Everett's 8800 — Restaurant in Big Sky

Do not bother. This is my first negative restaurant review.... and it’s only because I feel obligated. It is one of those restaurants that relies solely on its location... as epic as it is. But unfortunately they seem to think people will just blindly throw money at them because they have this on-mountain location, and you could even say they have exclusivity within the immediate big sky mountain village resort area as the only “high end” restaurant. We ate here on their opening night this year, and even with taking that into account... and we made every possible excuse for them... it was extremely disappointing.

First a couple positives- the restaurant interior is beautiful and our waiter as well as the sommelier were friendly. Worth 2 stars for that. Everything else was negative. The menu is uninspiring... especially when we’re told items listed were “typos” and not actually available. Starting out telling us about what’s not available would’ve been helpful. What we were able to order was either bland or completely inedible such as the rock hard vegetables that surrounded our dry bison filet. So along with spending a lot of money for food I actually wished I could go back and not have eaten, on top of that our water glasses were hardly ever refilled. In fact only once during a two hour dinner... despite sitting there empty for most of it. A small thing right? But for the caliber of restaurant this place thinks it is... this was just ridiculous. Tap water is free and plentiful, and we’re at 8800 ft. Your guests want water to go with their wine and dry tasteless food. Thankfully we were able to laugh all of this ineptitude off as we continued to self-fill our own water glasses as other waitstaff just hung around the bar totally disinterested in any kind of service at the 25% full house. A note on the price, not outrageous by any means but we at least expected some of the food to be enjoyable... as well as a hint of attentiveness from the waitstaff. Overall just a completely disappointing night, and I hope our nicely phrased comments on why we were hardly eating our food were taken into account. One thing is for certain, we’re locals and what could’ve been a restaurant we’d frequent will now be a place we will never return. I’m just thankful we didn’t bring anyone from out of town here... as that would’ve been a truly embarrassing display of elevated Montana cuisine....

First of all, I am extremely afraid of heights, but my family are all skiers and convinced me to board the Ramcharger 8 and get up the mountain. I prepared for this for days in advance doing guided meditation and breathing exercises. I convinced myself that if I attempted this extreme challenge (for me), I would deserve the best meal of my trip to Big Sky. Was I wrong...

My oysters were fresh and sweet until I found a tiny little live crab moving around in my oyster. I guess that means they are fresh oysters, but it makes me wonder why they weren't cleaned better. I sent the baby crab back with the waitress who said that this had happened before. Hmmm...

On to my steelhead trout meuniere minus the meuniere sauce. The trout was overcooked and was doused in a "mushroom ragout" which was supposed to come on their burger, not the fish. My sister-in-law also ordered the dish and had the same problems. When I asked the server about it, she said that that is how the kitchen serves it. I explained that a meuniere sauce is a brown butter, lemon, and parsley sauce. She proceeded to bring more of this hunter's gravy (German Jager gravy) for us, but neither of us liked or wanted it.

After everyone was finished eating (we all left food on the plate and all left disappointed), I explained to our server that the fish was inedible for me and the s-i-l. She took the plates away, and eventually a manager came to the table to bring us complementary meringue cookies and asked if we wanted to replace the fish dishes. The kitchen was already closed for the evening, and we had two kids to get home. We just did our best to eat off other people's plates and get out of there. (Yes, the kids have a refined palate for food like this.) The manager took off the two fish dishes, but, MAN, was I disappointed.

I had anxiety for days and a half-panic attack going up the mountain to get a live tiny crab in my oysters and a few bites of overcooked fish (so, no entree). Well, at least I won't have to conquer my fear of the Ramcharger 8 ever again....

For 1 of 2 restaurants on the mountain, one would expect better service. 2/3 of our group thought the food was great and all agreed the ambiance was on par. But quite frankly, the service made our experience less than stellar. For starters, we tried to make a lunch reservation weeks in advance, only to be told they didn’t take reservations at lunch. then we tried to walk in once we were in town, only to be told we needed a reservation. they were able to fit us in the next day. everything on the menu looked fabulous, and we ordered a wide range of food. we had a member of our party who had a dairy intolerance, and had asked questions to our server about the cheeses in certain dishes and had made it known she could not have dairy. amongst a myriad of other gaffes (asking us twice every time we needed something, serving soup after entrees, forgetting extra silverware and condiments we asked), the dairy free member of our party ordered what looked to be a dairy free dessert on the menu (a plain meringue cookie). it was served with a side of some paste that ended up being sweet cream, with no one telling us there was dairy in the dessert (after asking three members of the staff what the ingredients were). when we asked the waiter what the mystery paste was, he said it was sweet cream. member of our party said “well i mentioned i have a dairy allergy.” his response? “i hope it’s not a bad allergy.” aside from all of the other issues, this response was abominable. if it had been a more severe allergy, we could have been in real trouble. management was fairly nonplussed about it as well, saying it wasn’t the servers fault as they changed the menu “a week ago.”

TL;DR - food great. service so bad it made the food...