The Butcher & The Baker — Restaurant in Telluride

If you’re thinking of ordering a wedding cake from The Butcher and The Baker, let me save you the trouble: don’t.

The bride-to-be had given clear, detailed instructions for a vanilla semi-naked cake — a simple request for any competent baker. What we got instead looked like something slapped together by someone who had never seen a wedding cake in their life, much less knew what a “semi-naked” finish even meant.

When I arrived for pickup, the cake was covered with frosting on the sides — completely defeating the whole point of a semi-naked style — and was completely bare on top. It looked unfinished and lazy. As for the berries? Some bizarre, half-hearted pattern of raspberries and blueberries in uneven groupings. They apparently gave up halfway through and just tossed some in clumps.

When I asked the woman behind the counter if it could be fixed, she replied, “We don’t do specialty cakes this time of year.” Excuse me? That was never communicated to the bride during the ordering process, and at no point did the baker bring up any “limitations” either. How is this our fault? You took the order, confirmed it, and then failed to deliver.

I had to argue just to get them to frost the top of the cake — which, by the way, is the bare minimum. When they brought it back out, they informed me the frosting was still warm. Sure enough, by the time we got it to our Airbnb at Mountain Village, the frosting was melting im places. We had to fix it ourselves and add more berries just to cover it up.

And the taste? The cake was dense, dry, and oddly reminiscent of cornbread — not what you want for a wedding cake. They also mixed frostings — buttercream on the sides (which tasted like straight-up butter) and cream cheese on top. Who does that? Seriously, what self-respecting bakery sends out a cake like this and proudly puts their name on it?

To say I’m disappointed would be an understatement. I’m shocked a bakery that clearly has no understanding of basic cake styles takes cake orders. If you’re ordering a wedding cake, do yourself a favor and go...

First, I would like to mention that my family and I always enjoy our food here. My wife has a neurodegenerative disease that requires very specific dietary restrictions, and so we've made this place our go to in Telluride. I give the low rating because of the treatment I have received here by some of the wait staff. When paying for our food at the cash register, we signed our name and then hit next a couple times to get through the pay process. However the way their settings are preset, it defaults to an 18% tip ( which is interesting since you bus your own table, get your own silverware and water etc..). In any case this happened twice, to two different people in our party. I have no issue leaving a tip and traditionally have done so even at this restaurant where the only extra work for their staff outside of making the food ( which you presumably pay for in your bill) is to bring the food to you. After this happened to the second person in our party, I approached them and asked if it could be backed out since they would have liked to have chosen their own tip. The girl gave me a hard time and said it would be a pain to rerun it through the system, so I suggested that they just compensate the difference with some kind of baked goods like a cookie or cupcake to make it easier on her and make up the difference. In a very nasty tone she said "Im not giving you a cupcake if you don't even want to tip us". Of course at this point I didn't want to tip her anything. She then yelled at me whilst slamming the cupcake down in my face. Immediately after she went to the bar and proceeded to tell the whole bar how I didn't want to tip them. I have never been treated like this in any restaurant before and felt it necessary I say something about it. Finally I'd like to point out that this is the first negative review I've ever felt...

I love this place for its values (farm to table, composting, etc) but the food was super bland. We were here for both breakfast yesterday and lunch today mostly due to the limited food options around town and neither meal was exciting. We ordered two dirty chais with 2 shots of espresso and they tasted like double chai, no espresso. Not good. The SW scramble tasted watery and unflavorful. The avocado toast and the breakfast sandwich were the redeeming meals that led us to come back today, although when I ordered the avo toast over the phone, the lady asked if I wanted chilli crunch flakes on top, so I said yes, but didn’t realize that would be $1 extra and totally wouldn’t have added that had she been transparent about it. It felt like I got tricked into a more expensive order.

Today for lunch we got the burger and the chopped salad with sesame dressing and didn’t like either. The burger tasted like it had 0 seasonings and was plain cooked ground beef (with a very small serving of fries) and the salad barely had any dressing on it. I had to ask for 2 additional cups of dressing on the side, but the chicken was so dry that even the extra dressing didn’t help. It was so hard to eat, I ended up leaving the chicken on the plate and left the restaurant unsatisfied.

My partner and I were planning on answering a few quick emails while we ate lunch, but were promptly told no lap tops were allowed which made the experience overall feel uninviting.

We’ve visited this restaurant in the past (and even brought laptops before too!) and have always spoke highly of our experience, but it feels like it’s gone downhill in quality. I would love to support a business with strong values, but unfortunately the food was just...