The East Side Restaurant & Pub — Restaurant in Newport City

A friend in NW Connecticut had mentioned frequent stops at the East Side Restaurant and Pub while visiting Vermont and recommended the food and experience. With family in tow on a trip to Vermont, I thought the East Side would be a nice diversion on a Monday afternoon. The atmosphere was nice with spectacular views to the north and Lake Memphramagog sporting white caps in the late summer breeze. Service was casual and relaxed -- almost to the point of poor service (either that or the waitress just was not listening/responding to our questions). With a wide range of meals on the table for five people, the food was average to moderately above average in taste, presentation, and quality. The poutine appetizer was slightly disappointing with limp fries instead of hand cut potatoes. The gravy seemed to be on the instant mix side and salty. The Mile High Meatloaf was nicely presented, but lacking in appeal once tasted. As a wing lover, I was excited to try my own dish of salt and vinegar wings. The meat was tender (maybe brined before frying) and juicy and I asked for the wings crispy. The skin had a nice crunch to it, and there was a hint of vinegar and salt, but not the burst of flavor I was hoping for. The celery and carrot that accompanied the wings was limp and rubbery...rather disappointing that so little attention had been paid to the garnish that are often an important aspect of wings. Across the table, a maple glazed salmon was the highlight of all dishes. It was prepared well, presently perfectly, and accompanied by colorful sides that added to the overall dish...definitely above average compared to the rest of the orders. A bowl of soup here and a chicken sandwich there, and our meals were complete around the table, but not anything to rave about. Understanding that the East Side is an open and closed-air dining space, the most aggravating part of our meal was swatting the flies throughout the dining experience. Sadly, it even became a game...

Me and my family were up in Vermont for the weekend and found this restaurant on google, so we decided to go and eat there, it was Friday and we stopped for lunch. The place is tucked in one corner along the lake, it had a good restaurant atmosphere and the wait staff were very friendly and helpful. The food was really good and a descent size for the price. Overall I would recommend the restaurant for the service experienced above. NOW: the reason I’m only giving 3 stars (and I might be wrong about it) is because of the following anecdote that happened to us the next day: Late Friday night my wife received a notification from our bank that her credit card was used to attempt to make online purchases, (we didn’t see the notifications that day because it was really late at night) Saturday morning she checked her account and found that there had been over $2000 of attempted transactions on her card (thankfully none of them had been approved) $800 in car parts, they tried to transfer money thru paypal, a bunch of attempts to use it to buy games in xbox live, and some minor ones that totaled almost $2000, most of the attempts where online and the only reason that made us doubt about someone at the restaurant is: 1- She only used her card at that place that day, every other purchase we did that day we paid cash. 2-I thought it was kinda weird that the waitress took such a long time to bring the card back, even though she was only waiting on 3 tables. 3- there were several attempts to order from a Pizza Hut restaurant in Vermont. (We’re not from Vermont and didn’t stop at any Pizza Hut, so it wasn’t us) Again, I might be wrong about my feelings, but I felt I should express my concerns, I like the service we received from them, I just can’t trust going back there after what happened to...

Our first trip to Newport and purposely came for this restaurant. We’d been wanting to see the views from here and they didn’t let us down. We arrived a little past noon on a beautiful breezy day and got a table outside near the pier, with about 1 min wait just waiting for the hostess to come back from seating another table. Our food was really good, the triple decker roast beef, so happy it was the perfect color, I was concerned it would be grey but it was juicy and red. The crunchy chicken salad was perfect, they could use a larger bowl, it’s was hard to cut into it without spilling over the side but didn’t change the taste 😃 the artichoke dip with nachos was good too, the nachos had a seasoning on them they weren’t plain nachos. I didn’t enjoy my margarita, it was very weak and tasted like mix, I’ll stick with a soda or a G&T if we come back. Our server wasn’t ideal. It was a very long wait after we sat which helped us know exactly what we wanted but another table was seated after us and they had their food first, and they were a party of 4 (we were 2), before we finally got our bill the same table (3 different x) was already having their drink order placed. Maybe management should add more servers or maybe they are short staffed or she just isn’t aware she forgets about one of her tables. This is why my service star is low otherwise the rest of our experience was good. Odd though, we had to take our bill yo the cashier in the way out, which from the deck is a walk plus the you have to wait for the cashier to Finnish taking names for tables, really odd. Maybe management should get those table tablets to cash out, smaller restaurants invest in those. We’d go back though if in this area again, the price was $70, with an app and 1 adult beverage, very reasonable with a...