Elsie's — Restaurant in Caledonia

We were at the distillery in Spring Grove and found there is literally no place to eat in SG on a Sunday. So on we went to Caledonia where we knew we could eat at Elsie's with an extensive menu and reliably good food. We chose the patio and had great service even though one person was serving and bartending. He was running like crazy and did a great job. However, the nice day we were having went downhill quickly by a group or party who were obnoxiously drunk and inappropriate. All were wearing black tshirts with the F bomb clearly imprinted and every 2nd or 3rd word out of their mouths was also the F bomb. It was uncomfortable with families seated around us with small children. It was a large group both indoors and out. There was no effort by any staff to try to subdue them or suggest they clean up their language for the comfort of any of the other patrons. There are not many options to eat in the area on a Sunday but we will think twice...

Where do we begin? Went in Friday night and picked a place to sit, our waitress came by about 10 minutes later to take our drink order. We ask what IPA’s they had and she asked us if that was a beer…Ok… she brought the beers and as she set them down commented on how she didn’t know why the bartender didn’t fill the glass for my wife’s beer… ok…. Our waitress then took our appetizer order and meal order. She brought the appetizer and the onion rings tasted like pure fish!…..the food came later on, my wife’s sandwich turned into a wrap and my fish was ok at best. We then sat for a loooong time waiting for our waitress to return for a refill…. Never happened. We sat in awe as we watched our neighbors to the right looking for our waitress to cash out for at least 15-20 minutes Time went on until they got up to look for her. We go tour bill and couldn’t get out fast enough....

We typically really like their food and enjoy our visits there. However, today we were looking forward to their pasta bar (the food was out and it was posted on their sign) but as soon as the waitress came over, she said none of that was available anymore for the day. That was ok. So instead, I ordered a burger and fries. Now I am typically not critical, but number one, there were two black hairs on my plate of food. Secondly, the fries tasted like they were dipped in fish batter, with miniscule potato inside so it was like eating fish-fried "nothing." Third, the bun was visibly not fresh, extremely dry and super flaky. This is not what we typically experience there so hopefully it was just a bad day for them, but I thought Elsie would like to know that they need to pick it up a notch so we can continue looking forward to...