Trails End Taphouse & Restaurant — Restaurant in Snohomish

I'm confused why this place is so highly rated. Came here with my husband and daughter. Waited 25 minutes to be seated because they were busy, I'm fine with that, and this is not why I've reviewed it at 2 stars. We spent $90 plus tip and received:

Loaded Chips- Just terrible. extremely greasy, not enough cheese, bland, and chips were paper thin.

2 ribeye steaks with zucchini and mashed potatoes with pork sauce on top as recommended by our waitress because we couldn't decide between the ribeye and pork chop. The cut of The ribeye was not quality at all. No fat marbled through. Instead, there were just large chunks of fat in random places on three ribeye. The ribeye was so salty we both couldn't eat it. We took off the pork sauce and placed it on our mashed potatoes, which didn't have near enough salt and tasted bland. It wasn't the sauce that was too salty, though, unfortunately, it was the steak. There was nothing we could do to make it less salty. It was just terrible, especially for the price of $21 for a ribeye + $5 for the pork sauce.

Zucchini was great. We mostly liked the mashed potatoes once we added the pork sauce to them. Clam chowder side - left so much to be desired, this embarrasses the PNW Side salad with ranch- came with cranberries but wasn't listed on the menu, and I hate any kind of fruit on my salad. Also, some of the leaves were soggy.

Kids cheese pizza- I didn't try this, but it looked delicious, and our daughter didn't complain. The size of the pizza was large and exceeded my expectations for a kids' menu item. I'd guess it's a 12" or 14" pizza.

Our waitress was very nice, only reason for the 2 stars, but she checked on us once to only ask if we wanted dessert. Never asked us, not once, how our food was.

My husband and I were both extremely disappointed. Will never be back and not...

The food is great, as always BUT I was saddened to see the bill arrive with a tacky 5% service charge for the kitchen staff!!!

First of all, the kitchen staff SHOULD be properly paid a wage/salary that is at least minimum wage. Chefs usually get paid very well. Wait staff usually only get paid a couple dollars an hour, they depend on tips to feed their families and pay bills. When wait staff tip out at the end of the night it SHOULD be voluntarily!!! Besides the kitchen help, wait staff also tip bartenders (who are also tipped employees) this is in ADDITION to the 5% that your guests will have automatically paid from the wait staff's DEDUCTED tip they would have given, after seeing this hideous charge on their bill. The wait staff us getting a double whammy and maybe even a THIRD whammy when you irritate guests so much from seeing the auto charge that they refuse to tip a penny more. This seems like a really tacky practice you have going on and my heart goes out to your wait staff but it isn't fair to expect ME to tip more than I normally would, to make up for YOU taking away their livelihood!

You are better than this - or so I thought! PLEASE remove this insulting automatic charge, unless you instead increase it to 20% and give at least 15% to the wait staff. I was a waitress back in the day and if my boss did this to me, I would look for work elsewhere. If your staff is staying, they must love you, but you can bet that the wait staff loves you a...

The good, the decent, and the surprise.

First off, our server was great for the most part and very knowledgeable. Our table was dodging some food restrictions and she was very accommodating.

Our food was decent but lacked a few things to make it great. I had the Reuben Sandwich which was priced a bit high given the lack of meat in the sandwich but had good flavor. Trying to avoid dairy, I tried for the potato salad but unfortunately that wasn't an option, our server came back to offer to sub out for the brussel sprouts or potato chips so I elected for the crispy brussel sprouts. They were a big portion and had tasted great. My wife had the salmon cakes which looked great but wasn't anything to remember. For drinks I think the beer selection was balanced for the summer season.

Now for the main reason why this moved to 4 stars and almost 3 stars. Our bill came with a fairly decent surprise upcharge on my side of brussel sprouts ($6) which I wasn't told about and brought the sandwich and side up to $23. This part was difficult because I like our server but I think this is a heavy oversight to not explain, especially after she was nice enough to inform me about a tasting fee on a nicer beer.

Would I go back, probably not. This isn't a bad place to eat, but there wasn't anything in particular that gives me the desire or need to return. Kind of a...