Smoke & Timber — Restaurant in Contiguous United States

IF I COULD DO ZERO STARS I WOULD. 6:45pm reservation. Friday. Pulled into Valet at 6:22pm. Literally not a person at the stand. Waited for side by side to pull up - turns out it was the two guys working the valet. Paid the $10 handed my key, walked inside. Hostess team was fantastic, very friendly, energetic, wonderful group. We were early and went to the bar for a cocktail. New bar menu, ordered two cocktails. Chai Lavender Cold Foam and Midnight Cabin. After a few minutes, bartender returned to inform us that they were out of an ingredient in the Chai Lavender Cold Foam, but could make it close with spices and whipping cream. We approved and they made the beverage. After that was delivered it was another 5 minutes before the midnight cabin was delivered as the first bartender didn't know how to make it and had to wait for someone else to make it. $50 later and 17 minutes after we ordered we sat to have our drinks. Once seated at our table, the hostess was kind enough to offer a stool for my girlfriends purse, we thought, "wow, how kind, great service". Natalie our server was wonderful, came by promptly and was probably the best part of our experience. Ordered Crispy Potato Rosti ($36) and French Onion Soup ($12) as apps. This is where our entire experience started to plunge into terrible. After a while the apps came out, runner who brought the apps spent more time twisting the plates for "appearance" than anything else. Rosti came out without creme fresh and "crispy" potato was a soggy mess with half assed caviar sprinkled on top. French onion soup might have been barely above 95 degrees - which for soup is "cold". I asked about the creme fresh and Natalie agreed it was wrong. She took the plate to the kitchen. We also ordred our main dishes, scallop risotto and beef wellington in the time the apps were ordered and delivered. Natalie returned with the rosti - only to have half frozen creme fresh squirted lazily across the top like sour cream at taco bell. (photo attached). Finally flagged down Natalie, cancelled our main dishes, offered to pay for our apps and leave. Natalie brought the manager over who said sorry and nothing else. Natalie stated they were taking care of the apps and apologized again. We tipped Natalie, she was the best part of our experience, and went to the valet. Valet couldn't find the key to my car. I have a very specific vehicle. Of which there was only one other possible key of the same make. The valet couldn't find the key and we walked over to the fire pit, he approached and asked if a fob in his hand was my key, seeing the brand, I agreed without looking deeper into it. They brought someone elses car up, not mine. I searched the valet stand with the two attendants. Still no key to be found. after about 10 minutes of them searching he approached again saying - "I've shown you this one but is it yours?"

Everything from the moment the food hit the table to the time we left, HORRIBLE. Food was not even close to being good. Christine the manager said nothing, except other people complained about the french onion soup and she knew it wasn't hot. Wasn't going to say a word until I went back up to complain about the valet losing my key and then/only then, did she say anything other than sorry, but only after my girlfriend said something to her. Her customer service was a negative 6 on a scale of 1 to 10. Offered to "buy us dinner, if we gave them another chance". Zero percent. She clearly has no idea how to run a restaurant. Her level of sincerity and or attention to operations is broken. No amount of free food would get me to consider eating there again. Cocktails by the fire sure, but don't order anything more difficult than a wine or beer. Don't valet. Don't valet. DON'T VALET. They had 12 keys in the stand and lost one. Competency at it's worst.

The photo is the $36 Dollar "Crispy Potato Rosti" that was a soggy mess and an embarrassment to dining.

Deb Hatley, what do you have to say...

