Big Slide Brewery & Public House — Restaurant in Town of North Elba

I hate to be this person but we had such a poor experience here (summary up front, details below)

TL;DR: food and drinks were good, service was probably the worst experience I’ve had. We left feeling taken advantage of for the 20% automatic gratuity after getting practically no service.

Six of us came here after a long day of hiking. We were served by a talkative (with her coworkers, not us) redheaded waitress. They gave us one bottle of water to share, the bottle didn’t even give everyone one glass of water - we asked for more and had to wait what felt like ages to get a second bottle.

We ordered a few drinks too, they were served promptly but we weren’t checked in with or asked if we wanted anything else to drink.

When ordering, the waitress completely ignored a question about a salad. Oddly enough, we also asked about adding onion to a burger and were told no.

Someone flagged down our server (because she never checked on us) and asked for extra ranch, our server never came back and the person actually got so fed up they went to the food counter and asked for it themselves. Then our server charged .50 for it - after the poor service this felt like padding an automatic gratuity.

We asked for to-go boxes for pizza and a salad, we were given the bill instead, and the pizza box came awhile after paying despite the waitress hanging out at the food counter with her coworkers for several minutes between serving other tables. We just left the salad, eager to get out.

There was an added 20% gratuity to our bill for having a party of 6. This seemed silly considering 6 isn’t a very large party and it seemed easy enough to accommodate us with their table already set for 8. But oh well, despite the terrible service we just wanted to pay and get out. But then, the online/qr code payment system was a little different in how it listed the balance, compared to the paper bill we received, so the person who put it on their card inadvertently added an additional 20% tip on top of the automatic one for having a party of 6. We asked the waitress to fix it and she did, quickly relative to the few other requests we made, but not without making it seem like we were bothering her.

We saw other servers attending to their tables, and the patrons seemed happy. We truly think our waitress didn’t pay us any mind because she knew the tip would be automatically included. We left feeling taken...

I generally don't leave negative reviews. This may actually be my first. I also understand everyone has a bad day. Nevertheless, we probably waited 20 to 25 minutes for water and silverware. The water seemed particularly troublesome as if they were waiting for rain.. although rain may have helped clean rhe sticky tables. Our server did try her best and kindly apologized for the delay which is why we stayed. The $17 cheese board as an appetizer was a failed attempt at elegant dining and would be terrible on its best day. It was left essentially untouched. The draft beer selection was good, the choice I made based on description was a bad one. I failed to enjoy the mixture of lukewarm apple cider vinegar and barn floor mop water, although my second choice was a solid five out of ten. (To her credit, our server bought the second as we waited another 45 minutes or so for 75 percent of our meals to arrive). The misses had a wrap-super natural and organic themed and declined even a third bite. It went the way of the cheeseboard. (Stale crackers and dried apricots with dates, garnished with low-end but strong smelling) I went the safe route with a small pepperoni pizza as the head chef had a braided beard and no hair net. It counted as food, better than the cheeseboard or beer, but probably a taste toss-up between that and Dijorno. An hour or so in, our server asked if my son needed a box for the cheese pizza he ordered although he was the quarter of our group of four who never received any food. Our server took that off the bill as well. The chicken tenders or hamburger our youngest had was sufficient and completed. Again, to her credit, the service issue was not all on the woman waiting on our table. She had a weak supporting cast. The bill came for a hundred dollars or so and I decided to take the high road, pay it, smile, tell them we understand, and leave an uncharacteristically small tip of 15%. We'd had a great day and decided not to let this spoil the trip. I wouldn't...

Everything about this meal experience was 100% perfect! we had excellent service at the bar and the berry ginger beer cocktail was the best drink I've gotten recently! highly recommend. everything on the menu is so well thought out with amazing flavor combinations. the poutine is done so well, then entrées were amazing and sooo different from any restaurant we've been to lately! had the roasted chicken with sushi rice, SUCH a fantastic blend of flavors! the hot sauce and mango salsa complemented each other perfectly. can't say enough about how much we loved this dinner- one of the highlights of our vacation.

Edit: came back as a really nice benchmark of our yearly ADKs trip and was intensely disappointed. I was so charmed last time I even bought big slide merch and our experience this time just dropped off a cliff. Food was all room temp or cold after an hour wait. Our server was nice but didn’t even come back so that we could tell him everything was cold. By the time he came to check on us we couldn’t really say we were dissatisfied because we were starving after a day of hiking and ate the cold food anyways because it was in front of us. Super disappointing for a $150 dinner for 4 people before tip. My mom and my son barely touched their food because of temp/quality issues and our server didn’t even ask if there was an issue when he cleared their full trays from in front of them, they both had a hotdog and a chicken sandwich with one bite taken out of them and the fries eaten. Our server kept saying how busy he was so we didn’t feel right saying anything. Really seems to be fostering an environment where you don’t feel comfortable complaining for bad food and...