The View — Restaurant in Town of Lafayette

I want to love this place. The remodel is lovely. The deck is fantastic. The view is very pleasant on a WI summer evening. A year ago I went here to try to love it, in short, the service was terrible. 2 weeks ago I tried to love it again. It was worse.

Me, my wife, and my 1.5 year old arrived hungry and excited to have some drinks, appetizers, and a filling meal on the deck. We asked the bartender if we should wait for someone to seat us or go outside. We told her we would be on the deck and she said someone would be with us.

15 minutes later, no one came to serve us, although the waitress did bring food to another table on the deck. My wife went down to get us some drinks from the bar and inform the bartender we were waiting for someone to serve our table.

15 minutes after this, still no one had come to our table. My wife went down again to get menus so we were ready to order when someone did come to ask us what we wanted. She bumped into the waitress and told her we were on the deck waiting to be served and the waitress said she would be up there soon. At this point, my kid was getting hungry for food we hadn't yet ordered.

20 minutes later, 50 minutes total, no one had yet come to ask us our order. So we all went down to the bar to pay for our drinks and leave. The bartender did give us the drinks for free, which is fine, but we really didn't care that much about paying for our drinks, we just wanted a nice meal at a local bar restaurant. We had a very unpleasant 10 minute drive home with a hungry toddler who never got the food we promised him.

It really felt like the waitress passive aggressively ignored us and wanted to ignore us so we left. I'm sure this isn't what she was doing, but I've never been so ignored at a restaurant and unable to get any attention at all. We came to pay for a decent meal and a few drinks, and tip well for a great experience. We practically begged them to take our money in exchange for their service. They seemed to not want customers.

I hope this place goes out of business and a more capable manager is hired to make the View the amazing place...

Pretty disappointed in this bar. I moved to Chippewa from the East Coast about two years ago. Once I lived here I started going to The View and it was awesome. Every weekend it would be packed - too packed actually but that’s good for business I guess. The property is amazing and I love the roof top. Being on the water, it was a great idea to have a dock and have rental kayaks, canoes and boats. Even in the winter, people will stop in on their snowmobiles. Also having the volleyball nets is really great too. It’s a great bar and they have a lot of potential. However, I’m really disappointed in the service. I currently work 2nd shift and like to go out during the week. I would go there about 10:15pm, order a drink and then they would kick us out telling us they were closing. When I went, I wasn’t by myself - I would bring people so they were losing business. I would over hear the bartender say they were going to go down the street to another bar and play pool. They used to have the best bartenders who were always fast and knew what you drank. Now I think they are desperate and will hire anyone. The food is really good for bar food but the cooks could work on their appearance and hygiene. I haven’t gone to The View since Halloween. Now I go to small dive bars around the area that are reliable and I know they will always be open during regular bar hours and they wont close early. Like I said I’m disappointed but I hope they work on things so maybe one day I will go back to one of my favorite bars...

All I can say is wow.... we have been regulars here for years and have never been so disappointed with our experience here. The owner remodeled a couple years ago and its been hit or miss on service, food quality, and environment ever since. Today (Sunday) we reached our breaking point. We arrived at 5:45pm and met our family there for dinner. There were several families seated at tables and a few people at the bar. The music was so loud the server couldn't even hear us to take our orders. We asked if it could be turned down a bit. She responded that several people had asked her the same thing, yet the music was never turned down. When she took our food order I observed as she wrote everything down exactly as we ordered it. Upon the arrival of our food, 3 of the 5 orders were incorrect. We asked again to have the music turned down and still no change. We ended up physically moving our table to a corner to try and visit with our family over the sound of the music.

The saddest part about the experience is that the owner was present and entirely unaware of his surroundings.

I'm giving two stars instead of less because our server was sweet and genuinely tried to correct everything... from the too loud music to the poorly executed food. Oh and the view from the patio is still beautiful. We likely will find a new place to enjoy Sunday afternoons...