Founding Farmers Reston Station — Restaurant in Reston

This place during the week sitting at the bar during happy hour is great. The bartenders are wonderful and go above and beyond to make your experience a great one. Suggestions on food, snacks, or drinks you can't go wrong at the bar. Sat at a table once and had a wonderful server and can't sadly remember her name, because I'd love to give her praise as well. Very attentive for all of her tables not just us. Knew the menu and recommendations for the specials and could pair almost any drink or wine with the food. We tried to sit at a booth a 2nd time and well the experience made us not want to return. The waiter kept disappearing, she'd take a drink order and come back 20 minutes later with a drink for another table then be gone again for 20 minutes. When the appetizers finally arrived an hour later she said nothing other than here you go and walked away never asking about a refill for drinks or water or to order dinner. Caught her walking by and said we would like to order more drinks and dinner please, which she looked perturbed about. She then walked back over to the bar where we realized she had been sneaking off to the bathroom that sits next to the bar. She came back to the table with a bottle of wine after her trip again to the bathroom and she had a white residue on her nostrils. To each their own. But the issue was with what we ordered for dinner. Everyone's dinner was wrong. Burgers that were supposed to be medium rare were very well done, and the same with steaks. I ordered a tuna steak that I could have used for sushi 🍣. It was supposed to be lightly grilled on both sides with lemon pepper and topped with garlic sauce. It never saw the grill or the garlic sauce. So we sent back 4 out of 6 plates. We never got a let me get this fixed right away nothing. She took the plates off to the kitchen and then back to the bathroom where she went. Never came back. After 45 minutes we had to ask the waitress who helped us on the prior visit to get our checks. She didn't remove the sent-back food, she just never showed back up. Spoke to the host who apologized and removed the dishes. The waitress showed up at that point and wanted to know what she did wrong. How she could make it better by saying how this isn't generally like her. So if you go sit at the bar. Or avoid the woman mid-30s to 40s with the tatts...

We made a reservation for 7:30 and while there were many visible tables in the main dining area we were seated in one of the booths in the bar area right near the front door. Service was slow to begin but it it was a weekend night. We ordered out drinks and appetizers together. We had the cornbread and house white bread with butter, mini tuna wontons and a chips and dips. All were great with the exception of not enough chips with the dips. Our server seemed to be busy and our table was never cleared of used dishes. Our entrees took around 30-40 minutes to arrive. We had the seared tuna steak which was perfectly cooked. The steak and fries was also perfect. One daughter asked for fries instead of the mashed potatoes with her salmon which the server said was ok for us to substitute but never came. I had the meatloaf which was absolutely terrible. A shiny, crusty glaze had formed on the mashed potatoes you could tell it had sat under the heat lamps a while. The meatloaf itself was dry tasting even smothered in white gravy and au jus. It's served with one slice of the piece of meatloaf cut (see pic) and my first bite of that was crunchy and had hard pieces in it. The mashed potatoes were old and salty. Our server never came back until we were all completely finished eating. Our drinks were long gone and the fries which never came out at all she didn't acknowledge either when she came to clear our table. She never asked over the meatloaf which was un-eaten and we ordered desserts and candy to go and finally refills on our drinks. The homemade candy is fantastic! French crunch and butta-finger are our favorites! While the food was overall good the experience was poor. I understand it was a busy weekend but we had made a reservation. For an over $300 check I would've expected some level of service other than dropping plates off, clearing them only when the next course arrived and at least asking if our food was ok or stopping by the table to ask if we would like refills on our drinks. We eat out at least once or twice month and I feel that the level of service you receive should match the prices paid for a nice meal. I wouldn't recommend this place on a weekend night, we have too many great restaurants in our area to have to settle for mediocre food with less than...

Came here for lunch with my girlfriends. We had reservation but I came in a little early. The front desk told me to sit at a round booth in the corner while waiting for my party but got kicked out by the waitress because someone was still sitting there. I told the waitress that I didn't know that and the front desk was the one that told me to sit there. So I got up and She went to the front desk, but she made it seem like I should have known that. Okay. Not a big deal.

So I waited around for the rest of my party and they got us seated in a few minutes which was cool. Our waiter, Ken, offered to bring us some water and asked if we wanted the brunch menu. We said we didn't want brunch as it was already pretty late and we didn't want to rush eating our food. So we asked if we could have the regular menu which he refused to give us until 2pm which is when lunch started on Sundays. Mind you this was at 1:55pm. It seemed like he wanted us to really do brunch. So we insisted that we wanted to order from the regular menu and wait 5 minutes. Weird because it seemed he really didn't want us to "look" at the menu until 2 pm.

So 2pm rolls around, we finally get to see the menu and give him our order. We got the 2 orders of spicy shrimp pasta, a kid's pasta and two orders of fried chicken. We also ordered the spinach and artichoke dip for appetizers. The food was really good. I wanted more bread because the pasta was a little strong for my taste so we ordered an extra loaf of bread (which he made sure to let us know was an extra $3). It came when our food was almost done but we ate it since we were getting charged extra for it! Then we ordered two vanilla lattes and donuts for dessert. The vanilla lattes we're too sweet- I wish they told us they were sweetened because it was too sweet with the donuts that we didn't even eat them. We also had to keep asking our waiter for things like water and olive oil for the bread. Maybe it was getting towards the end of his shift so he wasn't quite there for us. But of this was the case, they shouldn't have seated us in his section.

Overall, good food but the service could've been better all around. Maybe it's better on days other than Sunday. 4 stars for food, two stars for service- 3...