Vermont Tap House — Restaurant in Rutland City

Let me say: the Server was fantastic! He was very friendly, he was a joy to talk to and was a great server. He earned the tips we left. Sadly, my food wasn't great. We had appetizers, they were good. I ordered a Calzone (I don't eat pasta sauce) Calzones-when made correctly, don't contain sauce inside, they are served with marina on the side. I was served a version of a soggy stromboli, I am not a foodie, but I know some stuff. My 'calzone' was soggy, had 'pasta sauce' IN IT, and the platter it was served on was WET with canned mushroom 'brine', I Know salty limp shrooms come from a can, fresh mushrooms don't have a SALTY taste, the liquid would have been clear and there wouldn't have been so much. Again, the food I ordered wasn't close to edible, and despite my friend insisting I simply eat the 'insides' I couldn't, canned mushrooms are GROSS compared to the fresh ingredients I was expecting from a 'pizza joint'. The garlic bread we had was sort of burned and my friends personal pizza crust was black and some they didn't eat because of the hardness of the blackened crust. I don't usually order dessert but I did. It was Fried Dough Bites, there was a lot, I offered some to my friend. I had leftovers from dessert. I can only say, don't eat food if it's not made the way it should be. I wasn't charged for the calzone, I hope the cook learns the difference between a calzone and stromboli, they should be stating they don't use fresh ingredients too, the Burlington location might, but clearly this location doesn't. Go because the staff is nice, but the table we were seated at was so wobbly the poor waiter had to put coasters under so that it wasn't so wobbly, my friend thought they were going to wear our drinks the first time the table moved, they started putting their foot on the table leg to hold it before asking for help. We could have been moved, but instead the coasters were employed to stop the wobble. The place looks nice, but it's a veneer, the staff Is Truly nice, although the cooks need a little more training, Stromboli has sauce, Calzones don't, either way, if the food comes out of the oven, it shouldn't be swimming in liquid...

Absolutely worst meal I have had out in a long time. Service was OK....it appeared the average age of everyone was 20 and no one cared. Waited to be seated by a host who could care less for 8 minutes place was not busy. Then she looked irritated that we wanted a table. When she tried seating us at a dirty table we asked for a booth so she sat us at the biggest one they had (although many more suitable ones available) begrudgingly. Said she had to keep sections in order as she walked away. Then the beer menu and menus came over. The beer menu was filthy all kinds of dried on food and drink stains. On it the first 3 beers I wanted were listed out on the menu. Then the next 2 I asked for I was informed were out as well but had yet to be scribbled out. So I asked what do you have and I was directed to the new nitro pushed beers which I had no interest in for 9 dollars a beer. Then we ordered a chicken parm sandwich which was burnt in most places and uncooked breading in others. It appeared as though they had previously breaded and fried a bunch of chicken at once and these got stuck together and then they microwaved it warm is my only guess as to how this could happen and still have severely burned areas of breading other parts of breading not cooked at all and still have it be so over cooked it was stringy...I wish I had had my phone with me at the time to take a picture it was gross. My Burger was OK although it tastes of burnt Italian dressing though....weird. The fries were Luke warm and looked as though they had been reheated twice and then sat out for an hour under a heat lamp before they found their way to us...they were chewy and old tasting I mean depressing...the kids took a half off of the chicken parm...that was nice I guess. We were just hungry and wanted a cold beer ours were warm.... something to eat on our limited dining dollar. Go some place else this was garbage the place needs some leadership...but it's clear that no one cares...

Also the dining room was depressing too.....I have seen operating rooms look more...

My wife and I recently ate at the restaurant while on vacation and the food was great(hence the 2 stars) but the service was awful!! The hostess put us in a booth on the far left side of the restaurant where it was very warm.  Our server did not come over to our table until 10 minutes later.  That was the first time we saw her. She did not introduce herself nor did she apologize. The restaurant was not that busy.  In fact, she only had one other table.  We next saw her when she brought out our appetizer and again when she brought our pizza.   She never came over to check on us after that!  I could not even get her attention to bring my wife a glass of water!! We eventually had to get the attention of another server to ask her to have our server bring us a box and our check.  I also asked to speak to the manager at that time but my request was totally ignored!  When our server did finally come over to our table with the box(no check) she acted like she had no idea what was going on and asked us if we wanted dessert!!!

On the way out, we spoke to the hostess, who, pretending that she did not know what was going on(I saw her speaking to both servers after I made the request to speak with a manager) asked us if anything was wrong. When we explained to her the humid conditions and the terrible service we received compared to the day before, she offered excuses instead of solutions!!!

For us, that was the icing on the cake. Although we will continue our annual trips to VT, we will not be eating at this restaurant...