Gar Woods Grill & Pier — Restaurant in Tahoe City

This is your official warning, go somewhere else. Anywhere else. From start to finish this restaurant failed us. I made this reservation for 7, weeks in advance for a special occasion which I also notated in the reservation notes where I requested water facing seating. They led us to the patio where we were sat at a round 6 top table where there weren’t even enough seats for all of us. We had to pull up another chair from a next door table just to sit down. Upon being seated we started looking around and noticing how dirty the glassware on our table was. (As in yellow glob on the outside of one of the glasses-dirty) We decided to take a look at our silverware after that. Many of which were also dirty. At that point, that was enough for me to be annoyed enough at the situation that I went back to the hostess to inquire about the seating a requested weeks in advance. Her attitude could use adjusting as she informed me that they make no guarantees as far as seating and said there’s nothing she could do. Which seemed a lot more like there’s nothing that she WOULD do, than could but I digress. I sat back at our lackluster location between the loud bar and the outside and was greeted by our waitress with an even bigger attitude than the hostesses at the front. We asked her prior to ordering if she could do separate checks to which she replied that she could “it’s just a lot of work”… are you not at work right now?.. I’m sorry? So she begrudgingly agreed to do her job and do that for us.. We proceeded with cocktails and dinner. Unfortunately for the price I can only say everything was very OKAY. Nothing to write home about, for some reason it didn’t come out hot either. We requested some boxes and finished up with dinner and decided to check out some desserts. She brought us 2 dessert menus and we ordered 3 desserts for the table. It took about 15-20 minutes for these pre-done desserts to come out and she gave us 2 spoons.. for 7 people and 3 desserts. Fortunately for us, none of us are germaphobes because we actually ended up SHARING SPOONS. At a 4 star restaurant, sharing spoons…. At this point we were in a bit of a hurry attempting to catch to sunset and requested our checks. When they were brought out to us they were each tossed in front of us. Wild. But it gets even worse. 6/7 of us paid with card but the one that paid in cash had $17 in change that was not returned. We actually had to hunt down our waitress to ask her to return what she unrightfully pocketed. She did so, again, with extreme attitude. What should have been a very special and memorable time was robbed from us and will now be memorable for totally...

Horrible experience with takeout at this restaurant. Called to place an order, hostess answered and put me on hold and waited about 20 minutes. Took my wife’s phone and called and they immediately answered and told me they do not do takeout orders over the phone (also said they are not busy at all and so order would not take long), meanwhile I was still on hold on got he other line so they clearly forgot about me. Not ideal but understand mistakes happen, so we drove down to do the order in person. Went to the bar and the girl took our order quickly which was great. No one mentioned anything however they did add a 20% tip to the order, not s huge deal as I normally do tip, but thought 20% is kind of high for takeout. Order did take quite of a bit of time, but again still not a huge deal. Finally get our order and saw the hostess on the way out. I mentioned to her that she left me on hold for 25 minutes and she started arguing how it was justified because they were so busy. Even though we were told it wasn’t that busy (which we also observed for ourself). She could have simply apologized for forgetting about us. We bring the food home, which is about 1 mile from the restaurant. All of the food was cold and incorrect. We got a chicken Caesar salad with dressing on the side. The salad had dressing all over it, and looked like it was pre made or something. The lettuce was all brown and wilted, with 3 very small strips of chicken in it. Not what you would expect for $30. Also ordered fried snapper tacos, what I got was some kind of grilled fish that was cold and awful tasting. Got an app of the ribs, and those were mostly fat. These 3 items cost us $100 and the food was not even edible. I understand takeout is not the same as in restaurant eating, but we had been hiking all day and just wanted to relax at home. Side note we did eat here the day before and the food and service was pretty good, albeit very expensive even for this area on the lake. I would definitely AVOID here...

The hostess was gracious enough to offer us a table in the patio with a Lakeview. Great view of Lake Tahoe and a decently positioned venue. Food was good, however, the service was horrendous at best.

Our server forgot our drinks' order and we had to remind him on two separate occasions (12min later). Apps took roughly 32min to hit the table. We asked for share plates which we never received. Come entrées, I relayed to my server that my ribeye was overcooked (I asked for a MR+, my steak was well done), he looked at me, walked away from the table and immediately came back with a water pitcher to refill my glass (not sure if this gesture was his way of recovering the situation?!). The missus also had to ask him for a napkin 3 different times.

Additionally, we noticed, midway through our experience (right before entrées), that all tables were receiving bread service except ours and the ones in our station. I had to "rhetorically" ask our server what those bread sticks were, hoping he understands that we never received ours, he seemed annoyed that we had to ask him.

Now, while we understand it was extremely busy and the servers had to bus & clean their own tables, for a venue to charge fine dining prices, this should not happen! Standards should definitely be higher than what we experienced. Massive failure when it comes to service.

I will not be dropping the server's name (I don't want anyone to get in trouble), but I'm hoping the leadership in this venue takes proper action to raise some standards. The restaurant has what it takes to succeed and ensure its guests are leaving...