The Vine Restaurant — Restaurant in Falmouth

Part of me did not want to write a review because I care that local Falmouth businesses thrive. But another part of me doesn't want a neighbor to spend time/money and have the same experience. While thinking about this after we left, the other four people said, "you are going to write a review, right?" Since I do have recommendations (having worked in hospitality myself for 30 years) ... here it is.

First, it is BYOB and there are ample opportunities to advise customers about this - (1) pop up on the web site, (2) while making a reservation, (3) during the hostess greeting, (4) upon being seated, (5) a separate piece of paper with the menu - but here they decide to tell you after you are seated and have ordered appetizers (really?) This totally messed up our ability to enjoy a relaxing evening, as my husband left to buy a bottle of Chianti to have with our Italian meal. They also listed lemonade on the menu, but then said they don't have any (after they knew we had to leave for the wine). In my past (restaurant employee) life, we would grab the lemons that are in the kitchen, plus sugar, and MAKE IT!

Second, the service was terrible, and while they recognized this and tried to make up for it, they sent us up to five different people to fix the issue, but the problem is one person did not know what the other person was doing, so the service was just as bad but we had to communicate more often (further interrupting our meal). They seated us at a table for five (as was the reservation), but kept serving us like a table for four (four pieces of bread on the bread plate, four settings, four waters, four pieces of bread on the 2nd bread plate, continuously throughout the meal.)

Third, the food was really not very good. The calamari was over breaded, delivered with our meal (not as an appetizer) and on the cold/warm side, not heated. So we sent it back after three people each had one piece and agreed it was terrible. Feeling bad about this, they offered a "free dessert". We selected the location to go got DQ across the street after, but figured "why not?" Our family happens to LOVE dessert pizza, I mean what can go wrong with fresh dough and nutella? Well, it looked like a small child made it, slapped together with watery strawberries (which made the pizza soggy), and that was all it was topped with. We have seen confectioners sugar, caramel drizzle, fluff (not my thing, but ok), mini marshmallows melted in the oven, ricotta cheese, chunks of white chocolate. I mean chefs can get very creative with a dessert pizza. This one was awful. Do NOT order it. The mac and cheese ("terrible"), pizza ("not worthy") and chicken parm ("sauce was gross") all not worth the cost of the dish. These are teen girls that say the food truck at Falmouth Heights beach has the "best" chicken nuggets and burgers.

Here are the two redeeming things. The lobster ravioli is quite awesome and the Ossobuco was tasty. They get points for noticing there were problems, but it kept getting worse (they brought the dessert pizza - another 10-15 minute wait - without plates so we had to track those down, then delivered the bill without a pen so we had to track that down too, the problems never subsided.)

I am sad about this because I really wanted this place to be a...

Systems just don’t seem to be in place here. We had a reservation for 4 and waited for our table to be set. We also watched another table (reserved for 8) because set as they arrived. After our appetizer of arancini, one staff member started bringing out bread to the tables, seemingly as she saw them. There was no rhyme or reason to serving as patrons had been seated, or anything like that. We finally flagged down a staff person to ask about the bread and he seemed surprised, embarrassed, and disappointed that we hadn’t received it yet. Special thanks to this one staff member (could be a kitchen runner) for taking care of us. As I haven’t mentioned her yet, our server was essentially MIA for the majority of the meal. We placed our order for a second round of wine with the woman serving the bread. Checking in with us on our meal was brief and we had to ask for water multiple times as no one seemed to be checking, other than the one man who came around with the water pitcher. The food (chicken parm, lasagna, and fettuccine al bolognese) was all bland and flavorless. The lasagna had a very weird taste, was long and flat, had weird sauces on either side. Would not recommend to anyone. The sauce for the bolognese was bland. The spaghetti seemed like it was from a can. We had wanted to try the desserts and martinis, but really had no incentive to stick around based on the service and food quality we’d experienced. We came in with high hopes for another quality restaurant to support in Falmouth, but really only the ambience and Instagram worthy presentation lived up to the hype. (Ambience was good with good noise volume in the dining room) Sorry, the food did not elicit camera usage at the table, so no pictures. Hope they can sort everything out in time for next summer (or the hotel’s continental breakfast that was...

We tried to love this new restaurant but it fell short of many many things. We were sat at a high top in the bar with only one patron. There were 4 tvs blaring with overly bright lights. Our waiter came promptly and offered menus and bread service. The rest went downhill quickly. The waiter NEVER returned. I had to get up and find the bartender for our drink orders and let him know the waiter disappeared. He came over and took our order letting us know all of the food was made in house and fresh. One hour later we got served cold inedible pasta. I returned mine and asked for another glass of wine while waiting. No one came back. During that time the waiters were fighting and yelling across the restaurant that they were out of most items and red wine. The bartender who had become our waiter ran out of the establishment. Another 30 minutes later he came back to ask if we needed anything (again no wine) and during that time our waters were empty. When the chicken Parmesan came out it was a thick, dried out piece of fried chicken. Almost like a BBQ restaurant would serve but with overly sweet sauce. The pasta this time was hot at least. The floor next to us was also peeling up and someone tripped on it. We did NOT eat our meals. Our bartender/ server/ manager took our food, didn’t ask how it was and dropped the check. Would never return and would not recommend to anyone looking for a relaxing...