The Tavern at Pine Barn Inn — Restaurant in Mechanicsville

This is not the review I was hoping to write. We have stayed at the Pine Barn Inn several times over the last 10 years or so. We like staying here when we attend the LLWS. The food had always been good when we stayed previously. We are taking our son back to PSU and decided to break up the trip by staying a night at the Inn. We arrived a little after 6, after checking in we went straight to the restaurant. A very nice hostess greeted us and sat us immediately. Our waiter came over a short time later and took our drink and dinner order. We started with the pretzel and mozzarella sticks. The pretzel was delicious with the mustard served with it. The mozzarella sticks tasted "institutional". My wife ordered a grilled chicken Caesar salad with a side of French Onion soup. The chicken tasted like it was boiled, the salad itself was fine. I had the salmon which was just okay. The sides were very bland. I also tried the French onion soup and it was not good. It was both bland and there was kind of an off putting taste to it. My son had a brisket sandwich and he too thought it was bland and not that good. This was not a cheap meal, we spent over $100 on the three of us not including tip. I did mention the issues with the food to our server as well as the manager. My wife barely touched her salad but there was no offer to remove it. I went into detail the issues we had with the meal, if I was the manager I would have made things right but that wasn't the impetus of me letting them know the issues. The staff is not the issue, the atmosphere is not the issue...The food just isn't good. My wife made the analogy of the food tasting like nursing...

I have visited here twice now, and unfortunately, both experiences were not great, mostly around the food. We were here recently with some friends and family, and I have just not been impressed with the food.

I ordered the Chocolate BBQ Ribs, which really caught my attention on the menu as it's unique and not something I've personally seen on a menu before. It came with parsnips and some sort of mashed potato on the side.

As soon as the ribs came out, I could tell it was going to be..interesting. it seemed like the ribs were prepared, and the BBQ sauce was thrown on there last second as it just looked like it was pasted onto them. They did not taste good, and it was probably the first time in my lifetime that I did not finish ribs as I love them. I had a few bites and was done. Do not recommend it. The other person at our table was in the same boat. The two sides that came with it were very similar, and the parsnips were chewy and almost inedible.

Service was ok and the drink I got was very good (Blueberry Lemonade Mule)! The atmosphere overall is alright too, not much to point out, really.

I hate to leave this review because I really want to like this place, but I will not...

It was my birthday and we called ahead to make a reservation at 7:30pm and weren't told they were closing at 8 over the phone or given any notice. After we ordered our food we got our drinks that tasted off and eventually got our salad order. The salad had wilting tomatoes in it but was otherwise fine. When we got our dinner my steak was sweet even though it was just a basic flank steak and our vegetables looked like it was just over boiled and tasted terrible. When I asked the waitress about the steak being sweet she avoided speaking to me for the rest of the day instead of even responding to the question. It was very strange for us to mistakenly come to a restaurant before closing but the fact that they accepted our reservation still without a heads up that they were closing so soon wasn't all our fault. So it feels like we received retaliation from the staff for it by the bad service and terrible food. I wish we never went to that restaurant knowing people would purposely alter your food because you came in late for a reservation that they booked. I wouldn't trust these people with my food of they are capable of...