The Prairie Whale — Restaurant in Great Barrington

The experience that was had here on a rainy night was probably one of the worst in my personaldining history. From the pseudo-exclusive front porch attitude to the sparsely decorated shanty of a building to be complemented by a heavy clogfooted server who bounded about shaking the entire room with a terrible attitude about any request to then be capped off with food that was virtually inedible. Honestly my wife was so excited to see this place we brought a wonderful bottle of wine to enjoy this farm to table experience to be shouted at that quote ,"we don't do corkage" without as much as a thought to even offer a wine list as we entered our culinary experience. Being seated in a room of four tables close together after being scalded to wear a mask when we travel through the restaurant which we absolutely understand but none of the servers or bartenders were complying with the same request. It only went downhill from here. I received a burger from their local grass-fed butchery that supposedly was prepared in house that had absolutely no flavor in fact if I had to describe the flavor I would call it fishy not to mention it's tepid temperature at best a touch above cold. I must highlight that I did enjoy very much the carrots that were served that was the highlight of my evening. I tried to cut through the excessive fat on my son's steak which came out effectively ice cold but at this point we were pot committed so there really was nothing else to do.Uon mention of the cold food to the waiter he promptly turned and headed back to the kitchen with as much disdain as concerned that could be observed. I cannot believe that I actually rushed to get to this restaurant my wife was so excited for and then suggested "well they can take us now so we better run" in at 5:45 to have dinner. Guys gals it's the beginning of service if nothing else what should be experienced when you have less than 25% capacity in your store should be vastly better than this. For all of you that have read this far I would really suggest that you skip the hype. Get back in your car and head for the new Marlboro area and go to the old inn on the Green. By the time you get there you can have a real understanding of what service quality and a group of culinary professionals are that actually care about their product and the experience. Long story short skip it all together skip the takeout skip it skip it skip it. I hope management reads this from the perspective of a restaurant owner from New York City trying to travel through Massachusetts to have what we were excited to hear was a farm to table restaurant. The letdown was real the attitude was horrible the...

We booked a table, and that helped skipping the long line of enthusiastic customers. However, while we waited to get the table, we saw some great looking chicken pass by, and we (i.e., the three grown ups) were already sold by the perfectly crisped skin. Two of us decided to share the coppa as a starter, and the kids happily joined: if I have a regret for to he dinner - along with not having any room for the dessert - is that we only ordered one, as it was AMAZING. We live in Boston but we are from Italy and we are often disappointed by the cold cuts in this country, even the imported one. However, the locally made coppa tonight had an authentic taste, and we are quite upset that this is the only place to find it aside from Italy. To accompany our meal, we ordered a French Orange wine (imported by Bon Raisin), which arrived a bit warm, but became a nice discovery after fifteen minutes in the cooler. It was great with our chicken, which kept all the promises: I didn't really like the raw kale leaves, but I loved the roasted potatoes and the chicken itself, which was perfectly cooked and juicy. My two kids (8 and 12) got a cheeseburger: it was quite or them, but they were pretty satisfied as they managed to finish it (we pretend it was without the help of my husband, who praised the burger meat quality for a while).

The only nuisance was that we had to wait for some time to get our food, but the service, aside for this, was quite helpful and nice, and everyone seemed to work a lot but efficiently.

To make it short: I am looking forward to coming back, hope they save some coppa for me...

Disappointing service 0 Stars! I would like to be clear that we never complain about service! We are In the industry, we are very understanding. This is the first time ever giving a bad review. $ 100.00 bill & $6.00 tip! Our waitress couldn’t be bothered to come back after we received our appetizers. After we finished our appetizers it took 35 plus to get our meal. It wasn’t overly busy. Finally receiving our meals 2 Out of 3 were cold. Waiting for our waitress to come back to see how our meal were. Never happened ! Still eating cold food because we were hungry. You would think a 20.00 burger with fries and a special for 28.00 would be hot.. When someone other then our waitress came over to ask how everything was. It was about 30 minutes after finishing our meal. We mentioned that our waitress hasn’t been back since we since our appetizer. No one came by except the food runner and we had to ask again for a side of mustard which was requested when ordering. Finally after getting the attention of an employee we explained this situation And she offered to pay for a round of drinks since no-one ever came back to offer or check on us. We declined additional drinks. We were given about $12 since our drinks consisted of a glass of wine and a lemonade! $20 burger with 3 bits out of it and our waitress never returning . My spouse told the waitress she was going to have a drink with dinner....