Merkin Vineyards Hilltop Winery & Trattoria — Restaurant in Cottonwood

Appetizers-

Lamb lollipops- they were good but one of the pieces we received was very overcooked and at one piece per person at our table it wasn’t a good experience. The one piece was very hard and rubbery while the other four were very good and no complaints.

Burrata- probably the worst we’ve had. No one at the table liked it.

Pane- the bread was ok. There were two types of bread of which I believe one was supposed to be grilled focaccia. It was barely grilled and the other bread was better. Bread and butter is hard to mess up but somehow this wasn’t great.

Dinner order-

Side salad is pretty hard to mess up, but you will see why it was very bad later in this review.

Cannelloni was ok. The description and idea are great but the execution was lacking. It needed more flavor, but maybe others enjoy it.

Lasagna was extremely disappointing and probably the worst we’ve ever had at a restaurant. Everyone agreed that it felt like it was missing something important enough that it ruined the dish. Someone at the table suggested ricotta was lacking but we couldn’t put our finger on it. Definitely do not recommend it.

Funghi pizza was very good. Great flavor, cooked to perfection, and definitely something that we’d order again or recommend.

Gnocchi was the best pasta dish we had. Everyone tried it and went back for more. Definitely recommend everyone tries this dish.

Wagyu steak was excellent for the price point. It was ordered medium and came out perfect. The sides complimented the steak very well. No complaints and if you enjoy a wagyu steak it is worth it.

The service was not good. This is a big part of why our experience was so bad. When we first sat down we had a normal experience until our appetizers came out and we ordered the entrees. Here are some examples of what we ran into-

One guest ordered a glass of wine, but was brought a taster sized glass. That was fine since it gave an opportunity to try something different or order more, but that never happened.

We waited about 45-60 minutes after ordering and started wondering where our food was and waitress went. There was zero service after the dinner order was placed, some of our drinks sat empty for a long period, there was no communication about when the food would arrive, and it felt like we had become invisible.

Eventually I flagged someone down and asked them if they could send our server to the table. That person asked what we needed, so I told them we had no idea what was happening with our food an hour or so in and we hadn’t seen our server in just as long. That person told us our order was coming soon after being delayed by a large party. Our server never communicated with us, didn’t come by after we talked to the other server, and neither of them asked us about drinks or anything else while we waited.

Shortly after inquiring our food did come out, but it only got worse. The pizza and steak seemed freshly cooked, but the other three entrees had clearly been sitting for a long period of time and were lukewarm at best. The side salad must have been sitting in the expo window with the entrees that were ready and stale because the lettuce was unnaturally warm and kind of gross.

After dinner was delivered no one checked on us to ask about our meal or whether we wanted drinks or anything else. We asked for the check, paid, and left with no intention...

Warning: long review

We were so excited to try this new place. I was a huge fan of the original Osteria down the street and came up to Cottonwood specifically for the grand opening on Oct. 6 to celebrate my birthday weekend. Unfortunately, we did not have a great experience that night. Understandably so, it was their first night and they have some kinks to work out.

The wait was very long for a table when there were clearly open tables. But we waited anyway. While waiting, we stayed busy and checked out the grounds. Very beautiful. And we checked out the merch, which was slim pickings at that point in the evening. We ended up waiting about an hour before I went to the hostess and asked how much longer. She put us through right away. Cool.

We were seated with menus on the balcony and had wonderful views of Old Town at night (it was dark at this point). When the hostess left to get us water, we opened the menus to find them blank. They didn't have the sheets inside. We laughed it off as an opening night faux pas. When the hostess came back with our waters, we pointed out there were no menus, and she got us new ones. My girlfriend's new menu had all the sheets, mine only had one page. Not a big deal. We shared.

Then we waited.

When our waitress finally came to the table, we ordered a bottle of wine and she offered us complimentary bread with oil and vinegar while we decided on our entrées. That was the last time we saw her.

A bus boy came by later with a basket of bread, which had three little slices, and oil and vinegar, but no plates. As we waited we noticed other people around us trying to flag people down and looking a bit irritated. We continued to wait.

