Main Deck — Restaurant in Town of Milo

We had a 7:45 PM Saturday reservation for four. We were seated promptly — and unfortunately, that was the only thing the restaurant got right all evening.

From there, it was a steady decline. Our server, Matt, was clearly stretched far too thin. He remained professional and apologetic throughout, but it took nearly 25 minutes just to place our drink order. Even then, it took three attempts to find a glass of wine they actually had in stock. We then placed a simple order — a few salads, appetizers, and two entrées — nothing overly complicated.

Over an hour later, we still had no food. And we weren’t alone. Nearly every table around us was in the same situation — waiting, watching, wondering what was going on. One table that was seated after us somehow got their food, but for the rest of us, the kitchen appeared completely non-functional. While the servers and bussers were clearly doing their best, darting around the dining room, the breakdown appeared to be much deeper — and no one in management seemed to care.

The manager's response to our concerns was indifferent, at best. The host didn’t seem interested in helping either. And the most frustrating part? The owner of the restaurant was in the building — dining, drinking, receiving top-tier service, and completely ignoring the chaos unfolding in his own establishment. As someone who has worked in food and beverage for over two decades, I found it unacceptable that the owner didn’t once step in to address the issue or acknowledge his customers’ frustrations.

This restaurant has every opportunity to be a 5-star destination — beautiful space, great location, solid front-line staff — but it’s being squandered. When we finally decided to leave around 9:05 PM, after sitting for 90 minutes without food, the manager simply said, “Okay, bye.” It was Matt, our waiter — clearly mortified — who followed us to the parking lot to offer a sincere apology.

Meanwhile, the owner likely remained at his table enjoying another bottle of wine.

We won’t be back. And...

We had a party of six for dinner two weeks after the grand opening. The service was excellent and the food was good. We had a wide variety of menu items including two different salads and five different entrees. The salads were really good with very fresh greens excellent house made dressings. I would go again just to have the salads. The entrees included scallops, clams, schnitzel, the smash burger and short ribs which was the nightly special. The short ribs were outstanding, according to my daughter, perfectly done with a rich, flavorful wine sauce over polenta. The scallops were terrific according to my grandson. There wasn’t a scrap left on his plate. The stuffed clams were a mixed bag. The clams themselves were very tender and cooked perfectly. The stuffing had very little flavor and very salty. The schnitzel was perfect, pounded to just the right thickness and cooked just right so that it was moist and flavorful with a very nice mustard sauce that complimented the dish very well. The spaetzle was a disappointment. It was tasty but so salty it was difficult to eat. My other grandson, who is a burger expert, raved about the smash burger. The dessert menu had four items and we had them all. All were house made delicious. The overall menu was a slight disappointment. There was no fish entree, except the scallops, which I thought was a bit strange. There was a rabbit dish on the menu which I thought was unusual for a summer vacation spot restaurant. There weren’t many items on the menu that would appeal to children. The wine list is almost entirely Fingerlakes wines. The ambiance is classy, very well done and reflective of Penn Yan’s boat making history. In my opinion this restaurant has great potential and could achieve a five star reputation with a few changes. It will be interesting to follow it’s evolution. We will certainly...

Main Deck is one of the highest rated places in the Penn Yan area, so we were excited to have dinner there. It was an abominable experience. We had reservations at 7:30. The young lady seating diners said that she was sorry but they weren't seating people with reservations at the time - which makes no sense. I said that. She then found a place for us to eat outside, but I had commented in my OpenTable request to eat inside. After this confusing interaction, she sat us in the dining room which had several open tables for 4 and several open two-tops. Made no sense. The waitress came to our table quickly, greeted us and said she'd be right back after she got some appetizers for another party. She returned more than 15 minutes later to take our drink order. Gave us our drinks about 25-30 minutes into our visit and took our food order. We ordered the combination board ($38), the beet salad ($15) and the 4-piece foccacia ($8). The "foccacia" that came out was a large board with 3 (not 4) small pieces of toasted baguette not focaccia at all. The combination board was said to have house-cured meats and several local cheeses along with appropriate accoutrements. Again, a large board came out with about 2 slices of each of 3 different meats and 3 small portions of cheese. The accoutrements were cold string beans and purple tortilla chips. Both the "focaccia" and combination boards were beyond a joke - terrible in every way, obviously put together by someone in the kitchen who had no idea what they were doing. And it took forever to get these. The beet salad had very little beet and a lot of salad, but at least was palatable. This place is, from front of the house, to wait staff, to kitchen a restaurant in obvious decline and should be avoided. It's particularly sad since the physical location is lovely and its reputation in the past...