The Circular — Restaurant in Hershey

My 6 year daughter and I were in the area for a daddy\daughter trip. We had a great time around the Hershey area up until our last night. I decided to take her out for a fancy dinner and made reservation at Circular and noted it is daddy\daughter date on reservation. We toured the Hershey Hotel grounds and we absolutely loved it. I told my wife back home we have to come back and stay at this hotel when our younger son gets older. The grounds were awesome but that is where it ended.

We were sat and our server, Manny, took about 7 minutes to come to table. We ordered chocolate milk, glass of wine, soup, child steak (medium), and a burger for me. It took about 6 minutes to pour wine even though the open bottle was about 10 feet away. After 6 minutes, Manny finally poured the wine that was already open near us. The food Order took about 30 minutes to come out and my daughter's steak came out with my soup at that time. I guess I will be eating my entree alone? I was not happy with this. Aside from this, my daughter's $26 steak was SUPER well done. I told the server this and he agreed that it was very well done, yet offered to do absolutely nothing to fix it. About my entree not coming out with hers, just "sorry."

At this time, I was upset bc I wanted to eat with my daughter. I asked for the burger and it came out 7 minutes later. When it got dropped off, I asked the food runner for mustard. I sat that for 6 minutes waiting for mustard while my burger became cold. Gina, the manager, came over and I explained that I was waiting for the mustard. You would think being a manager, she would go check on it. Nope, she told me how much she loved the burger and left. Another 4 minutes went by and Manny never came by so I asked a different server. A different server finally brought out 2 minutes later. This was about 15 minutes after my burger was delivered.

Manny finally comes over and I told him how long it took and that he never came by the table. He said sorry, again. I proceeded to eat my bruger without my daughter eating and it certainly made it less enjoyable. I get bill and it was full price with absolutely nothing said to me. I would expect with issues, something would be said or comped. Unbelievable. Manager comes over again and asked how it was. I told her everything that went wrong. She offers free dessert. Cmon. You get this for birthdays.

I told Manny that I wasn’t happy and been in food service 20 years and they could learn a lot on how to proactively treat customers. He said “it’s not too late to take care of something on bill" but at this point. It was too late for me. I love the hotel and the grounds and 100% wanted to come back here in years to come with my family but at this time, we will find somewhere else to stay when we do come back near the area. To pay $86 for a 6 year old and parent seems a bit much and these types of issues shouldn't happen. The staff could certainly learn to be a bit more proactive towards its guests. Been in food business about 30 years and there were such easy signs to make this an...

Update 1/21/25: I did call back at the number provided to speak to the manager of the restaurant, Jeff. Apparently the reply below is normally posted by their HR dept. so I had to inform him of what occurred below again. He was pleasant and apologized for my experience and offered the opportunity to come back in the hopes to be able to have a better experience. I appreciated Jeff’s time but unfortunately we won’t be back. It’s so not worth it and the service/experience is just too bad to ever go back again.

One of the worst if not THE WORST dining experiences I’ve ever had. The experience my husband and I had here was very disappointing; so much so that we won’t return. Though our server was pleasant and the food was decent, the hostesses at the front were appallingly rude and disrespectful. We arrived for our reservation and the hostess acknowledged us but then proceeded to take another group. Then the other hostess that came in her stead completely ignored us and sat another table for 2 right in front in us, even though they came after us. When the other hostess returned, she acted like we weren’t even there and then I had to step up again and inform her of our reservation and she mumbled that they were still setting the table and proceeded to address other folks who were waiting in line. After a bit of additional waiting, the reserved table was finally ready. It’s such a shame that these hostesses really make the first experience of coming to a place like this such a drag before even seating down! I truly hope that it wasn’t anything with how we looked as a black/white couple or that my husband had a hat on, which he was going to take off before we sat down as to why we were treated the way we were. In any event, I’ve have WAY better service and been to better food places than this one and I’ve never been SO relieved to leave a restaurant. One and so done! PS. Also, never ever have I been asked by a host if I’m buying a bottle of wine or not while being seated?? Are you trying to gauge how to treat us or what service to provide cause...

My husband & I went there as part of our special anniversary trip. We had made reservations and arrive on time. When we arrived we were told we’d have to wait to be seated, not a big deal normally even though there were a ton of vacant tables. She said we needed 1 service set on the table (one service setting shouldn’t take that long & it should have been ready since we had a reservation). The hostess also reminded my husband that no hats were allowed in the dining area. No biggie and he even replied that wasn’t a problem. The problem was the hostess was rather rude in how she treated us. So we stepped to the side to wait to be seated. Behind us the people kept coming in and everyone was seated immediately. It didn’t matter if it was a table for 2 or a table for 10+ they were all seated immediately. There were also other gentlemen that arrived wearing hats and were never given the rude reminder that hats weren’t allowed in the main dining area as we received. After waiting & watching this continue for awhile we decided this wasn’t the place for us. After everyone else was seated and nobody else came in the hostess finally approached us to seat us. At that time we decided we’d rather go somewhere else and told her no thanks we changed our mind. When she asked why, what happened? I asked why she didn’t remind the others she seated before us about the hats. Her response was that she would be in a little while. We have never been treated so rudely before. We have been to much more exclusive places that cost way more than this place and treated much better. You can not treat one customer one way and someone doing the same thing totally different. Unfortunately our special dinner was ruined simply for the fact of how we were treated even before we sat down. The hostess is the “face” of the restaurant so we can only imagine how the rest of the dinner would go if this was how it began. Thanks...