Celilo Restaurant & Bar — Restaurant in Hood River

First time here, just passing through. Look, this is a nice place. But it's absurd to pay $19.00 for a BLT and have it come out and, if anything, it's HALF of an appetizer. I included two pictures herre to show how small it is. The darned thing looks like a dinner roll. A day later, I ate at the Oswego Grill in Lake Oswego, Oregon. It had the same vibe to it, in terms of how nice it was. My meal was four times bigger and the cost was two dollars cheaper. This was just insulting. But this was one of those "fancy" places where the tables are all right on top of each other and you can't really complain without it coming across like you're an a-hole or some Karen because everyone around you hears the whole conversation with the staff.

I was going to write that I'd rather choke on this BLT than spend $20 ever again, but then I realized the thing is too small to get lodged in an air pipe.

UPDATE: "It seems unfair to publish such a negative review about an issue we could have corrected had you brought it to our attention." It's easy to say this after-the-fact. But by passing the blame back on the customer, that tells me everything I need to know about how it probably would have actually been handled. 509-

TRUTH time: when the item was brought out, I did say, "oh... how cute!!! That's pretty small." And the server laughed. I'm sorry she wasn't trained well enough to take a step back and read the signs. Or when she came back after I had the little fennel salad and asked how everything was and I said "I'll start on this in a bit, it's just so small I want to make sure I savor every bite." Read the signs... read the clues... I was leaving them in a way that was trying to be good natured. But as "unfair" as the owner may think about "such a negative review," it pales in comparison to the unfair nature of putting a customer in the position where they are forced to go from good natured to more assertive. Again, the area we were sitting had no space between us and the other three tables. Why would that have been right? The reaction to the review is everything I need to know to also know that, no, it probably wouldn't have been handled well at that time and would have created a worse experience. 432-

Bottom line: Look at the pictures! If you feel worse about the review than you do about sending this $20 BLT out to a full-grown man, then that's all I feel anybody needs to know about the restaurant. End...

I visited the Celilo with a group of ladies to celebrate a bachelorette. We had made a reservation well in advance for 5 ladies. Upon arrival, we were asked to wait as our reserved table was not ready. We arrived 5 minutes early and waited for a 7:00 reservation to be ready until 7:30. After we were finally seated, it took another 10 minutes for the waitress to come over. When she finally came she shared the specials and left. Another 10 minutes or so passes by and she comes back to take our drink order which we figured we should also order our food too given how slow it was. We ordered food and drinks. Partway through this order OUR SERVER LEFT to attend to another table! Apparently we were not high priority. She made that very clear. She said "I am being waved over to another table". I found that extremely rude. Our order was finally fully taken and our drinks arrived 10 minutes later. We saw other tables seated after us with only 1-2 less people have their orders taken and get their food much faster than us with what appeared to be much better service. Our food did eventually come out but it took another hour or so after it was ordered to arrive. The server didn't let us know why it was taking so long or really check in on us at all. She barely attended to our table. We had to ask her for another drink when glasses were clearly empty, we had to ask for more water when our pitcher was out. Overall, the food was good but the waiter we had at least was horrible. I wouldn't go back there without some serious persuading. We should have found another place to eat when they originally made us wait for 30 minutes for a reservation. It was extremely unprofessional and rude in my opinion. We were all dressed very nicely and really had no idea why we were treated so poorly. It was a very disappointing experience. I would expect that kind of experience with a larger group but there was only 5 of us. At least I was in good company with the group of girls. The atmosphere was nice and...

The food here was exceptionally tasty, but the portions and the service are lacking. Lucky for us, we were not extremely hungry when we were seated for our dinner reservation. That was conveniently good since our appetizers didn't show up until about an hr after we were seated. It looked like our service was either forgotten or difficult as we noticed multiple other dinner parties arrive after us, eat, and then leave before our food had arrived. It also didn't help that our bill was incorrectly charged to my card before I brought the mistake to the waiter's attention. The food here is above average, but their service is on a different level from their food, and that's not a good thing.

We tried their crispy pork cheek and asparagus & green garlic soup. I loved the crispy pork cheek, it had the spices similar to a falafel in this crispy fried medallion while the innards were moist and tender. My only regret with that appetizer is that there was just a single half-dollar sized medallion. While the baby kale and house made chicharones were tasty, the pork cheek was seriously rare. The asparagus and green garlic soup was certainly creamy, but I felt that it was overly creamy to the point that, besides from the obvious garlic flavoring, what you tasted was predominantly heavy cream. As for the entree itself, their cast iron paella certainly was tasty. Your nostrils are filled with the scent of sea with the large prawns, bay shrimps, calamari, and manila clams while also having a smokey scent from the house...