The Encore Lakeside Grill & Sky Bar — Restaurant in Lake Ozark

Response to the owner: You have the wrong customer first. I was extremely calm, very nice, and politely explained twice to the manager our situation. I left a cash gratuity to the waitress who was thrown into a terrible position by YOU and/or the Manager that night. There were many upset customers that night; I can't say why or what happened...but the OWNER wasn't there on a busy Saturday night. So please take some ownership of what happened instead of blaming it on me. As far as my 145 reviews; I've been on google for at least 20 years; I try to review when the business has really done a good job...rarely anything in the middle; but if it's an epic failure; people should know that too. Doesn't mean it will happen to them. Like I said to start this review; your establishment is a super cool place, great vibe, great set up; just very poorly managed on the night we happened to be your customers. Also, there were 6 of us....and all 6 agreed to leave; it wasn't a single decision. I've never left a restaurant like that in my life...so this was a pretty bad situation. I wish your response had been to figure out what happened, instead of attacking me; now I know I really don't want to come back.

Original Review Edited to allow room for my response:

Absolute Garbage for management. Before you disregard my review, please look at my reviews and how totally fair I am with business. I'm a small biz owner and this was by far the worst managed, worst run, destination venue/restaurant my wife and I have EVER made a reservation at. We have been multiple times to Vegas, New Orleans, Nashville, Florida, and Texas plus International...they have a long way to get better at handling a large crowd...which is the design intent of this establishment...so that's a little ironic.

We had reservations; multiple groups were seated ahead of us, even those who came in without reservations. Arrival 7:30, First Drinks arrived at 8:30. I tried to help out by going to the bar to get our own drinks; but the bar had only 1 bartender. She was backed up over 30 minutes as I waited, our first round of drinks finally arrived. So it wasn't just the kitchen under staffed, the bar was under staffed, and the restaurant service was under staffed.

Order taken at 9pm, Partial delivery with wrong ordered dinner between 9:45 and 10:00; 4 of our group received some of what they ordered, 2 never received anything. 10:15 - We left without paying our bill - First time I've ever done that. It was a group decision and all 6 agreed. I did leave some gratuity for our overloaded and under trained wait staff.

I want to be sure I'm very clear. We were very very patient. We were there to have a good time and enjoy the night and venue. But it was chaos inside the restaurant and the menu's price level should reflect the service you expect to receive. We were not the only customers having real problems. All the tables around us either had full meals missing or the wrong food was brought to them.

Had the manager actually come to our table and explained the situation, we might have waited longer and just asked them to start over. But instead, we had to get up and go to her; with no resolution or improvement. Maybe she was just loosing track of all the upset customers; I'm not sure. Because I saw a lot of customers from other tables approach her.

Let's Be Sure to Mention the Positives: The piano guy was great! There was a band that was pretty good. The vibe is great! IF they can figure out their menu, determine their food identity, train their staff, and better manage their staff; this place would be a 4-5 star venue. Unfortunately, they have the wrong management in place right now or ownership needs to change.

Now...be sure to read my next review...after striking out at 3 places to find food....since it was now well past 10pm; we did discover a family owned small Carribean Connection that had delicious flavor and crazy nice owners who should have been running Encore instead of...

They advertised their $48 thanksgiving buffet which with the forced 22% tip was $60. To add insult to injury, we got 0 service. I ordered an ice tea when I sat down, I’m still waiting for the ice tea. I felt deceived, the buffet ran out of food, the deserts bar consisted of 1 pumpkin pie left. The manager said it was advertised everywhere when I pointed it out. All while I was standing in from pf a flyer with no mention of the forced charge for a service I didn’t receive. I pulled up their website and asked him to show me the disclosure. He then said they do it every holiday. I said that’s not true as we’ve been to other holiday dinners there including NYE and have never had a forced gratuity. Our server was horrible, she didn’t deserve 22%. But they removed any incentive to provide us service. I felt scammed and deceived and will never enter their establishment again. Just a warning, what you see is not what you get. We had a lot of choices for this holiday experience and unfortunately made the wrong one. Do yourself a favor and bypass this one. Overpriced subpar food and the rudest staff I’ve ever encountered and as a local I’ve already been warned off some of their specials, and been told about the service. But this was my first experience with that. Getting quite the reputation. Edited to include my response to the owner who clearly doesn’t understand that a gratuity is payment for service received. I am typically a 25-30% tipper, but I do expect service for that gratuity. You can argue with every bad review you receive on Google, but it doesn’t change the fact that we were dissatisfied locals who won’t be back. If you think that is good for business, that’s your prerogative. Forcing a reward for employees who didn’t do their job, allows them to continue to provide horrible service. Furthermore; advertising something you don’t intend to provide is deceptive. If you can’t handle the reservations you accepted at a high level of service perhaps you should accept less reservations. I’d rather have happy customers who feel like they received what they paid for. But...

Had a somewhat negative experience here for a bachelorette party. We had made a reservation ahead of time since we had a larger group. When we arrived, they checked us in and asked if we’d like to sit inside or outside. We told them inside as it was still pretty hot outside and we were dressed to go out afterwards. They told us it would be a 30-40 minute wait for indoor seating even though we’d made a reservation. I don’t mind a short wait as I understand they’re busy on a weekend evening, but making a reservation seemed pointless if we were going to have to wait over a half hour to be seated. We could have went anywhere at the lake and been seated for close to that amount of time. We ended up choosing outdoor seating since we didn’t have time to wait, and the outdoor seating area was not as bad as we expected. They did have fans and sun shades to keep things cool. However the host took us outside and said we’d have to split into 2 tables. This was not what we wanted, and as a party of only 8, we figured it’d be easy to push two tables together or add some chairs at the ends of the table to accommodate. When we suggested this to the host, we were told no and that it wasn’t possible to move any tables around. So we were pretty frustrated at this point as again, we had made reservations in hopes of avoiding these issues. Luckily, our waiter Jason came by a few seconds later and was VERY accommodating. He immediately tried to figure out a solution and let us turn the table so we could fit chairs on the ends and have enough seating. It was only his third evening on the job and he was quick to help us get things figured out. If it weren’t for him, we would have left and went someone else. Aside from these issues, the food was okay and the live entertainment was nice. It is certainly not an environment for a quiet dinner, but we didn’t mind. Overall I’m not sure I’d go back. Maybe for a smaller group on a weeknight, but I wouldn’t trust making a reservation at this place for anything larger...