SkyBar Gourmet Pizza — Restaurant in Eureka Springs

Once upon a moonlit night in Eureka Springs, I embarked on a noble and cheese-fueled quest to reclaim the glory of a calzone I had once tasted—not even fresh, mind you, but in the form of leftovers passed down to me from my lady, who had moved to this whimsical mountain town to reign among fellow musicians, writers, artists, ghosts, and eccentrics. She had sung tales of this calzone. Rich in cheese. Overflowing with meat. Cradled in soft, pillowy bread that could have been baked by woodland elves with access to an Italian grandmother. And I, having tasted a bite reheated, knew I had to claim my own fresh one. My excitement was at an all time high to pay $30 for this calzone. Or so I thought. We ordered the very calzone that had lit up my dreams a couple nights before, that sat for 24 hours and then was nuked for warmth. But alas! I ordered my very own fresh one. The kitchen, however, seemed to be forging it in the fires of Mount Doom. As we waited... and waited... and waited, my lady began to fade. I, too, was descending into a hypoglycemic spiral, seeing visions of marinara waterfalls and mozzarella rivers glowing in the beautiful outside seating under the moon. After questioning if we should check on our order, my lady suddenly rose from the table to politely inquire on the status of our order to keep me from hurling myself over the 4th floor balcony from hunger. She has been a server in the past, she is very aware of the goings on in restaurants, and is quite empathetic to the challenges, but at this point patience had failed us. Our server returned shortly thereafter with a charred bread tractor tire and announced… "It looks burnt but it’s not." Unless Smaug is taking a vacation from the Lonely Mountain and helping in the kitchen then this calzone had lived a full and tragic life in that oven. It was burnt. And to add insult to injury, it came to our table uncut and lacking all resemblance of a healthy and happy Calzone. Our server said the kitchen accidently put it in a to-go box, so she took it out of the box and brought it to us. This was an obvious clue of why it took so long to get our food, for it had been sitting under the heat lamp in a box waiting for someone to pick up the to-go order that was never placed, for who knows how long. So instead of correcting this situation which we figured out by deduction of logic and away from the kitchen area. She instead served it to us with a hint of truth and a steaming pile of lies. We attempted to cut into the cursed calzone, but it fought back! What was inside? A barren cheese wasteland, and clumps of meat that no one bothered to spread evenly as one would normally on a pizza or sandwich pizza commonly known as the calzone. This was the ghost of the gooey glory I had experienced in leftover form. My dreams were crushed, and in its place stood only sadness wrapped in a crust that will haunt me forever. I am only able to describe this pile of regret because we were so ravenous and it was beginning to affect our relationship, and we both decided love was more important, so we ate to get our blood sugar up and we moved on trying to understand what just happened and what we just consumed. When we gently informed the server that this was not the same glorious calzone from days prior, we were met with the kind of indifference typically reserved for the DMV line. Complete with hands on the hips and feigned surprise that we would know the difference. Perhaps she assumed we were tourists, but we are locals and knew what to expect. Which begs the question, is this how tourists are treated at the sky bar on a weeknight, or possibly just a tired overworked server and kitchen staff on this particular night. Something to ponder for management. And then, the glorious check arrived. Smacked down with the grace of full blown, thinly disguised annoyance, and bore upon it the true twist of this horror story: an automatic 18% gratuity. With no foreshadowing of said policy. For two people! Is this the penalty for a couple that wants to eat after 8pm on a weeknight in...

This place is busy! We tried one evening to be on the waitlist and it was 45 min - 1 hour. It was too late for that so we opted to come back the next day for lunch. It was the same wait time of 45 min - 1 hour. After our wait we sat at our table for about 10 minutes before a server came over to take our order.

We initially picked this place because the pizza is know to be good and we had read online somewhere that they offered a gluten free pizza crust option. THEY DO NOT HAVE GLUTEN FREE PIZZA CRUST. The server said they used to have a cauliflower crust and they no longer have it anymore. Since this was an issue for one person in our party they were forced to order and eat a salad instead of enjoying the pizza they were looking forward to .

Atmosphere: It's nice. The interior dining area has these painted sun beams around the room and a large gorgeous painting. The balcony overlooks the hills and you can see the Christ of the Ozarks. We visited in late October and the tree leaves were in the midst of color change and it looked pretty. Despite a nice atmosphere, I was more engaged with the group of people I was there with than paying attention to my surroundings.

