Lakehouse Grille — Restaurant in Meredith

What a disappointing experience tonight at the Lakehouse Restaurant

We got married at Mill Falls Resort Collection at the Lake in 2020, and ever since, we've made it a tradition to vacation in the area and enjoy a special dinner at the Lakehouse each year. While we don’t stay at Church Landing anymore—your room rates have become unrealistically high—we’ve always looked forward to dining at the Lakehouse as part of our trip.

Tonight, we arrived at 5:01 PM to find an empty dining room—truly not a single person in sight. When we asked about sitting in the main dining area, specifically the “200 section” (which we’re very familiar with since we had our rehearsal dinner there), the hostess told us there were reservations. She checked with the manager, Jen, who declined our request “just in case” a larger party came in. Instead, we were placed in the lounge.

When we left at 6:25 PM, the main dining room still had plenty of empty tables—many of the exact ones we had inquired about. It was incredibly frustrating and disappointing to feel turned away from a space we have sentimental ties to, despite there clearly being room.

The only saving grace of the evening was our server, Jaden C., who was absolutely fantastic. Her service and attitude were excellent, and without her, the entire night would have been a loss.

Unfortunately, the food didn’t help the situation. My husband ordered his filet medium, and it arrived quite rare. When we sent it back, it returned with the blue cheese topping completely burnt. At that point, we were just over it.

I understand the need for reservations, but when there are clearly available tables, and walk-in guests arrive first, there should be more flexibility—especially when those same lounge tables seat 4–6 guests anyway. We still took up just as much space.

It’s upsetting to see how this place has changed. After years of loyalty and special memories here, I think it’s time we find somewhere else to start a...

We ate here for lunch on 4th of July and the best part of our experience was how friendly and accommodating the hostess was on the phone when we called the night before and the morning of the 4th. Otherwise it was disappointing. The view is lovely, however it looks over a parking area so you have to focus farther out onto the water unless you want to see cars. The bathroom facilities are spectacular though, and are in a common area within the building.

The disappointing aspects were as follows. We had a VERY used glass on our table that somehow never made it into the dishwasher, but instead got used for our place setting that was already on the table when we were seated. That was incredibly disgusting but could have been quickly rectified except the server grabbed it with her entire hand covering around the glass, then brought us a new glass with her entire hand covering around that glass - and later handed us each drinks and straws - from that same hand! Then shockingly that hand's thumb was prominently placed on top of each plate as she set them down on our table. The vege burger had a distinct taste of lingering seafood so the kitchen's flat-top that wasn't cleaned after grilling seafood before grilling the vege burger. A Google reviewer said he/she got very ill after eating here so only nibbled at the vege burger, afraid of what it'd picked-up on the dirty grill. My queasiness didn't develop into anything luckily, and may mostly have been caused by watching our server mishandle stuff.

If a server must pick-up a dirty glass and replace it with a clean one, please advise the use a clean napkin to pick-up the dirty glass and take it away! Cross-contamination is food handling...

Very disappointing. Made a 5:30 reservation for a party of 7 to come here with my family that included 3 children under the age of 5. By the time we sat down and ordered food it was 5:45. We ordered the kids food, an appetizer and a bottle of white wine first and we ordered our entrees within 10 minutes of ordering the appetizers.

The bottle of white wine was brought to the table to try and it was served room temperature. They brought out an ice bucket to put by the table to help chill the wine but didn’t have enough ice in the bucket to do a proper job. About 30 minutes later we ordered a second bottle of white wine which was also brought to the table warm after asking to make sure it was chilled and being told all the wines come from their “cooler”.

The appetizers came in a timely manor and were good, no issues there. However, we then waited an hour from the time we ordered until the kids food finally arrived. Then after waiting 20 minutes more and being offered dinner rolls (for the first time) we finally asked to speak with a manager. After waiting another 10 minutes for the manger to come to our table and explaining to him our frustration with the overall experience he was flippant and could not give us an answer as to why our food still had not been delivered, other than saying they were busy. Meanwhile, there were multiple tables around us that had been seated after us and had already finished their meal!

We ended up leaving before our entrees were ever delivered to our table, almost 2 hours after we arrived. I...