Cascade’s — Restaurant in Estes Park

SHOCK, is the only word I have to describe our anticipated, romantic, anniversary, dinner. We were seated close to the door in a bit of a breeze. We were greeted by our waitress immediately. We had an idea of what we wanted,( pre viewed menu online but still wanted to look at the menu. She quickly cane back and asked for a drink order. We knew we would agree on a dark red, and my husband ordered a bottle of merlot.(usually about 1.5 glasses each). The waitress left to get the wine. We talked about what we wanted for dinner, she returned quickly. We were fairly ready. We went ahead and ordered. I was first and ordered the Filet Flight, but had to ask what it was, minimal description on the menu. She explained 3 different filets from 3 different places. I said ok, I did not ask about a side or what else came with it, because of the picture that was shown on line had mash potatoes and a vegetable with it. I should have asked! My husband has been a strict vegetarian, not vegan, but he has been a vegetarian fir 25 years and always lets the waitress know, so that he will not end up sick for the night. Wine arrived, she did a lovely job. We sipped for about 20 mins. Our dinner arrived,my husband had ordered the beyond neat veggie meatballs, they were firm and clearly full of veggies, drenched in a red sauce, almost all tomato juice. My food came on a long plate, with the 3 different filets in a row, and a brown sauce amply applied across all three. The waitress quickly cane over, she explained each filet and where it came from. Check to see we giot the correct order, not so bad so far! I have to have my husband cut my food because of my physical limitations, he cut it perfectly, I could see it was cooked correctly. I took the first bite, this brown sauce was SO SALTY! It must have been made in a salt container. The three filets were just three filets, nothing else on the plate. I should have said something, but I try not to make a fuss when we are just trying to have a nice dinner out! We ate our food, planned to have dessert, but not had an idea of what. Our waitress quickly gave us our options with her personal favorite. Tiramisu, we chose that one. It was good, presentation was gorgeous, tasted fantastic! Now the bill came, honestly my meal was marked in the price column mrk, this means market value, I usually avoid any order with this. But I live to have a nice cut of neat a couple of times a year. SHOCK! Now remember, no veggies, salad, or bread. Just three “special” salty filets. $103! My husbands was not too bad at $56, but tiramisu st 35, ridiculous! NO, we will NOT be returning there for a nice meal! The waitress was good, and well trained to distract us from details we should have asked about, she was excellent at suggesting expensive items. Our whole restaurant and Hotel experience was not up yo par with the quality that is promoted! The front desk allowed children to run up and down the hallways at midnight. They did not get tge wheelchair accessible room right snd we had to switch rooms. Even when we did it really was not set up for a wheelchair. ADA would love to see some of these ideas! We made it to the next day, checked out early and got out of there, did not dare have breakfast there for fear it would really hit us hard! Too bad, you might have gained a new customer! We came home and had a good meal, nap, and privacy! Such a SHAME, Such a...

I was in hospitality, food and beverage for a decade and truly enjoy my dining experiences while on vacation as much as I can. I had high hopes for this restaurant and was looking forward to it as a highlight of our stay at the Stanley.

With that being said, this was the worst experience I've ever set through for the price point on the menu.

What is the point of making a reservation and a table preference being offered online when said table is not even offered when arriving for the reservation?

Were there shorter four tops available? Yes, at least one that was set at by a couple that arrived after my party. We had originally requested a shorter table. We were set at a small circular high top table next to the bar and all the restaurant traffic.

When I mentioned The table request to the hostess, I believe she was a hostess, I'm not quite sure, that we had requested a shorter table. Her reaction was not professional by any means for the caliber of restaurant this establishment claims to be.

She muttered that they were really busy and she wasn't quite sure and they needed to be prepared for the larger parties arriving after us.

I'll give her credit, she came back 10 minutes later saying that she'd found another table, but by that point the waitress had already stopped by and given us Waters, so I did not want to compromise the server rotation. I want to be fair to our waitress, she was busy and she was as attentive as she could be. The hostess just looked at me and asked "well, Are you happy?" when I told her that we were going to stick with the table we were originally given. At this point, I already looked for other dinner options due to the wait on drink orders and seeing The couple that had been set after us at one of the shorter tables being served promptly. At this point I just wanted to eat so we stayed.

I was prepared to go with the weekend special of the prime rib along with a few other dishes, but the smaller table did not really allow for a lot of plates so we settled to share the Rocky mountain grill flight. It was ordered rare and two of the three pieces were cooked to temp. The venison was overcooked and a bit too gnarly for either one of us to finish.

The dish was delivered by another individual and again, I will mention it was a meat flight. It was dropped off and we had to look up the menu to try to figure out what was what on the plate. We'd already eaten half of each piece by the time our server was able to make it back to the table to clarify for us what was what.

My guest had to leave before a check was delivered and I waited close to 20 minutes for it and a to go box.

As far as fine dining goes, this is not it. With price points on the menu being that high, I expect a little bit better quality and service for my money..... And mostly not made to feel like my dinner is less important than a larger table that has not even arrived yet. (And did not during my entire dinner experience).

Despite this negative experience, the brunch option and the chicken and beer restaurant located on the property were great experiences and I highly recommend them...

This was the most expensive bad experience I've ever had. My wife and I stayed at the Stanley Hotel for the first night of our vacation because we thought it would be a cool, historic place to splurge on for a night.

Cascades looked expensive but we thought that it would be nice to have one really good meal that we spent more than we usually do. The hostess and our waitress were very nice, but they seemed overwhelmed. We sat at 7:30, waited about 10 minutes to order our drinks, and then waited for about 25 more minutes for them to come out. Nobody came and talked to us at all during that time. When we finally got our drinks we ordered our meals and got a side of truffle fries out first because we were both starving and were worried the food would take a while.

The fries came out pretty quick but I was less than impressed. They were fine but nothing special for $12 an order, and they were served with heinz ketchup packets. We chalked it up to the pandemic and didn't worry about it too much. Then our meals came out. The Alaskan salmon that I ordered was cold and covered in what I can only describe as orange custard. It was mostly flavorless with a weird sweet-orange after taste. I'm not a picky person at all - I'll pretty much eat anything - but this was bad. I stopped after a few bites. My wife said her filet medallions tasted fine but she wasn't wowed. All of the veggies were undercooked, but they tasted ok.

I pushed my plate to the side because I didn't even want to finish it and the waitress came over to take it. I told her I was done and she cleared both of our plates while my wife was still eating. I'm guessing she told the manager because he came over and asked if something was wrong and offered us a free dessert or drink and we declined. It was a nice offer, but we were done at that point and just wanted to leave. They brought out our bill and charged us full price for everything.

We noticed throughout the night that the manager had been talking to a lot of tables and bringing out a lot of free drinks and stuff. I'm guessing they were having a rough night - I've worked in the restaurant industry and I can completely sympathize - and it was probably made worse by the pandemic. I doubt any of the people there had much control over how everything was going. In my experience, problems like this stem from the very top. Judging from the state the hotel was in, I'm guessing ownership has no interest in making the property any better. It's unfortunate because it has such potential. Unfortunately We probably will not return and would not recommend it to...