Lamplighter Restaurant & Pub — Restaurant in Chester

"Servers Wanted," the sign outside warned customers! The food here is great for the area, but my large group should have heeded those words because we were tasked with dealing with a young man who's likely holding onto his job because no qualified Milennial has submitted an application to replace him. I'd give this place 4 stars. However, I am giving this spot 2 stars because its management thinks it's okay to assign a nitwit to a large group, even during a point where the restaurant was nearly empty. From start to finish, service was atrocious. Where to begin? I won't fault the fella for not knowing the restaurant's wine list or beer offerings, but I will fault him for telling the group he'd be able to separate checks, only to backtrack on that at the end of the meal. I'll also fault him for getting orders wrong (e.g., a vegetarian got a giant meatball with her spaghetti), not taking notes (e.g., salad dressing "on the side"), not keeping track of an order ("The grill forgot the mozzarella sticks," he explained), and failing to ask the table if we needed bread or more water. (For that last one, people just got up and walked to the bar for refills.) Ultimately, even when we wanted to escape, the server made things difficult. After running credit cards, he left the receipts to sign and disappeared to smoke a cigarette. Supplying pens - even a single writing instrument - would have prevented our having to track him down. I'm not asking for white linen service when I go to a restaurant, but I do expect my server (who's expecting a gratuity) to serve a...

Upon arriving, my wife Cuban and her friend Mexican were talking about our wonderful experience at the farm up the street in Spanish.

When we asked for a table, the host told us that there was no room for us and that they couldn't serve us. We were confused and asked if he was joking. He said that the place was to busy for us to be seated. So we asked if we could sit at the bar. He responded, they might serve us there.

When strolling to the bar, I kept my eye on the front door because I had a sneaking suspicion that something wasn't right, because there were plenty of tables available.

Then another a group of 3 and a family of six were seated the second they walked in the door. So I went up to the host and asked what the problem was and he made up some sad excuse and said that the tables were not available at the minute we walked in.

The food was decent. We were also the last people served after 4 other groups arrived. Our Mexican friend asked for a wine menu and they handed it to me instead. (I'm white). Also paying attention to body language, they never made eye contact with my wife or my friend and were snappy with them. Another family of color (Dominican) were experiencing the same issues we were.

This place is clearly Racist and not welcoming to non...

This place is a really cool restaurant to visit with your family or to just go to the bar. I first came to the lamplighter with my friend to sit at the bar. We loved it! As it's not a normal tavern bar, you can totally see the history of the building and the bar is the perfect lighting, not too bright, not too dark. Music volume and TV volume was low enough that we could talk and not have to shout and the drinks are what you would expect at a local bar. The building is so cool. One of the hosts told us a little bit about where the original building was and the expansions and showed us the architecture which is fascinating to look at. I came back here with my family and we had dinner and it was perfect. The catering/ events room is so pretty and I'm looking forward to have a party of some sort at this location. I feel bad that the exterior of the building is not what it s glory used to be as evidenced by the photo I took of the photo they have hanging. This is still a really cool spot and is a local gym that I hope lasts for another...