Seventh State Restaurant and Lounge — Restaurant in Maryland

Poor Service. Don't Eat Here: My wife and I visited the restaurant on 5/1/24 around 7:15pm. She had just completed a 4 hour trip from NYC and I picked her up from the Vamoose bus stop. She was starved, and we decided to try Seventh State around the corner. The restaurant was 80-90% empty. Just a few tables of two, four, one table of 8 being seated as we were, and a table of 12 leaving. My wife ordered the brick chicken and a glass of wine. I ordered the rockfish and tap water. The restaurant was slow, but It seemed to take 60 minutes to receive our entrees. Maybe longer. Now, I didn't actually time it, but everyone who came after us had received their food. My wife was famished. Our waiter, who disappeared for awhile, finally showed up and noticed we were still waiting, gave a look of panic, said to another server, "They don't have their food yet!!??" and rushed quickly around the corner. 10 minutes later, we received our food. My rockfish was good. No complaints. It was super hot like it was just made. Unfortunately, my wife's brick chicken tasted, well, like a brick. It was barely warm, overcooked and super dry. Inedible. IMHO, the kitchen screwed up, the chicken was made first, and sat under a heat lamp for an hour. My rockfish was forgotten, and made after our server said something to the kitchen. Our server got the manager when my wife complained about the inedible chicken. The manager seemed nice, professional and empathetic. She apologized about the chicken, and gave the unbelievable excuse that the kitchen was handling a large party. And, that's why we had to wait so long. Uh no. A well run kitchen serving less than 20 should be able to integrate large and small parties/orders smoothly. I actually didn't see a large party. The manager offered to take away the chicken and "replace" it with another entrée. "How about the rockfish?" My wife accepted. "Can I 'offer' you another glass of wine?" My wife said yes. After 20 minutes, she received the rockfish. The forgotten wine came after the rockfish, only when my wife asked for it. While my wife was eating her long delayed dinner, the server offered me a dessert. I happily accepted and ordered the cake. After our meal, we received the check. It came to $105 for us two. Frankly I was shocked. Based on my past experiences, when the restaurant, kitchen or staff screw up, there is usually some conciliatory gesture made by the manager. Typically, it's reflective of the level of screw up. Let's summarize, ad nauseam. Our food took one hour to deliver, my wife's entrée was inedible, the manager made it sound like she was offering my wife an entrée and wine on the house to make up, she had even suggested a more expensive entrée, the two wines took forever to be brought over, we spent over 3 times the amount of time we should have to eat what was supposed to have been a one course meal. I was truly surprised and dismayed to have to be paying for my wife's rockfish and second wine. At the end, we received a comped dessert and I gave my server what I now think is a much too...

I had the most baffling experience tonight. We came to seventh state on a nice evening when they had the wall removed so it was open air. Great vibe. We ordered a flatbread which was acceptable, but largely on par with what you can get at &Pizza for a lot less.

Then it came time to pay the bill. It was clear there was an issue and our waitress, who was very nice throughout, told us they were trying to reboot the register.

Nobody sitting at the bar had brought cash and I started to notice everyone is waiting for them to figure out the register. I’ve never seen such a lack of basic customer service inside of a hospitality conglomerate. Managers running around on their phones all huddling around the machine trying to fix things. Holding onto customer credit cards until they fix it.

At one point a manager came over and got really snippy with me when I told her how long we had been waiting and we needed to leave to go to sleep. She just said, “just wait a few minutes.” I had given many minutes at that point.

I hinted earlier that maybe it was time for our tabs to be “on the house” so that we could go home. No such luck, they would continue rebooting the cash register. So finally after almost an hour waiting to pay, I walked a few blocks to find an ATM, left a $20 and walked out.

It was the most ridiculous experience I’ve ever had in Bethesda. I understand Marriott just opened and you have your kinks to work out. But to burden me and other customers with the technical malfunctions of your brand new multimillion dollar hotel shows a complete lack of basic customer service and hospitality. Any sensible establishment would have comped the meal so we didn’t spend more time paying that we actually did eating and apologized. I can tell you I wouldn’t have left feeling compelled to write a review of just how bad a taste Seventh State management left...

This is your upscale Marriott hotel lobby restaurant, situated on the ground floor, beautiful ambiance. We had dinner reservations for 3 on Sunday night, but wasn’t necessary since there were plenty of seating available. The bar had far more guests than the actual restaurant—since it’s in the hotel lobby, people are coming in and out right by you—you don’t have much privacy.

Food overall was mediocre—no “wow” factor. The menu is limited, nothing too extensive.  For starters, we ordered the Crispy Chicken Thighs, Crab & Corn Fritter, and Crispy Brussels Sprouts. The Crispy Chicken itself was actually decent but got mixed with the hot honey (too sweet) which threw off the taste for me. The Maryland Crab Soup barely had any crab meat and tasted like a typical Campbell’s canned soup. For entrees, we shared the Ribeye and Local Catch which was Rockfish.  The fish was fresh and the veggies were sauteed well, but nothing special.  The Ribeye came out well done when we asked for medium—it looked dry coming to our table, as if it had been sitting under the heat lamp for an extended period of time.  Thankfully, our server quickly brought the steak back and had a new one prepared, this time to our liking—the bourbon steak butter added good flavoring.  The steak was tender, but seemed to be cut thinner than a ribeye at other venues.

Cocktails were meh—the Venetian Bayside was a bit sour for my liking and the Mojito was awful, tasted like straight up lime juice with no sugar. Aside from the food, service was however excellent! Our server Griffin was AMAZING—very friendly, positive energy and overall attentive—he was the best part of our whole dining experience.

I personally think there are better options in the...