Altana Rooftop Lounge — Restaurant in Lancaster

We had such a ridiculously bad experience at Altana, and I would recommend to the owner/manager that they hire outside consultants to address the many fundamental issues that the restaurant has. Our experience unfortunately did not include food or drinks, as we were at the restaurant for over 30 minutes without receiving any service at all and decided to go somewhere else. The restaurant was NOT busy at 7:30pm on a Saturday- there were shockingly few people in the restaurant. As I'll explain later, it was so empty in there that it was awkwardly silent.

Issue #1 - We had a reservation for 9 people on a Saturday night during restaurant week, but two people dropped out at the last minute so we were only 7. We walked up the stairs to the 3rd floor, but were not sure if were in the right spot. There was no host stand or clear sign that this was the restaurant, no landing space for us to wait for the host to seat us, and no host at all. There was absolutely no indication that we were in a restaurant named Altana, and we had to just assume that we were in the right place. A waitress passing by told us to sit down at the table they set up for us and we told her that we were only going to be 7 - she said that was fine. We took our seats.

Issue #2 - there was no silverware at our table, no water glasses, no menus. We sat there for about 5 minutes with nobody coming to greet us at our table or give us menus/water. A different waitress walked up to us and asked if we had been seated here and if we were the reservation party - we said yes, and she said she would go get us some menus. She returned 10 minutes later with our menus, only after I had gotten up to go find her and remind her we were still waiting on the menus. She left again to go make us waters, but after 15 minutes of waiting for water and not receiving it, we decided to leave.

Issue #3 - the atmosphere. I have never been in a more awkward restaurant. The room is ornately decorated with giant sculpture-like wall pieces, but the effect wasn't cozy or inviting and did not feel like a restaurant - more like the kind of sculptures you'd find in the lobby of a gaudy apartment building. The lighting was a strange white-blue light that felt too close to fluorescent white. The music was strangely quiet, club-like instrumental music that sounded more like it belonged at a runway fashion show. The room is HUGE, and the decor, lighting, and music did nothing to make it more comfortable or cozy. It felt more like a warehouse. I do not want to eat a $30 dinner in a warehouse .

Restaurants need a host stand. It's integral. It helps with organization and ensures that issues like #1 and #2 don't happen. A host can let the servers know that their tables have been seated. Tables need to be set with silverware. Water needs to be served right after the patrons sit down. A server should at least be mildly pleasant or interested in providing adequate service. This experience was a disaster, and the management needs to take a really hard look at their business and make...

Took my wife on Valentine’s Day. First impression was wow! The restaurant is beautiful. Nice ambiance with light jazz softly playing in the background. The main dining room is on the 2nd floor of the building and there was a rooftop lounge, which was closed for dining, but open for viewing the city (I’m guessing it’s seasonal). Nice views of the square, the Marriott tower, the Trinity Lutheran Steeple. We didn’t expect it to be too busy as we made reservations for 4:45pm. When we arrived there was only a small party of Galentine ladies and a few couples. We ordered our food before 5:00pm and at 5:00 it started to fill up. Our appetizer came out about 20 minutes after we ordered. However, we noticed that some couples that came after us had already received their food before we got our appetizer (pretzel bites which were very dark, luke warm and dry). The portion was very small, so we asked for more rolls. The rolls were good, but lukewarm. At 6:00 we noticed that the galentines girls and a few of the couples that were there before us still hadn’t had their food, so we weren’t too hopeful. I waved our waiter over and asked what was going on. He said that there was an issue with the ticket machine and that the tickets weren’t coming out for 40 minutes and then they all came out at one time. He never thought to share that there was a delay… I noticed that most of the food that was coming out was the burger and fries (you’d think it wouldn’t take that long to cook a burger and drop some fries). About an hour and a half after we arrived we finally received our food ( I also ordered the burger and my wife ordered the Chilean sea bass), and my umami fries were luke warm and overcooked. They did bring out a nice big bowl of fresh (overcooked) fries to “make it right”. The burger was pretty good. Both meals were on the “large plate” section of the menu, but the plate was the only thing that was large. My wife did enjoy her meal. After filling up on bread, we opted not to have dessert (even tho the espresso cheesecake was calling my name). The gentleman next to us was very upset about his experience and declared that, though he had dined at the restaurant before, he would never return after this experience. The waiter apologized and said that all the kitchen staff were new. The prices weren’t terrible and the restaurant has potential. Giving the benefit of the doubt, the combination of ticket issues, new staff and a busy holiday probably made it a less than great first impression. We are open to coming back maybe over the summer when the rooftop lounge is open and give...

All around terrible service. We were seated at our table around 5pm and were ignored by our server for about 20 minutes after we were seated, then finally came and took our drink order.  The drinks came out in a reasonable time, but were wrong, although did get corrected quickly. After our food order was  finally taken, it took over an hour to get our food. The restaurant was almost full so I can understand the kitchen being backed up.  When the food was finally served, one person in our party did not get their dinner.  The person who brought the food walked away with no comment about the missing meal. After a few minutes when it still wasn't brought out, we flagged down our server and asked about the missing food.  Saying she would check on it, she then disappeared for another 15 minutes only to come back and say "did they make this right?" and we still hadn't received the other meal nor had anyone else come to check on us during that time. They didn't even apologize for the fact the meal hadn't been served! The person in our group who still didn't have his food asked them to forget about making the meal and comp his drinks so he could go somewhere else to grab food since the rest of us had already nearly finished our meals by this point.  The server sent the manager over who said of course he would take the drinks and meal off the check.  After he left to get dinner elsewhere, the manager came back and said that he could not take the alcohol drinks off the check, so we ended up having to pay for those for the person who had already left due to not getting food and being told their drinks would be taken care of.  Altogether, we were in the restaurant for over 2.5 hours which forced us to change up the rest of our plans for the night.  To top it off they added a mandatory 20% gratuity charge to the check. I always leave at least a 20% tip, but I would say if given the choice I would have left a lower percentage in this case because there was a genuine lack of caring on part of the server. It is sad the service was so poor because the food itself...