Cantwell's Tavern — Restaurant in Delaware

In the last 2-3 years we've tried Cantwell 8 times. The first time was for lunch. We both got burgers. They were decent, though nothing special. Same with the service. I would have rated it a 3...average.

About 6 months later, we went there for dinner for our anniversary (approx. 2.5 years ago). The food and service was excellent- 5 stars. Next time the service was good, but we had to send back one of the appetizers and my soup. Neither were hot. The replacements were very good - 4 stars.

The next several times we went there for dinner, the service and the food was average at best. One time we ordered dinner. My husband ordered ribs and I ordered a RARE steak. His came out. I waited 10 more minutes and my meal never came out. I called the server to find out where my dinner was. “Oops! I’ll go check” he said. He came out few minutes later with my steak. When I cut into it, it was room temperature and medium well done! I’m guessing it sat under a heat lamp for over 15 minutes. I had to send it back. By the time they brought me a properly prepared meal, my husband was already done eating and ready to leave. He said his ribs were delicious, though the portion was very small. They ended up giving us a gift card to compensate us for the bad experience. If not for the gift card we would never have gone back again.

So tonight, we decided to use the gift card and give them one more try. Another poor experience! We ordered 2 appetizers. The first was the prosciutto flatbread with that was supposed to have peach marmalade and goat cheese for $12. It should have been good. It wasn’t. The flatbread was not as described. It had the meat and cheese, however instead of peach marmalade, it had some cut up cooked peaches (possibly poached) tossed on top. BLAH! The bit of sweetness from the peach marmalade would have perfectly offset the tanginess of the goat cheese. The chunks of peach were tasteless. When we asked the server about it, they said sometime things are changed and don't match the description on the menu. REALLY??? Either fix your menu or prepare the food as described!!! The steamed shrimp was fine, in fact it was the on decent part of our entire meal. Then again, bow do you screw up shrimp cocktail???

My husband ordered iced tea. They didn’t even bother to put a slice of lemon in it. Really?!? I had a glass of white wine. Hard to mess up.

For dinner, my hubby ordered the Twin Crab Cakes with sugar snap peas, bacon, and whipped ricotta for $28. Although not the best crab cakes (too much filler) they tasted good and were not over seasoned. The cakes were served on top of the sugar snap peas. While the crab cakes came out hot, the beans were cold. I don’t know if they were supposed to be cold or not, but I certainly would not serve hot crab cakes on top of cold beans. He only ate 2 bites of the beans.

I ordered the Grilled Scallops with basil ricotta risotto, asparagus, bacon and preserved lemon gastrique for $27. There were only 4 medium size scallops (about 1.5 to 2 inches in diameter). They were coated in seasoning, including black pepper. The only thing you could taste was the pepper. Chef, don’t you know, scallops have a delicate, slightly sweet flavor that is completely overwhelmed by anything other that a little bit of salt??? I traded my husband one of his crab cakes for my scallops. Although he likes blackened food, he completely agreed with me, that the seasoning and pepper totally overwhelmed and killed all taste of the scallops. He scraped off as much as he could with his knife, but said it was still bad. At least the risotto and gastrique were tasty.

So in a nutshell, the small portions (of meat) were poorly prepared and definitely not worth the price on the menu. Thankfully they comped us by taking the appetizers off the bill and we had the gift card, so our out-of-pocket was only about $14 plus tip. I guess a glass of wine and shrimp cocktail is worth $14. Fortunately, I had leftovers from the night before available to heat up when...

The service started out great, and then all of a sudden, it went downhill after our appetizers. We asked our waitress for refills and extra napkins and, for some reason, ended up never seeing her again. Our entrees were brought out by someone who works in the kitchen; we did inquire about our waitress in regard to needing refills and extra napkins. Due to our waitress never checking in on us again, I never had the opportunity to tell her that the fries were soggy and salty. Also, the cheese steak was bland and overcooked. Since our waitress simply disappeared with no explanation from her, management, or another waitress, we ended up waiting over 45 minutes after we were done with our entrees. Again, still no refills or extra napkins, and no one checked in on us to see how we were doing. Finally, a different waitress got our plates out of the way, and she did apologize for the other waitress not being around due to having to take care of customers upstairs. We didn't feel her apology was sincere and absolutely certain she only cleared our table to make room for other patrons waiting in the lobby area. Otherwise, we would have probably waited another hour or longer. I'm assuming this waitress was supposed to be the one to take care of us since the other waitress got pulled away. We felt her vibe was not her problem mentality! Well, it is your problem since you are supposed to be a team, and if the roles were reversed, I'm sure our primary waitress would take care of your tables...just sayin! Shame on management for not checking in on us, and especially the waitress that was supposedly covering for our waitress! We did not have a pleasant dining experience due to a lack of communication, inattentive service, and quality of food. We made reservations at 4 pm. on a Tuesday, and it did not get busy until after we left. When we finally received our check several minutes after the plates were cleared off the table, we did not want to wait all night for someone to pick up our check so we begrudgingly payed through the QR code even though we wanted to pay cash. We still left a 20 percent tip even though the service was 1 star. My dish was not good, and I never had a chance to speak to someone about it. But then again, maybe that is why no one checked in on us because they knew their service and...

Food absolutely AMAZINGGGGGGG. Service 0! Hostess, negative.

We arrived around 10am on Father's Day morning June 18 2023. We rode there on our motorcycles and didn't care what our (appearance) looked like ... We enter minutes after they're open. Tons of tables available...

A phone call came in while we were waiting for a table. They tended to the phone call more than us. We waited for about 5 minutes and the hostess wasn't sure if she could "seat us" because they had over "200 reservations for the day!"

She said, "well I can try to seat you outside, or maybe upstairs but I don't know if I have anything because of our reservations" ... she then just stares at us ...

...mind you our appearance was frowned upon ... due to her eyes ...

I said "don't worry about it, we will go somewhere else" and we leave ... and the two hostesses say "okay" ... didn't say bye or we can make this work, nothing ...

We leave. Sitting outside thinking ... We are starving and won't have anywhere to go .... so, I walk back in!

I said to the hostess, "is there availability in the bar tops?" ... She says, "um, I'm not sure" ... I go to the bartender and ask her if we could sit at the high top ...

The bartender says, "you have to ask the hostess if it's open but if it is, you can't put another chair out in the open, it'll have to be around the side" .... Mind you, we have our small petite 6 year old daughter with us.

We were starving, so I sat ourselves. I accepted what the bartender said because she has waited on us a couple times before ... years ago ... but her personality is a little "iffy" .... but she's very tentative to her guests.

The food came out SO quickly. As the hostess kept looking at us eat. We were there maybe for an hour. My husband ordered a steak with his eggs (that's why we were there for a while). I could count maybe 8-10 families coming in during that hour. While sitting there 3 tables became available in the bar area.

Our bill was $107 and we still left a $30 dollar tip to remind these hostess girls NOT to ever judge a book by it's cover. I hope someone at this restaurant really reads into this message.

When we left the hostess didn't say one word to us. Nothing. Blank...