Cantaberry — Restaurant in Blue Ridge

I would give five stars. If parking was convenient. I went on a Monday. Before noon. No free spots available. Had to pay 5 dollars to park then walk. Atlanta is more convenient. This problem blue ridge really needs to fix . Locals would like to enjoy downtown too. Unfortunately the tourist traffic is all week all year.better city planing has been needed over a decade. They add more shops,resturaunts and rentals and do not accommodate for employees, locals, daily visitors.hell employees cannot afford rent there anymore. The roads are a mess . Costs about 5 grand yr for average daily driver. The parking is a mess. I was unhappy with Canterbury in ellijay. Same reasons. Thought I give blue ridge location a try after years of locals complaining in both towns. First I walked in. No waiter or waitress to sit. Dirty tables. After 25 minutes of no staff approaching me after saying excuse me .. I walked back to register. I understood they are small staff and busy. I was more amazed that Noone approached at all. Unprofessional. I could've grabbed drinks from bar or food/ tips from tables and no one would've noticed. Bar had no staff tending at all . You could grab a glass and pull on a tab. That cannot be good for business. At register, you see kitchen. You see the generic grocery store bread and the drink machines for sodas. The soup and buffet style heated plates w veggies etc. They employees, no hair nets,, on phones,,sneezing , pressing ear buds in ear and touching food with no gloves.. That should not be visible to guests. Nor should cleaning buckets with cleaning products next to food. Yhe spills from drink machine, employees walking over and In. The food was good. Prices were fair and acceptable. Seems to need better management . Will go again if in area and parking ever available. Used to be such a good resturaunt in ellijay before new owners. Seems blue ridge facing same problem. Hope management for both becomes more attentive for first locals and second tourists. If they keep catering to tourists they will keep going out of business. Losing leases , employees etc. If they don't. It will just be another out of towner owned business that fails and costs us tax payers. Blue ridge. Get your county in order. It's not a pleasure to visit anymore. It's a hassle. Glad I only have to go every other week. It's. Been terrible for last 4 years. Really hope they address local concerns and stop catering to out of staters. That would preserve beauty, cut down crime and make the ppl that retire there stay. As they are leaving in droves. Even ppl born and raised there are leaving. Its not a resort town and shouldn't be. Stop letting florida and atlanta ruin our...

Cantaberry has been our go-to lunch spot every time we visit Blue Ridge (around 6 visits per year), for at least the past 4 years. Unfortunately, their service has taken a nosedive over the past year - to the extent that we will no longer support this business. We gave them 4 chances to redeem themselves, but it only got worse with each visit. We're done.

On our most recent (and final) visit, the sign on the upstairs door directed customers to the back door, so we complied. We entered the back door and waited patiently for 15-minutes while the servers passed by no less than 5 times (close enough that I had to move out of their way). Not one time did they greet us. Not one time did they make eye contact with us. Not once did they mention a waiting list, nor acknowledge us in any way.

Eventually we wandered to the opposite end of the dining room because there were a few other customers standing there. Again, there servers passed by us two more times until we finally got the attention of the "blonde" server (they don't wear name-tags).

We asked why she kept ignoring us (were you closed?). Her only reply was "Well we're short-staffed." The dining room was only half-full at that moment. I understand they likely had a busy lunch and were trying to catch up, but that's no excuse to not even acknowledge customers.

Told "Blonde Waitress" that she walked by us at least 6 times at that point and we'd at least like to be added to the list. She rolled her eyes and said in a very rude tone "fine, you want to be on the list?" and stomped over to the pad, flipped through it, and said "there are 5 people ahead of you". It was obvious they had no interest in more customers.

We left, walked directly across the street to the upstairs tavern. There we were greeted immediately, told there would be a 20-minute wait (it was less than 10) and the food was awesome. The tavern had no problem staffing their business, with 5 servers on duty, a bartender, hostess, manager and several kitchen staff. Maybe Cantaberry should put more effort into hiring quality staff. Seems their neighbors...

in short: food was pretty good; service was not only bad, but our waiter Josie was openly confrontational and rude.

in long: We stopped for lunch at Cantaberry with a large party on a busy day, and so expected to wait a while. When we were seated, we offered to split our group in two for table room. Instead, we (9) were seated at a booth for 6. We were given 3 menus and left alone. One member of our group was left to stand and not offered a chair. After 10 minutes, we ordered drinks (waters, sodas); we didn't get then for another 15 minutes. After ordering food, we waited another 20 minutes until our waiter Josie informed us that half of our orders needed to be edited due to missing ingredients. This was not her fault by any means, but I can't understand the delay here. Later, when soups came out, Josie asked two members of our party to "play rock, paper. scissors" for the last chowder, and did not offer to bring a replacement for whoever ended up without their order. Half of our party got their soups, the other half were forgotten. As we were leaving, Josie singled out a member of our group and confronted her about our complaints.

I'd like to make it clear that while I would've loved faster service, I fully understand that we were a large group and the restaurant was very busy. This is not my complaint. My complaint is that our waiter, after coming to our table 4 times in an hour, chose to wait until all but one person had left and then try to guilt them. I found this incredibly unprofessional and rude, on top of already...