When I looked at my watch, it was 8:05pm. We had been seated for about 25 minutes, and had been there about an hour and a half total. I didn't like doing this, but we ended up walking out.

We were starving at that point. If we had at least got our bottle of wine to keep us busy while enjoying the view, or some plates for the oil and vinegar, we could have held out. But it wasn't looking promising, so my girlfriend and I left for a restaurant down the hill.

That was a not so great experience. But, I convinced my girlfriend to go back with me the next day for lunch. She didn't want to give them another chance, but I'm glad she did.

When we went back the next day it was as busy as the night before. We told the hostess what happened, but she seemed kind of lost as to how to handle it. So we waited again. Still a lot of open tables for a long wait. So, I hovered by the bar until a few seats opened and snagged them.

Everything turned around after that.

The bar tender we had, Cody, really provided great service for us. The view was fantastic. There was a slight breeze coming through the open balcony. We got to order and drink some really great wine. The lunch special was perfect. I got the pastrami with provolone on cibatta bread and it was amazing.

We walked out of there feeling much better about the restaurant. We both really loved the wine so much I bought a bottle of the Tarzan Red and a bottle of the Shinola Orancia.

It was a little inconvenient they had us ring up the two bottles separately at the front instead of with the rest of the bill.

I do look forward to visiting again. It really is a good place once you get seated and...

Unfortunately we had two back to back disappointing experiences here, both for dinner. The first night (Friday, 5/9) mainly was related to the quality of the food and service. My dining party mainly ordered pasta dishes and gnocchi. The pasta was overcooked and bland, and the gnocchi was sticky and clumped up, and almost had no flavor to it. We received minimal attention from our server after the food was delivered, which meant we did not purchase another bottle of wine for the table (we were out for quite a bit), and had to go without water refills.

We came back the next night (Saturday, 5/10) as we wanted to give this place another chance. We sat down and ordered wine, along with two appetizers. A few minutes later, our appetizers were delivered, but it was explained to us that they currently were out of clean silverware, and it would be just a moment or so before we received our rollups. No problem, right? Unfortunately, we waited 10-15 minutes for our silverware, resulting in our appetizers becoming cold. During this waiting period, our pizzas that we ordered were delivered by a cook. We told him that we would prefer to enjoy our appetizers first, but currently could not as we still did not have silverware, and would prefer if our pizzas could be refired after we were done eating our appetizers. Once we received silverware, we ate our appetizers (the salad did not have any dressing on it - strange) which were just so-so. After this, we asked a server walking by if our pizzas could be re-fired.

During this time, our server was mysteriously absent. We did head up to the front desk to ask for a manager, and found out the woman who had visited our table a few times running food and wine was the manager on duty. Our pizzas unfortunately took about 20 minutes after we requested them to be re-fired. The manager's explanation was that we needed to wait for the guests in front of us to receive their food. This was a disappointing response, as we were hoping that our pizzas simply could have been re-fired. After waiting a while, we finally received our pizzas and finished our meal. I do want to call out that we did enjoy our pizzas. The dough and sauces were delicious.

The strangest part about both nights, is that our reservation was on the patio, around 8 pm on both nights when it was 75 degrees, and the restaurant was half empty. I'm assuming this is partially due to the lift/elevator being broken, but the issues we encountered with the poor service, lack of silverware, etc., you would think would be indicative of a full restaurant that is running behind due to the amount of orders. I'm assuming this is due to poor management/staffing choices, but I really am not sure how we experienced so many glaring issues with the service and operations.

Overall, I really cannot recommend this place for dining, which is disappointing. The views are incredible - you would think this would be THE premier spot in downtown Cottonwood, and that the owners would make every effort to get things right, but the service and issues we encountered were extremely disappointing and overshadow anything the views can offer. Based on our back to back disappointing dinner experiences here, I would recommend just grabbing a wine flight or a glass of wine, enjoying the view, and heading somewhere...