Lake Effect — Restaurant in Salt Lake City

This review is regarding my experience with setting up an event. I have been planning an out of state work event per my Chief for March 26th. To my understanding, this restaurant only has one designated manager for Events. I sent an email inquiry on January 17th and received a response two days later (more than reasonable). We were very interested in the space aesthetic, menu, and proximity it was to the convention center. Unfortunately, there is a little bit of a process as we have to go through our Accounting and Legal departments. The approval took longer than expected. Never the less, I tried to keep the Events manager informed as much as I could with any updates I had. Unbeknownst to me, our Director of Finance had gotten the approval mid-February and had been attempting to contact the restaurant numerous times as well as the Events manager. She was unsuccessful as no one answers the phone (which has also been the case for myself on multiple occasions despite calling within the earlier part of their business hours). Two weeks from our event, I made multiple attempts to contact her. I also figured that if there was another party that had been booked, she would have at least responded and let us know that there was no longer any availability, which would be understandable. This was not the case. She did not respond to any of the emails we had been sending up to Thursday 3/21 which left us in a tough spot as the event was only a few days away. We had to scramble to find another place to accommodate our party of 25-30 attendees. The Events manager eventually responded over the weekend on Saturday 3/23 simply stating that they had limited availability for our date and that she just had another event cancel. Thankfully, we had been able to secure another location and got the contracts in place on Friday. If we had continued to wait until the Events manager decided to reply, there would not have been an event. I just want to say that this was a very poor and unprofessional experience, especially when trying to coordinate everything from out of state on the East Coast. I understand that she is only one person (as am I in my role) however, it should not take multiple emails and calls over the span of two weeks to get a hold of someone to get a reply. If the manager is out of the office or unavailable, then people should be notified about this as well or at least have another person covering (assuming this could be the case as well). This truly put us in a difficult position in the very few days leading up to our mixer because this person failed to simply give us the common courtesy of letting us know ahead of time that there was no longer any availability. We would have had more time to look into other options. This was completely unacceptable. The disappointing part is that this venue along with its menu look amazing! It's this experience that has made it not so pleasant and speaks volumes to how things are coordinated here. You will waste your time in pure frustration just trying to get a hold of anyone. The events portion really needs improvement. Unfortunately, I do not and will not be recommending this place for any future events whenever our executive staff travels to Salt Lake City. I am not confident that the encounter would...

If I could post with zero stars, I would. They don't deserve the one star I had to post. We had been wanting to go here for awhile and when a friend recommended it, we went on Saturday afternoon. We arrived at around 3:45 pm, sat down and waited for someone to wait on us. We were brought two glasses of warm water in dirty glasses and was told that our server would be by soon. There were at least 5 employees standing at the end of the bar, talking and on their phones. After waiting for at least 10 minutes, I went over to the bar and asked if someone could take our drink order and a young guy with dark curly hair and glasses said, yeah, no worries, I'll be with you soon. He told this to me while he was on his phone and not even looking at me. After at least 5 minutes longer, he came over to take our drink and food order, his name was Dewar. I ordered two drinks and asked for a food menu. He proceeded to tell us that dinner wouldn't be served until 5 pm. Are you kidding me? They serve brunch, everyday until 4 pm, he/they purposely waited to take our order until after 4 pm so that we couldn't order food. The time on our receipt for the order was put in at 4:04 pm! I asked if they had any appetizers or something (we had come there after a show at Eccles and was expecting to eat there), he said that we could order chips and salsa, fries or nachos. We ordered the chips and salsa and fries. Our drink order finally came up and sat on the end of the bar for over 5 minutes while he was at the other end of the bar, on his phone, talking with employees. He finally brought our drinks and chips. He never checked on us, we finished our drinks and was still waiting for the fries. After sitting there for another 10 minutes, we asked him for our check so we could leave. We never got our fries, he told us it was because they were getting prepped for dinner and the fries were taking a while. Unbelievable. Horrible customer service, horrible atmosphere, employees standing around on their phones, talking and not taking care of customers. What a waste of time and money. Oh, and the bill? It came to $53 for two small drinks, chips and salsa with guacamole! What a scam. Don't spend your money or time here..ever. There are many more bars, pubs, you can go to that will respect their customers and treat their customers with respect...

I didn't get a picture of the beignets that I ordered and shared with my friends at brunch, but they were fantastic! The texture and preparation of the beignets was awesome and the lemon curd to flavor/garnish the beignets was "popping!"

One order of the beignets was appropriate for four friends to share. Each of us got three beignets, which was really appropriate considering the entrées we had coming.

Pictured here in my review is a Bananas Tossed Her brunch cocktail which does have an egg in it. It is a really sweet drink, but tastes fantastic! It really is almost like a bananas foster out of New Orleans, but in liquid form. The egg in the drink provides a nice frothy topping which is the white layer you see on top in the picture.

I ordered the biscuits and gravy entrée which is also pictured here. The jalapeño cheddar biscuits are fantastic! The gravy has a strong curry flavor to it, so it tasted a bit more Indian than southeastern United States. The gravy was delicious if you appreciate curry flavors, but it can be a bit of an acquired taste and not what someone who grew up in the south might expect to be served on top of the biscuits.

A couple of my friends got the shrimp and grits. In hindsight, I probably would have preferred that entrée for brunch. The shrimp and grits are amazing! The kitchen provides plenty of large shrimp in the dish and grits are done super well! The grits were almost more like a polenta to me, but they were prepared amazingly well! The shrimp and grits also is spiced very, very nicely. The dish is super flavorful and has just a hint of a spicy heat to it, which is fantastic for someone like me.

The ambience of the restaurant is gorgeous and offers a selection of different seating depending on the size of your group and your preferences. The selection of liquors at the bar to make drinks is just incredible and the bartender was really good at making everything: the cocktails, bloody marys, and margaritas.

It's not the most expensive restaurant and bar to visit, but it's not a cheap one, either. Expect a good meal here with appetizers and drinks to reasonably cost around $30 to $45 per person. The service was also fantastic for our visit for a Saturday brunch. The server was very attentive and accurate in all...