So incredibly disappointed. We made reservations a few weeks in advance for Valentines Day. We showed up for our 7:30 reservation at 7:33 and were told that they were working on getting our table ready and that we could go to the bar for a drink if we wanted. After 30 minutes the younger of the two hosts said she was sorry and she was trying to seat us soon. You could see the restaurant falling apart from where we were. Finally, 45 minutes after our reservation time we were sat. No apology for the wait from the other host. While waiting for our table I saw how things were going down. The staff was drowning as Hatley herself was dining at a four top with two other guests while taking breaks from her meal to go back and forth to the kitchen completely tone deaf to the fact that her restaurant was drowning while she held court and socialized. The chef even came out and crouched down next to the table a couple different times to do some socializing. Mrs. Hatley has zero restaurant experience and is clearly more into socializing and playing restaurant. The FOH manager was flitting around the front desk here and there as well while avoiding making any eye contact with ourselves or the four other couples waiting way past their reservation times. If even one of them would’ve addressed the situation it would have done so much. Upon seating we were given a Valentines pre fixe menu and valentines cocktail menu. The night before our reservation I received a phone call from the manager at 8 pm notifying me that it was going to be pre-fixe. I was disappointed that they would not have the menu that inspired the reservation in the first place but decided to stay the course. I told him I had not received an email and asked if they would still have the tomahawk steak. I was told no, they would not have that but would have two other steak options which were described to me at that time. However, I was not informed of anything else about the menu nor that it was going to be $125 per person. When we were finally sat 45 minutes after our reservation with no menu other than the Valentines menus we were greeted about 10 minutes later by someone saying that they didn’t know what happened to our server but that she’d be our server now and she was going to go get us some water. Then another completely different person who I assume was the original server we were supposed to have showed up. She was clearly spread very thin and was a little frazzled and in over her head. I absolutely could already see why she would be. We ordered our cocktails and while waiting for them watched three tables around us either receive wrong items or misfired items. The ship felt like it was literally sinking all around us. This was when I thought maybe we should just have our drink and go home and make sandwiches. Again, I’m kicking myself for not listening to my gut. We proceeded to order all of our items off the pre-fixe. Appetizers came out after our salads 45 minutes after we ordered them. At this point, it’s an hour and a half past our reservation time. Appetizers were very mediocre. Not sure how you mess up deviled eggs unless you don’t season them and put cold chorizo on top. After that our pasta which was almost inedible because of how “Al dente” the pasta was came out and we were really over the whole situation. We got our steak entrees and while mine was actually quite tasty my husband’s was extremely over cooked and the dish as a whole was under seasoned and didn’t have much flavor. We had our desserts packed to go because we just wanted to leave at that point. We were then presented with a $315.00 bill and after a 20% tip ended up paying $380.00 for a pretty big disappointment. I’d love to be able to say that I’d go back and try their standard menu but I just cannot. Nor do I want to support a place who lacks so severely common decency in customer relations and throws their employees to the wolves. I wish we would’ve left when I saw the writing on the wall within the...

Well my husband and I went to try this restaurant with pretty high expectations. That's probably where we went wrong initially. The prices were very high and they boasted of fine dining so we thought it would be worth a shot for a special occasion .I had the beet salad and it was good but nothing special. My husband had the roasted peach salad and it was pretty tasty. When I made reservations I'd asked about gluten-free options because my husband has celiac and the menu online did not lead us to believe that there were very many options but the person on the phone assured me otherwise . Well when we were ordering our main course there were not very many options for my husband, and not much appealed to him so he risked it and tried the meatloaf even though we knew it had breadcrumbs in it. It was supposed to have a spicy tomato sauce on it but he said it wasn't spicy at all and the meatloaf was rather bland, not nearly as good as what I served him at home. I opted for the salmon because I love salmon and I also love miso, but it was ridiculously salty and if I had not paid $45 for it, I probably would've left it on my plate. The sides were à la carte and nothing sounded special plus they would've added another $10 or $12 to already high priced entrées so we didn't try any. As far as the quantity of food I was satisfied but the quality was average at best. Our waitress was pleasant enough, but not attentive or organized. After our meal she asked if we wanted a dessert and I immediately said no but she looked at my husband and said, "We have pineapple blueberry sorbet" , and knowing that it was gluten-free figured my husband would bite. He looked at me and asked me if I wanted to share with him and I said "go ahead I'll try it". Well even the sorbet was not good. It didn't have a bad flavor but the consistency was terrible, It was crumbly. My husband and I don't drink, we only had water with dinner and when you have a meal this poor and receive the bill for $122, you pretty much feel like you've been robbed. We certainly would never give it a second chance, and would suggest that people steer clear of...