Olde Forge Restaurant — Restaurant in Lanesborough

We have been here a few times, and have gotten 5 star service and food from a seasoned waitress. We got wings (pricy, but satisfying) and French onion, and a few beers from a phenomenal selection. We thought this would be a great stopping point yesterday, given our prior experiences. We were wowed in the opposite direction. It took about 7-10 minutes for a server to get to the table, this gave us time to figure out our order, and we always have snacks prepared for our toddler, but we were still hungry and thirsty and found it an inappropriate wait time. Due to covid and distancing, restaurants have less guests allowed, one would think that this would allow for proper staffing and timing. I am glad that teenagers have serving jobs, I really am. It gives them responsibility and awareness, but they also need training before being on the floor. Servers and bussers need to know timing, and how to reach across the table, and to actually check back on the table to further serve. A manager and owner should also be aware of these things and teach his staff. No one checked back after our food was dropped off. This was lousy because I think they are using the salt on their pavement instead of putting any in their food - seriously, a bland burger and au jus with nothing no flavor. If your restaurant is busy and servers cannot handle x amount of customers, go on a wait and call people in their cars; take reservations and stick to them; turn people away; train staff to a certain degree of competency before making them the face of your business. You should want the best for your restaurant, not substandard service, and food. I had to go get a busser to get a to-go box, and a soufflé lid (he didn't know what that was) although we did end up throwing the leftovers away. I also had to get up and ask for a check and grab someone to run the card, after expressing an urgency to leave. It was not an experience I would recommend, and I cannot think of excuses on the restaurant's behalf as I have served and managed restaurants for over fifteen years. We ended up getting Chinese takeout after this, and wish we had done so...

We had the worst possible service and the sad part is, is wasn't Our Waitress that was the biggest problem! The Manager Stephanie B. was by far the poorest excuse of representation this Restaurant could hope for!

The food was mediocre at best! The Salad Bar was unbelievably lacking vegetables! However, when asked if the Salad Bar was stocked with all of the basics, Our Waitress instantly replied, that it has a little bit of everything/many options!

When I was told that they were restocking it as I went to the Bar, the only thing they were actually restocking was the Salad Dressings. On top of this, one of the wait staff bumped my arm and caused me to dump way to much Dressing on my plate of what little bit of Salad that I could choose from.

I tried to eat a couple bites, but it was just too saturated with Dressing to even Stomach, no matter how much Dressing I tried to shake off of the bites!

I explained this issue to my waitress and was told they could take it off of our bill, but Ms. Personality (Stephanie) came out to obnoxiously and very loudly verify what the issue was. To only accuse the Waitress of having told her that I had already eaten 3/4 of the Salad, when I brought the issue to the Waitresses attention. Since I had eaten (at most) 3 small bites, Not Surprisingly Our Waitress vehemently denied having said this.

On top of all of this, our waitress sat my Meal/Soup in front of me, then placed our Appetizer in the center of the table, to then immediately place my husbands dinner in front of him. The last time I checked an Appetizer is supposed to precede your actual Dinners!

When the waitress brought our bill to the table, I asked for the Managers Name, so she had to then leave to go and get her permission to give her name to me. Stephanie then re-joined our waitress, (as she was writing Stephanie's name on our bill) and very Loudly again reiterated that they took the Salad off, but that was not their normal policy!

Several other diners were flabbergasted at her behavior as she just continued to speak very rudely and loudly while looking around the Dinning room area, hoping to embarrass My...

Very compelling experience at this restaurant and this review will be a tale of one of the best dining experiences I've ever had and yet one of the poorer.

The place was expectedly packed on a big ski weekend Saturday night, so when I showed up with my family, I was not surprised that there would be a wait. However, the "system" put in place to maintain some type of order for those people waiting was almost non-existent. There was no hostess to be found, and in her stead a rude and incomprehensible older man barking angrily at everyone and adding to the general confusion. I understood soon that he was the manager and found that he was so incredibly rude to everyone, including his own staff, that I very nearly walked out in disgust before we even sat down.

Having taken our seats, I was delighted to find out that our server was incredibly nice, helpful, and attentive. I have nothing but positive things to say about everyone who works there except for the ponytailed boomer fool that was managing the place that night.

The food was excellent. I ordered two types of wings (a very hot type and a smoky mango or maybe it was pineapple type) and my right hand to god they were the best wings I've ever eaten in my entire life. Bar none. Succulent, spicy, crisp, big. I sucked the bones of these wings and wish I'd ordered even more. I've been in wings afterglow ever since and this was several days ago. I saw the wings touted as being award winning and they definitely deserve all the awards.

I cannot in good conscience give this restaurant the 5-star review it would so richly deserve were it based only on the wait staff and the food. It is either a great tragedy or it is entirely fitting that in order to partake of such heavenly wings, it was necessary to cross paths with an ogre. Decide for...