Brothers Restaurant at the Red Barn — Restaurant in California

Brothers is my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE restaurant. I constantly brag about how amazing their food is to anyone I talk restaurants with. Worth the drive if you don't live in the area (which I live 45 minutes Northwest). Their filet and stilton port wine sauce is next level. I was so excited to bring my mom for her 70th birthday - she has babysat my kiddo enough times so that husnband and I could make the trek, I felt it was appropriate to finally bring her (also having never been) and our 10yo kiddo (also having never been- and because the sitter was busy that night ;) ). Having said all of that, tonight's experience was at best "less than" compared to what we normally encounter. We arrived 13 minutes early and the hostess appeared quited annoyed that we were early and stated they would serve us "closer to our reservation time." For the purpose of math we arrived at 6:17 and our reservation was for 6:30. We were unenthusiastically encouraged to either "standing room only" in the bar or sit on a bench outside even though there were 2 empty tables directly in front of us - ironically, one of which we ended up being seated at 8 minutes later. We decided to stand in the bar because it was pretty chilly outside for my 70 Mom who had a knee replacement less than a month earlier and my 10yo son. I reached back out to someone else at the hostess station at 6:25 asking if we were still too early - she was way more helpful, spoke to the server, and seated us right away. Our server was great, the food also wonderful as always, except one thing - the stilton cheese port wine sauce wasn't as robust as the norm. Still very flavorful, but not the sauce I make the 45 minute drive for. Seemed maybe a bit watered down. Crossing my fingers Brothers didn't change the recipe and maybe it was just an off night. All in all still a decent experience and the food was still good, but they've set a standard in my previous experiences that was not met tonight in both service and product. This is what (obviously) prompted this...

We had the chance to eat there last week on my birthday and found the food and service to be phenomenal! We made reservations (highly recommended) rather late in the day and found ourselves sitting at something akin to the "kitchen table" where you had complete view of the full operations. It is apparent that Jeff and Matt Nichols have invested a lot of time in training their staff...very well organized, professional and efficient! From the bus staff to the wait staff to the chefs, they were a very well oiled machine.

Their prices are reasonable (not too high) and as expected for the type of restaurant this is. They have a great wine list emphasizing local wines and the menu changes to reflect the fresh produce available at the time of year.

We started with their simple take on a Caesar salad and followed with our main course...my wife had the roasted chicken stuffed with goat cheese mashed potatoes and I had the 8 oz filet mignon accompanied with caramelized onion potatoes and green beans with carrots. All were cooked perfectly and very tasty!

Being my birthday of course dessert was a must...my wife had the Meyer lemon custard cheesecake and I had the caramel brioche bread pudding...again all was perfectly prepared by pastry chef Stephanie Jones!

Note: We visited on a Thursday night which is their "Taco Thursday"...three filet mignon tacos (huge) so it was especially busy as it is apparent that the "locals" know good value when they see it! If you don't make reservations, they do have seating in the bar on a first come, first serve...

We made an online reservation to celebrate my birthday, and wanted to try the restaurant out for the first time. We mentioned in the reservation that it was our first time coming there to celebrating a birthday and wanted it to be an amazing experience for a special occasion. We were seated quickly when arriving there, and the host staff were all quite friendly. Once we started ordering with the waiter, our experience started to turn a bit less than amazing. Between the two of us, we decided to only order one cocktail and some waters, deciding at the last minute, to not order any appetizers, but just order our meals. At that point, it seemed like the waiter was kind of short and annoyed with us that we hadn’t ordered anything more, and that feeling of standoffishness seem to continue throughout our time there. We noticed the waiter, seeming a lot more friendly to the table next to us, who was also celebrating a birthday, but they seem to be more frequent patrons of the restaurant, which gave us the feeling why he was paying more attention to them, and somewhat short with us. The steaks that we had were both really amazing, but for the price paid and what came on the plate doesn’t really feel like there was as much value given for the prices we paid. Unfortunately, this seems to be a trend now with most restaurants in the SYV area, because of the amount of tourists that come through. I don’t think we would consider returning after this overall experience, and that’s sad to say...