actual date night or...

So let me start by saying I really really really wanted to have a 5 star review of this place.... When we arrived we were met with tables full of empty dishes and other tables full with people without food and drinks. We found an open clean table and a oil our seat. 15 minutes later I went to the bar to order drinks myself. THE waitress (the only one) saw me apologized and said she would be right over. We ordered our drinks and they came promptly. We then ordered food and again it came out in a reasonable amount of time. I hike we were waiting for our food we saw 4 tables of unserved people get up and leave.....They came in just behind us.... The bartender was not impressive with his service skills to say the least. The food was good and that is why I am giving it 3 stars. To say they were understaffed is nice.... These small places have to realize it is worth putting a few more people in staff BEFORE the rush starts so they can at least prep and clean the f there are not enough customers yet. (In this case 2 would have been sufficient. ) For the little bit they will pay these people it will save money from walking out the door and earning poor reviews. We plan on giving it another chance and we hope it will be better. But this time unfortunately we just were not amazed...

Pros: Great location clean ample parking and honestly VERY good food

Cons: We waited for ~45 minutes before our order was even taken Once we ordered, we waited another ~45 minutes before our food arrived. Half the table got their food 10 minutes earlier than the other half We watched 3 tables sit down after us, eat their food, and leave before we even got our food Our waiter was VERY callous with us. He seemed to not care about my table, which was about 9 people all being quiet and polite. He did not smile once at us, and made us all feel like we were being annoying when he finally came around to take our order. Now, before you assume the restaurant was busy when this happened... We came as a lunch party around 1pm and there were only 2 other tables in THE ENTIRE RESTAURANT besides a few people at the bar. Out of our 9 orders, 4 of them had the wrong side or was just plain missing the side when it was brought out. 2 of the 9 orders were completely wrong, but we had waited so long that those receiving them ate them anyways.

Bottom Line: The food was good, but the wait of over an hour and a half to get our food was absolutely unacceptable. Add to that unpleasant waitstaff and you're really not left with much, even for a...