Stilt House Gastro Bar — Restaurant in Cedarburg

Over the past 3 years, my girlfriend and I have been to the Stilt House just short of a dozen times. This has been our favorite spot, particularly for the calamari and a good burger.

Unfortunately, I don’t know the next time we will visit. Out of our 9 visits to the Stilt House, 3 of those visits have had a polar opposite experience from the rest.

On 3 separate occasions now, the food has been awful. Most recently, I paid 15$ for a chicken maple bacon sandwhich, and got a cold, kids-sized sandwhich on a value bun from the grocery store with bacon that was clearly old and cold. This has happened to me twice with this exact menu item. To top it off, our calamari was soggy, and we had guests in town that we had hyped this place up to.

They were extremely disappointed (one ordered the bulldog burger which was cold, and we got another chicken sandwhich that looked the same as mine, with shrimp tacos that were overcooked.

We know how good the food is at this place, but if you get it on a bad night, it’s a very unpleasant meal. The definition of hit or miss, as when the food is good, it is some of the best you can find in the area.

We have never had an issue with service here, always friendly and polite.

EDIT/UPDATE: Gordon, the owner, reached out to us personally and made things right with us, covering our bill from our poor experience and inviting us to try his other restaurant. While this doesn’t erase our experience, it does emphasize the point I made on how our service has always been great, and we will be back for more. I will boost this review from 3 original stars to 4 stars for making things right.

FINAL EDIT/UPDATE: After receiving a voucher from the owner to return to the Stilt House, we went back for a meal. Once again, the food was sub-par. We did take pictures this time. Our apps were good (calamari was cooked crispy this time, and the sauce they serve it with is delicious. We also got the sliders which were good).

However, the sweet potato fries we ordered were off…they had an odd texture, almost like a stale chip. They were room temperature and under-seasoned. The beer cheese fries were under cooked, under seasoned, and the beer cheese was gritty and luke-warm. My girlfriend ordered the southwest chicken salad, which came out with rubbery overcooked chicken, with what looked like black beans that were just rinsed from the can and added to the salad. The dressing tasted like thousand island mixed with taco seasoning. My sandwhich came out fine, but this type of inconsistency is what will keep us away from the Stilt House in the future.

It is worth noting the staff removed the items from the bill. We have always received great service here, but after embarrassing ourselves with guests coming into town, and then having a poor experience again after receiving a gift voucher, we cannot justify keeping this restaurant in our local rotation. We have now had 4 poor experiences here in the last few years of visiting. Worth every penny if you get it on a good night, but it sure can be disappointing...

Gordon Gogin and team have done a wonderful job of creating and maintaining the Stilt House; However be warned about BELLA. Bella was rude when my wife and I walked in and we asked if we could sit outside. Bella told us the outside is only open for 30 more minutes and that she would talk to her coworker about serving us there. We were going to get a drink at the bar and take it outside BUT Bella abruptly came back and said in a snotty tone that we couldn't go outside anymore. I mentioned that I knew the owner from high school and asked again politely that we wanted to sit outside on a beautiful Sumner night and that Belka had just previously said we could. Bella said we couldn't anymore and walked away. The place was crowded inside and the bartender was very nice but as Bella was walking away said that this was poor customer service to which Belka in a snotty teenage type tone quipped '" Why because you didn't get your way" Everyone all looked at Bella as I asked why she had rudely quipped at me? My wife and I have not done anything together outside of the house and we're disappointed in the rudeness of Belka which was uncharacteristic of our previous Stilt House experiences. We contacted the owner and have not heard back about the issue but don't want to ever go back and see Bella. Hopefully Toast doesn't have any Bella's...The update is that Bella did know what she said was wrong, reported to manager, was written up, and this hopefully will not happen to anyone at Stilt House again. My wife Michelle (and I agree) feel the atmosphere of that one poor decision makes us not want to go back to what used to be a fun place. Logically if a wonderful outside is lit/safe/open during our short Wisconsin summer, we should have been allowed to utilize. We had simply asked to sit in the outside which was going to be open another 30+ minutes but because a veteran server looked and acted overwhelmed by other customers, we were told "No". My statement of "POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE" is dead on! But to be told , in a snotty voice, by an experienced 30 something server that "Why because you didn't get your way" is UNACCEPTABLE. Stilt House 'built' its reputation up by helping customers with what they want not telling them "No" and being immature in doing so. What we had asked was to sit in an area that was open, to be served and if not/ we could server ourselves. Now summer will be gone soon and we unfortunately won't be back all because of one poor customer service experience. QUOD AGIMUS IN VITA,...

UPDATE: After taking Geoff up on his offer of a redo, I’m happy to say I’m so glad we did!

The drinks were again on point, the food was delicious, and the service was top notch. I genuinely appreciated all the effort put in to rectify our initial experience. As we were leaving our 6 year old said “everything was much more better” 😆 and I can’t help but to agree! We look forward to visiting again!

I rarely leave reviews, and generally try to give places the benefit of the doubt after working in the service industry for 10+ years. I’m even still giving 2 stars cause the drinks we had were great, and the menu looked promising. However, tonight was probably one of the worst experiences I’ve had.

We tried visiting the Stilt house for the first time after visiting Illuminate Ozaukee. It had really promising reviews, particularly for being kid friendly. After a 15 minute wait for a table (no biggie) we proceeded to sit for 30 minutes with not one person stopping at our table. We got drinks at the bar during the initial wait for a table, and unfortunately one of the kids knocked it over, again no biggie. We asked a passing server for napkins, she said she’d grab them and they never came. We ended up using what the silverware was wrapped in, figuring we’d get more when our serve came.

After watching FIVE separate staff members walk by, and the kids complaining they were thirsty, I finally stopped the same server who forgot the napkins, and politely mentioned that we hadn’t gotten a server, waters, or even those napkins. Her response? “I’m not your server”. To which I explained, that’s fine, I just needed some help, which seemed to annoy her. So at that point, we decided to leave. She did come back to the table with napkins as we were packing up, and her response was “oh are you just gonna leave?” And we said yeah, it just wasn’t working for us, and she said nothing. On the way out, I did stop who I believe was a manager (and among the 5 staff we saw while waiting for someone) and explained that no one came to our table so we were going to leave. They apologized and asked that we try again after the holidays, which honestly we most likely won’t.

My hope on leaving this review is that it can be used as a learning opportunity. Especially considering the service staff seemed really young, and frankly (hopefully) just inexperienced based on...