Splash At the Boathouse — Restaurant in Burlington

Bizarre experience and not a good business model! We were on vacation and stopped by here for drinks to enjoy the view and local scene. Drinks were great, so we didn’t mind spending $32 for 2 drinks and a nice tip. At 3:30 pm it was not busy and there were many empty tables, which you can see in our photos. We were enjoying ourselves for a mere 15-20 minutes when a worker approached us and said “I’m sorry but these seats are only for people who are eating food and someone else has requested this table, so I have to ask you to leave, but you can go up to the upper deck and sit at a table up there” We were absolutely blown away! We had just purchased drinks and were planning to have another. We did not see any signs stating this rule, The worker did not offer us a menu or give us a chance to order anything. We were so shocked that we didn’t really know what to do or say, so we complied and started to head to the upper deck, but then some young girl worker stopped us and said we couldn’t go up there either! We told her what the guy had just told us but she said he was mistaken. Super sassy and rude and said we could stand at the tables in the blazing sun on the middle deck. What!? Nobody was even on the upper deck! And while we hung around for about 2 minutes in disbelief nobody ever went to the table that we were told someone requested - and why we were asked to leave. It was the most bizarre experience we’ve ever encountered at a restaurant/bar! So we spent $32 on 2 drinks for 15 minutes and had to leave, but evidently if we had spent a few bucks on a food item we would have been able to stay there? Terrible business model and just dumb. Do you not want customers? We would have understood if it was busy or an actual meal time, but it wasn’t! It was literally cocktail/happy hour and nobody was around. I guess I now know why! It was their loss though, since our 3 kids (young adults) were up the street at Echo and we had planned to find a place to meet for dinner, which could have been Splash, but instead we took our business ($180 dinner/drinks purchases) elsewhere. There are lots of little breweries nearby without nonsensical rules. We suggest going...

Absolutely dreadful. We were someone else's guests, or we would have walked out.

My teenage daughter is newly vegetarian, which made most of the menu off-limits to her. That's fine, and she's getting used to navigating that — however, while she does like plant-based meat like Beyond Burger, she doesn't like veggie burgers (grains+veggies in a burger shape). No matter how much we told the server that, she simply refused to understand. "Well, all I can say is, people tell me it's the best veggie burger they've ever had." So what? The best [X] doesn't taste good to people who don't like [X].

There was a cheese quesadilla on the children's menu, but the server refused to let us order it, saying that the chef would be furious with her. Everything we asked, the chef would be furious with. No substitutions, no making one of the other dishes without the meat, no kids' menu, nothing.

I made an admittedly salty comment about the chef needing to relax and the server delivered a stern lecture (!!) about how the chef is in the kitchen 12 hours a day 7 days a week, as though that's somehow my problem. So my kid should go hungry because the chef can't be bothered to, you know, cook something she absolutely has in the kitchen and would make if my daughter were 4 years younger?

In the end she had some french fries and the worst brownie sundae ever (TINY store-bought brownie, about 1/4 cup soft-serve ice cream, and that was it). They did relax enough to let her have chocolate ice cream instead of vanilla, so I guess we should consider ourselves lucky.

They also served drinks in 6 oz plastic cups, which meant we were constantly asking for refills, and it was abundantly clear that this was also very inconvenient.

My fish and chips was objectively very good, but I didn't really enjoy it.

I'm not one to say the customer is always right, but I do think a restaurant ought to exhibit at least a slight interest in feeding a hungry customer something they might like to eat.

We traveled across three states in a week and ate out for every meal; this was the worst experience we...

I was very displeased to have been at this establishment and would not go again. My name is Jin Mahr (writing under my son's google account). We had come to visit Burlington, VT for the day since he was interested in applying to the UVM medical school and we stopped by to walk the waterfront and watch the July 3 fireworks. We were happily invited into the restaurant by security and made our way to the bar on the upper deck to watch the fireworks.

Soon after we came in however, the manager gave us a hard time. He was an older man, with white hair, and wore a pink shirt at the time. He first singled us out for bringing our table closer to the edge of the deck, even though the people at the table next to us also had their table close to the deck railing as well. The tables furthermore had no chairs with them, so we had to stand on the deck for the fireworks the whole time. When my wife, who was feeling under the weather, decided to find a chair to sit in, he quickly came in and very rudely shouted at her and said that she wasn't allowed to sit there. She had barely stood up when the chair was yanked out from under her and he threw my bag, which had been hanging off the back of the chair, to the ground. I understand that the chair may have been reserved for other guests, but the way he treated and berated us for an honest mistake was disrespectful and rude.

My family tried to be good customers-- I bought a beer from the open bar (which took only cash, not sure how they report tax....), but we were just unfairly singled out by the manager. When asked to see a manager, he said some line about being the manager, and when I asked to see his boss, he said some bs statement about also being the owner (a fact which I now know to be untrue after talking to security after the chair incident). Overall, I found the service to be terrible and mean spirited. I would not recommend this place to friends or relatives, if there was even the possibility of them being as humiliated as me and my family were today.

Jin M...