Service: Not great. As mentioned above it took 10 minutes for our server to approach the table. She did take our full order all at once though. She dropped off our drinks and we didn't see her again till our food was almost ready. We waited about an hour to get two salads and two pizzas. No beverage refills were offered while we waited. I was surprised the salads did not arrive out before the pizzas. The server dropped off the salads and took off super fast. We had no silverware to eat them with and were wondering how we planned to eat them. She shortly came back with pizzas, plate, and plastic wear.

I found it odd that we were given normal washable plates to eat off of but our cups were disposable plastic cups and our "silverware" was packages of plastic wear. I don't know if this is the norm for them or if it was so busy that they could not keep up with dishes.

Food: While I can't vouch for everything on the menu I can talk about what we tried. The salads are decent but expensive. My partner had the house salad and I had the spinach salad. Between our party of 6 we spilt a pepperoni pizza and a carnivore pizza.

The house salad is made with a fancy lettuce that I do not know the name of, but it looked good. It had an added salmon which was cooked well but the portion was very small.

The spinach salads was topped with fruit, pecans, and feta. It was interesting. I am not sure that I care for fruit on my salads but I tried something new. There was plenty of lettuce piled on a plate which made it hard to toss the salad. I wish the option would have been given to have the salad pre-tossed or even been offered more dressing as I did not feel it had enough dressing for the amount of leafs on my plate.

The pizzas were good. The crust looks very pretty and fluffy but it is a lot of bread to east. Now the crust beneath the pizza have a little bit of a squish and bouncy texture. It was slightly thicker than a thin crust but definitely not a thick crust. There was an ample amount of cheese on the pizza and the toppings were standard meat flavors for pizzas. They were filling.

I normally remember to take picture of my food but we waited so long for the food to come that it didn't even cross my mind. I did get pics of the view and menu at the beginning of the...

Decent pizza was what we ordered, which is the only positive in this review. We have traveled quite a bit to tourist/resort areas. For the most part, all of them took great pride in providing excellent meals and excellent service. That is not the case for SkyBar Gourmet Pizza.

When we got there, we were told there was a 30 minute wait for inside seating. We gave our name and went to our room for about 25 minutes. When we went back, we were told we were next in line. 15 minutes later, we were seated and noted several other empty tables inside and on the patio.

After waiting another 20 minutes, a waiter asked what we would like to order. We ordered a pizza, a diet Coke and water. 10 minutes later our drinks arrived. 20 minutes later the waiter refilled my drink. 15 minutes later I flagged our waiter and asked how much longer. He explained that it took 10-20 minutes to make our pizza!

I told him we had already been there an hour and we were watching the family next to us eat their pizza...they came in 15 minutes after we did! He said he would check on it, and came right back explaining that he did not realize we had been there that long and he was checking on our pizza. I told him that if our pizza wasn't there within 10 minutes, we were leaving. He said he understood, offered a discount and left.

A few minutes later he came back saying our pizza was coming upstairs now and we would have it shortly...again, offered a discount and saId that if we didn't want to wait he understood. A few minutes later another guy stopped by the table and said they were bringing our pizza upstairs right now and it should be here shortly. I asked what that means, and he explained that the kitchen is in the basement. They make the pizzas there, and bring them to the restaurant on the 4th floor.

Then the dogs came in. Seriously, a family with two large dogs...German shepherd sized dogs...into a restaurant. One was well behaved, and laid down quietly. The other paced at the end of a 6' leash sniffing everybody that passed by and begging for food from people at nearby tables. To be clear...these were not service dogs! They were pets.

10 minutes later, the pizza arrived...it was okay. It wasn't great. It was okay. The waiter explained that our meal was on them since we had to wait so long.

Bottom line, the restaurant is horribly managed and the wait staff are poorly trained. We sat directly in front of the bar, 6' from where the wait staff turned in their orders....and they didn't realize we had been there over an hour and one half. How is that possible?! We sat there for over an hour and a half!!

For a place that touts itself as a top shelf hotel/resort/spa, the SkyBar Gourmet Pizza was a memorably bad experience. I will not recommend...and I'll never return. Go to Pizza Hut...nothing special but at least you'll probably get...