Twin Pines Restaurant, Resort, & Fishing Launch — Restaurant in Brainerd

I was so excited to try this place! Breakfast is hands down my favorite meal. Before entering I was greeted with their "no mask loophole sign". (I'll attach a pic) Upon entering I was blown away. Not a single mask in site. Not the employees, patrons.. nobody! Doesn't look like they spaced any tables around as the place was packed. Not what I was expecting to see in the middle of the global pandemic. Oh well.. sat down at the table, and it just continued downhill from there. Our party of 3 sat there at a dirty table for at least 5 minutes before 1 of the 2 servers finally came over, dropped off menus and wiped down the table. Thank you! She didn't bother to take drink order, didn't bother to come right back with water, either.

After what seemed like an eternity but was probably more like 5 possibly almost 10 minutes I heard a lady mention to the other server (not ours) to get us some drinks!! She came, took our drink order and about 2 minutes later brought 1 of the 3 drinks. The other 2 came about 5 minutes later after our server finally came to take our order.

After about 20-30 minutes we inquired about or order as the 3 tables that sat right around the same time and after us had already gotten their meals and we're already finishing. We get the "oh sorry we're really busy, short handed.. efc. Not sure how that explains how larger tables after us had already been served before us but whatever. I can always sympathize with that, but when we were never checked on, drinks refilled etc, that's where I struggle. Watched our server walk all around the room numerous times and never once we're we checked on. Not once.

Finally got our food and maybe I already had a bad taste in my mouth due to the service. Kid and wife enjoyed their food.. I got the 7 layer and was so disappointed that it was maybe lukewarm and the cheese wasn't even melted. Ugh. Let's just eat and get out of here before we catch a virus. Well after sitting for 10 minutes with empty plates I finally went to the bar to ask for my tab. I appreciate the discount but I would gladly pay full price for decent service. Dissapointed to say the least. I hope to try again when there isn't a global pandemic going around and maybe things will be different. At the end of the day, a little communication from staff would've went a long way instead of...

I recently was here, and wasn’t impress with the location they have choose to put the Ice Fishing Rentals. You have to drive out about two miles to get to your rental with no good markings to guide you to your house, they just say, find the barrel down the first mile and take a left for another mile. The rentals are really old, and feel like they were made in the 80’s. The beds suck, the windows are nailed shut, no outside hook up for a generator to the rental [No Power Outlets] and the ice fishing holes weren’t looked at when we arrived at the rental. Some of the holes where frozen solid all the way down. They told us the location of the portable bathroom which was in the incorrect location and we had to search house by house to find it. The human waste was almost to the top of the toilet seat. Seems like they don’t clean it out often at all. We ended up leaving 12 hours early because we didn’t mark a fish for over 24 hours. The same was for other people who rented this weekend. We only caught one Walleye, which was hard to get through the hole in the ice since they were freezing over due to the lack of snow around the ice house. No other species of fish was in the area. Giving them one star because their food is amazing and they will deliver it to you. They also do a decent job plowing the ice roads. This place feels like it just wants your money, and that they don’t care about...

We stayed for two days and have mixed feelings. We were part of a large family group of 26 and various ages. First, the owner/manager was very gracious and accommodating. We all stayed in a large retrofitted commercial building. There were plenty of beds, a large TV and couches in the living room, spacious kitchen with little utensils and no kitchenware. The air conditioning was adequate and the ceiling fans worked well. In our party we had an elderly couple of 88 yrs old and having everything on one level was essential. The place felt like it was still under construction- weird lighting arrangements, no doors to some bedrooms, damaged shade systems. We had several meals at the restaurant and the food is surprisingly good. All home-style with handmade ingredients. The most memorable entree I had was the lightly breaded walleye fillet - absolutely delicious and highly recommended. You should be warned however that there is an unbelievably crabby and vocal woman waitstaff person who grumbled about everything!! We hired the fishing launch for the morning which had a young and enthusiastic crew of two. Very nice. But the launch is separated from the resort by a very busy road- crossing was very dangerous, especially so for our...