The Set — Restaurant in Santa Barbara

The Set restaurant, the only hotel restaurant open for dinner, is ridiculously situated away from the kitchen, so that all of the food has to be carried by hand through the entire lobby, past people waiting to be seated. Only a portion of the plates are covered, making it susceptible to the germs of the people and animals moving throughout the area. We eat at Set two nights and both times the wait was inexcusable: 40 minutes, and then 130 minutes. The first night, the delay was blamed on the servers: three servers attending nine tables (30+ open tables.) The second night, the delay was blamed on the kitchen: 35 people seated, 70+ open seats. The host made a point to come to the table to lay blame on the kitchen and everyone else (sans apology) - except he was the one that told us originally 40 minutes, which turned into 2+ hours. At least 25% of the small menu was unavailable, so we ended up waiting for something that we didn't...

What an amazing place wit great people! My wife and I cancelled our reservation for Convivo at the Santa Barbara Inn due to an issue with the previous evenings dinner on Christmas Eve. We stopped in to the Hilton and asked the hostess at the Hilton if she had any tables for dinner and she was so kind and gracious and stated yes, no problem. She took us to a table and my wife asked for the Hightower booth and she graciously accommodated the request. She was so nice and graceful..thanks so much. We had a wonderful server who brought us some great cocktails. We ordered the specials on the Christmas menu and I had the pumpkin ravioli and my wife had the organic chicken dish. Both were awesome. I commend and thank the staff and management for a job well done and we had a great time. Highly...

Understaffed: Our hostess was our server. We had to wait forever to be seated bc she was waiting on tables.

Food/Drink: Very basic and lacked flavor.

Service: Horrible. 1) Booked a Fire Pit experience via Open Table (confirmed) but it was not reflected in their system. 2) Was told they were ‘out’ of Rose by the glass and could only order a bottle. When questioned they had 1 glass worth. 3) They were out of milk chocolate for the s’mores desert and gave us Hersheys cookies and cream instead. 4) Glass of water had lipstick stains! 5) Glasses and trash from prior patrons were left on the ledge where we were sitting.

Overall: Do NOT come here unless you want to drink bottled water and...