Eastbay Lodge — Restaurant in Town of Lake Holcombe

With views of a beautiful lake, I've always had high hopes of this restaurant. Sadly, those hopes are gone, as the experience I've had here twice now (June 22,2025 and August 19th 2025) and have been less than pleased to say the least.

Our first visit was a party of 2 for a birthday, usually a great, uplifting day. Unfortunately the long wait time, coldness from the staff, and overall disappointing food (aside from the one decent thing the skirt steak) made that a birthday to forget. Shrimp Scampi was just store bought noodles, with 4 to 5 small, anemic looking shrimp drowning in butter. Not scampi sauce, but straight butter. Could not eat. The pork belly bites were okay, albeit with an overly sweet sauce and tiny portion for the price. The asparagus that came with it should have never been accepted from the distributor, nor cooked and served (all 4 tiny pieces) and the corn on the cob was half a cob, that seemed like it was the frozen corn on the cob halves you buy at Walmart, and was inedible. The total time from order to food on the table was roughly 1.5 hours, while it was on the busier side, was still a long wait and not worth it.

Let's bring us to tonight. We ended up going there with a party of 4, when our normal family spot was closed for vacation. We regret it.

The salad in the salad bar was well past its prime, wilted and turning red. Chicken noodle soup on the bar and chili both seemed lime they came from a package and reheated, and the rest of the salad bar was just as "great" as the lettuce, and cross contaminated with everything else there. And who puts chocolate pudding on a salad bar? (Which eneded up being in other things like the carrots, eggs ect).

From time of ordering to time to recieving the food it was roughly 2 hours. The kicker is, there were 4 tables that sat after us (all of 4 people) and they received their food before us, even though we ordered before them. The food that came to the table was obviously heated in a microwave or stuck under a salamander for WAY too long. The chicken parm was lava on the inside, cold on the outside, on an ice cold plate, with sauce that tasted like it came out of a can and cheese that was just a film. To top it off, there wasn't any fresh basil as advertised. The salmon looked small, anemic and tasteless. The asparagus was well past its prime, woody and disgusting (again all 4 pieces) and the walleye was probably the worst excuse for walleye I've ever seen. It was so small I couldn't believe they would serve one peice or even accept it from the distributor. And the fries were cold, limp and disgusting.

When I brought these issues up the the waitress Brooklyn, we were told it was all hot fresh and great quality, when in reality I had walked past the kitchen to go the the restroom and saw our entrées sitting in the window a solid 10 minutes before we received our food. Mind you there was at least 5 different wait staff inside, 6 total tables populated inside and only a handful outside (mainly drinking).

To see all the comments from the owner saying "you should have brought it up while you were here" is hilarious as we did bring this up, multiple times and had nothing rectified.

This was disappointing, and as someone who has worked in restaurant kitchens I am ashamed for you, as I could never let the food I was served walk out...

My husband and I just got married in March. He has a vacation home at WinterHaven. This was my first weekend here to visit and see the area - finally. (We live in Sparta). My husband has been in this area for a few decades and knows all the restaurants and hot spots well. I was very excited to visit East Bay this last Saturday. Very nice "lodge" feel in the dining room and the dining area was beautiful! The hostess sat us in the corner by the Lakeview. Our server was nice. I asked he give us about 5 more minutes to decide what we wanted. He walked through the dining room again after 5-10 minutes and I tried to flag him down...we were ready to order but he wasn't really paying attention. I could tell he had health issues so I wasn't upset. He went on the patio and started closing up all the umbrellas. We could see this was gonna take a long time and that he probably forgot about us. But we were ready to eat! I went up to the cashier area and asked the nice waitress with long blonde hair if we could please place our order because I thought our server forgot about us. She was very willing and happy to help with a smile. The salad bar was good. Food was fresh. No brown lettuce! REAL bacon pieces for the salad. Great bread sticks... soft and warm...BUTTERY! perfect to dip in the soup or chowder whatever it was. It was very thick and had mushrooms in it . Our sirloin steaks were PERFECT medium. Seriously perfect! Crinkle cut fries perfectly fried crispy none were burnt. I seriously love this place. Such a nice experience with my amazing husband. So far I've tried Flaters ( great double cheeseburger at a dive bar wow). Birch Point (great Friday buffet and great price). Ted's (overpriced food, filthy table, poor service, dry pre-frozen cheeseburger and flies hopping on your food every few seconds INDOORS). I wanted to go to East Bay again for dinner last night but hubby wanted me to experience Ted's. East Bay my favorite place in the area so far. My only suggestion... With COVID still around and germs everywhere on the planet... Allow people to open their own pop cans please.😶 Servers are cleaning dirty dishes from other tables then putting their fingers on top of your can to open it which goes straight to your lips. This allows for huge transfer of germs. Most people like to wipe off the top of their can before drinking from it. Once it's opened... It's too late. And I can open my own ranch cup too LOL😁. I give this place 5 stars for quality...service...friendly staff...CLEAN tables...beautiful dining area with perfect lakefront view...and great food! For sure will be back again! Thanks for a great experience! I will be excited to visit again at East Bay!...

We live in Eau Claire, WI and travel to Holcomb a few times a month. We decided to try Eastbay today for lunch. We were disappointed with the food quality and serving size. When you are accustom to Big Swedes and their generous portions, Eastbay doesn't measure up. When we received the bill for our food, we were told they charge a credit card surcharge. Since we did not have cash with us, we had to pay this charge.

While imposing a surcharge on customers is legal, they did not properly notify customers of this charge. In the agreement with the three credit card companies, (which must be completed and approved by the companies before any establishment can legally charge this fee), it is stated that any company who imposes this charge must, "clearly alert consumers to the practice at the point of entry, the point of sale or transaction and on the receipt". In our instance, we entered the establishment and there wasn't a notice. We started the transaction by ordering, and were not told about this. Finally, when we wanted to pay, we were told about this fee. We were told to avoid this fee we needed to pay cash. This is absolutely not true as an establishment cannot, under any circumstances, charge a credit card surcharge on a debit card, even if the credit option is chosen. This option wasn't available to us as an alternative. I strongly feel that this establishment needs to re-evaluate their procedures as this whole situation turned us away from...