The Regional — Restaurant in Fort Collins

BUYER BEWARE: this restaurant is running a scam.

I came in this evening for happy hour with my fiancee and elderly parents and our server deliberately overcharged us for our happy hour food, charging us full menu price for my parents' wine and meals.

The Regional (ostensibly) offers a burger and wine deal for happy hour, and our entire table ordered burgers (or their vegetarian equivalent) and wine, well before the 5:30 happy hour cut off point. We made it known audibly that we wanted the happy hour burger deal.

When the food came out, my parents' plates had fries, while my fiancee's and mine did not. I should have known something was fishy at this point, but they had arrived before us and I assumed they'd ordered the fries ahead of us.

When the bill arrived, it was considerably higher than expected, but I paid it without much thought (and tipped generously, as one ought when receiving discounted food, such as with happy hour), assuming they'd had additional drinks prior to our arrival. Only upon my return home was I able to peruse the receipt and consult with my mom to learn that our table had been overcharged to the tune of $40-ish for the separate burgers and wine at standard menu price.

Now, despite having the name of the offending party printed on the top of the receipt, I won't mention the server's name here for three reasons:

Having worked much of my life in restaurants, I've found that this type of behavior is generally tolerated if not tacitly encouraged by restaurants and can easily become a part of their waitstaff culture, so it's likely that this server is not the only one on staff who engages in this type of activity. I don't snitch and don't need to stain their name publicly. Plus, I have reason to believe their are multiple staffers who share this name and I don't want to create issues for their counterpart, aside from maybe having the crux of this review mentioned in some upcoming pre-shift meeting...if we're lucky. If management really wants to know, they can check last night's receipts on Toast and figure it out.

As I said, I've seen servers openly brag about using this tactic in the past and watched restaurants turn a blind eye to it because it inflates the servers' tips (20% on the extra $40 is an additional $8 to the server, and if you think that some servers won't happily spend 30 of your dollars to make an extra 6 for themselves then I'd love to talk to you about the bridge I have for sale back east,) and the restaurant's profits. Elderly patrons are especially susceptible to scams like this, as they will pick up the check 9 times out of 10 when dining with younger couples. Waitstaffs and restaurants know this. There's no downside for either party so long as nobody raises a stink, and even then, there's usually plenty of room for plausible deniability and managerial hand wringing to smooth things over.

As they say in somebody else's old country,...

I found this place on yelp and the reviews were fantastic, smothered pork chops, fried chicken etc promising down home farm to table cuisine. Well we got there and it was ok, the kitchen is the first thing you see and a hostess with an ipad... I'm thinking "ok, it's just unique, thats alright" then we get seated and my husband mentions "if they had sat us at one of those tiny tables on the outside of the room, I would have just gotten up and left." He's right... They are small! Anyways, I immediately go for the drink menu thinking ohhh this place is going to have some wonderful drinks, thinking along the lines of The Social... Nope Nothing special. Okay. Prosecco it is(p.s. prosecco is served in flutes.. Not the merlot glass I was given). I hear my husband muttering and turn my attention to the menu, FIVE entrees?! And not one of them is smothered pork chops or fried chicken?! Okay again. Since there are only 5 they must be amazing so I choose the trout(photo included), hubby got the lamb sirloin. By this time we have been waiting forever it seems and my husband orders coffee.... It's cold(twice)... Seriously getting annoyed now. Our food comes, my first thought? "Where the heck is the rest of my TWENTY SIX DOLLAR filet of trout?!" Is this a joke? Nope. And my husband's lamb was the worst cut of lamb ive ever seen! The upside? The quinoa was soooooo good! But a girl cant live on quinoa. There was a point where I just started laughing because I thought to myself "I cannot wait to get home and eat again." The whole meal was prob 120 cal total... Which is great for someone on an extreme diet but not me. Anyways.... With all the glowing reviews I was fooled into thinking this was a "down home" sort of restaurant but it's just another hippy-dippy-hipster-hangout with ridiculous prices and horrible customer service.... Our waitress literally came to the table after our first few bites and said "happy?".... Like no. No im not. I want the rest of my fish lady and for you to not have an attitude, I am a mother, i know what it sounds like... Lol. At the end I can only assume the man who manages this place asked us how our meal was and by this point I just was over it so I lied through my teeth and...

So our visit was today 7/23/22. I also have worked in restaurants for nearly 20yrs and a Chef at a 4 star restaurant. I know how service can be and how hard it is to work in the food service. That being said I'm usually VERY patient when it comes to dining out at a restaurant.

My wife and I walked in after seeing great reviews and decided to try it. We got there a little after 7pm on a Saturday and were sat at a table pretty quick. It took a few minutes to see our waiter which was understandable.

However we ordered immediately since my wife didn't have much time. Another couple ordered at about the same time. We never saw the waiter again. We sat there from around 7:40ish until almost 8:30, and never saw our server after we ordered. The couple at the table next to us who had ordered around the same time had gotten their food and were almost done. A couple at the bar who had came in after us were already getting their food, and we hadn't seen our waiter since ordering for nearly 45min.

We were about to just tell them to cancel our order and leave since we couldn't even find our waiter to at least get the food to go. Finally another staff member saw us looking around a lot after nearly 45 minutes of being ignored by practically every staff member there. They asked if we had been helped and looked shocked when I answered 45 minutes ago when we ordered.

We finally saw our server AFTER another employee brought our food, and we asked for to go boxes since it was almost almost 8:45. Our waiter simply said "Sorry, 30 minutes is standard on a Saturday night" and walked off after bringing our check. We had waited nearly an hour for our food without ANYONE even acknowledging we were there the whole time.

On a positive note the food was good which is the only reason I gave 2 stars. However the place was small and the tables were sticky and very close together. The service was abhorrent, and it was a sauna in the dining area. All in all it was NOT worth the price we paid simply because the experience was one of the worst I've had at any restaurant. Coming from a former Chef with 20yrs experience...