Adam’s Mountain Cafe — Restaurant in Manitou Springs

This is the second time I’m posting because clearly they just delete their negative reviews... I will just keep posting. Reading reviews for Adams Mountain Café, there are a lot of complaints about bad service and them being understaffed. However, my husband and I decided to treat ourselves to their great looking menu for our Anniversary Dinner. Our plan was to enjoy some good food and a bottle of wine, ending the night with a sweet dessert. Maybe we should have listened to the reviewers, and found another restaurant to celebrate, but we didn’t and now we know never to return. Here is what happened and why we urge anyone reading this to pick somewhere else for dinner. We made our reservation online, noting the special event to be our “anniversary dinner”. We arrived and ordered a bottle of wine and an appetizer. This is where it began, our order took ages to get to us, but our waiter comped the appetizer and apologized, so everything seemed fine, we understood and were appreciative. Then our dinner came out, we were pretty hungry, so we dug right in. To our horror, my husband’s chicken dish was completely raw, but he had already eaten some of it. As we sit there examining the chicken and trying to get someone’s attention, I snapped a picture. No one came to the table to check how we were doing or ask how our food taste or see if we needed anything else. I finally flagged down our waiter and he asked if we wanted a new one. By that time, we had completely lost our appetite and did not want to wait again for our food. My husband was already starting to feel queasy, so we declined. The waiter didn’t follow up with another solution or apology, just handed us the check. We reluctantly paid for our bottle of wine and my entrée and rushed out to get my husband home. Some may say we should’ve talked to a manager immediately, but at this time we were more worried about possible food poisoning. So the following day, my husband home sick, I went back to Adams Mountain Café to speak with the manager. I explained what ruined what was supposed to be a simple romantic anniversary dinner and very politely asked them to comp the rest of our bill. The manager I spoke to, Audrey, explained that since we drank the wine and ate the other food, there was nothing more they could do. She explained that she would reach out to the owner, Farley, and see if she would make an exception. She took down my name and number to give to the owner. Two days went by with no phone call from the owner. Finally, the manager that I originally spoke to called me back and explained that they would not comp the bill because we “seemed satisfied” when we left, I was astonished. We made it clear we were not satisfied when we left, to the point that I was almost in tears when leaving. But apparently the owner was there when we were served the raw chicken and felt we left “satisfied”. Which we had no idea of, since she never came over to apologize or introduce herself. The point is, Adams Mountain Café has poor service, serious food safety issues, and extremely poor management. If I could give it less than 1 star I would, because now my husband is suffering from symptoms of a food borne illness and Adams Mountain Café...

I wanted to treat my friend Kimmie for her birthday and this is what she chose. I hadn’t eaten at Adams Mountain Café in years, and based on the name, I was expecting rustic, hearty Colorado fare — maybe even a little wild game. Imagine my surprise when I realized it’s essentially a vegetarian/vegan restaurant. Nothing about the signage or branding hints at that, which felt misleading, especially for someone like me whose diet is meat-based.

Service started off fine. Our waitress brought water (oddly, without ice) and took our drink orders. When I asked what “Sherry cream” was, her initial answer was simply, “a cream sauce.” After I pressed whether it was made with real Sherry or just a name, she laughed and clarified that it does include the alcohol — which feels like an important detail to just gloss over. We asked for a few more minutes with the menu. Kimmie ordered a green juice that she said tasted great, though it had a serious ginger kick.

At least 10 minutes passed before our server returned, which felt excessive considering the menu offers maybe 15 items. Menu flexibility was another issue. I tried to order something simple — a pancake with bacon, eggs, and potatoes — only to be told you can’t order sides like a single pancake or even one egg. Eventually the only thing that sounded satisfying was the vegetarian lasagna. Kimmie, who is vegan, ironically struggled to find anything appealing. She considered the French toast but $18 for just two slices seemed outrageous, so she went with a quinoa bowl and swapped tofu for chickpeas.

When the food arrived, the portions were surprisingly small given the prices. The accompanying harvest roll was hard and served room temperature with butter smeared on top. I set it aside — I don’t eat hard rolls. Kimmie immediately commented that her bowl looked “skimpy.” Honestly, I couldn’t even find the quinoa under all the chickpeas and raw spinach.

That said, my lasagna tasted good (heavy on the herbs, but nice overall), and Kimmie said her bowl, while lacking substance, was also flavorful. Still, she wasn’t close to full and ordered a side of potato cakes, which took another 20 minutes to arrive… but ended up being the highlight of the meal.

All in all, Adams Mountain Café isn’t somewhere I’d return. If you’re vegetarian or vegan, it might be a great fit — but maybe change the name of the restaurant to reflect its fare. And for the love of God, if there’s no meat, why are the...

I so badly want to like this place. It used to be one of my favorites but the last two times I’ve gone the service was horrible to nonexistent. The most recent, my mother was visiting me in Denver, from out of state, and after a day at Garden of the Gods, this was to be the cherry on top. Walking in a few minutes after opening for dinner service, we were seated in a virtually empty dining room. After waiting for close to 20 minutes to be acknowledged by our server, we were asked what we wanted. Knowing we were on a bit of a time crunch and having waited so long to even place our order, we both decided on salads. Sitting patiently in the dining room, we watched the other 4 tables in the room( 3, 2 tops and a 3 top) order and receive their appetizer, main and check. By this time we are thirty minutes into our ticket time for SALADS and almost an hour into our visit with still no food. At this point we have to leave to get to book club on time. I asked to pay for our iced teas so we could leave. The host informed our server who proceeded to shout across the restaurant that our salads were ready. Unwilling to be embarrassed in front of the restaurant or engage in a shouting match across the room, repeated my request to pay for our teas. Again, shouting across the dining room, our server offered to box our salads to go. Having no time to eat them before book club and knowing dressed salads don’t keep, this was not a viable option. Feeling hungry, embarrassed and beyond disappointed we left. Working in the restaurant industry I have a lot of grace for the employees, but this place has consistently bad to nonexistent service. I would not recommend patronizing unless you have a couple of hours to spend and have a low standard of service or you will be let down. I wish this was a fluke, but a similar situation happened during my previous visit, we waited over 30 minutes to order because they never assigned us a server. I chalked it up to a bad day, but this seems to be the norm. I wish I could comment on the food, as it has been wonderful in the past. With so many amazing places to eat in the area, don’t waste your time or money here. You deserve great service and your presence to be recognized and respected....