Lakeside Restaurant & Tavern — Restaurant in Town of Pulteney

I have been to the Lakeside many times when we are at Keuka in the summer and had a fantastic meal in a gorgeous setting. So when we decided to go to Keuka for my sister's bachelorette weekend, and we needed a nice place for dinner, I suggested the Lakeside.

What a horrible mistake. And how embarrassed I was.

It was early in the season (May 5), but a lovely day. There were 8 of us, but we called and made a reservation. We thought. When we arrived there were lots of people on the deck, and inside. The hostess seemed surprised to hear about our reservation. They weren't ready for us. That was our first clue that we should have left.

Then, we were seated in the room adjacent to the bar, overlooking the lake. It's a beautiful sight to look out, but inside - lights were off, and it looks like they were cleaning out a back room. Random stuff was piled in the corner.

Someone came to give us water, and said there were a lot of specials - only she didn't know any of them. She kept telling us she had only been there for 45 minutes, so she couldn't help us. The menu was appallingly small; nothing even close to what they had online. This was our second clue we should have left. Nothing looked good, but we were making the best of it.

A young man came to take our drink and food order. Twenty minutes later, we were still waiting for our drinks. Another server stopped by and we inquired about the drinks. She found them at the bar. The were in sweaty glasses - had been sitting there a while. Oh, and one of our drinks wasn't there at all. Our server came to apologize, and we asked him to get our missing drink. Third clue. We stayed. I don't know why.

When he came back again and said someone threw away his pad where he wrote our orders - that was it. We were done. We were not staying for dinner - give us the check for the drinks, we'll move on. The check came - WITH ALL THE FOOD ON IT. So please tell us - someone threw away your pad of orders, but it was in the system to charge us?

And we were treated absolutely horribly. No apology, no offer to comp any drinks - nothing.

So - early in season - not a good experience. We were offended to...

Our party of six arrived at 8:15 and we were told it'd be a 20 minute wait. At 9:00 we still hadn't been seated so my mother-in-law went up to ask how much longer and they said they couldn't seat us because they had no clean silverware. We had two small children with us and the temperature had now dropped to 60 degrees. My mother in law came back to us and explained the situation so we all asked if we could at least be seated inside because the kids were freezing. A very tall, blond waitress was up at the hostess stand at this point and was so incredibly rude to my mother in law barking things like, "we are a restaurant, it's Friday night, you'll have to wait. It'll be a while. We can seat you but no one will pay attention to you" The poor teenage hostesses stood there horrified that an employee would even think of talking to a customer in that manner. My mother in law was calmly asking if we could just sit inside until a waitress/waiter could attend to us. I cannot believe how rude she was. The sad thing is, we frequent this restaurant at least a dozen times a summer with all of our friends and family and I've never been so embarrassed and let down....ever, by the way an employee has treated a member of our party. Unfortunately this experience will now leave a horrible impression on us and will from now on lead me to turn any and all recommendations away from the...

My boyfriend and I stopped here a few weeks ago for a late lunch. We chose to sit outside on the deck, which was lovely, nice view. Despite the few customers that were present, service seemed to be a bit slow. While waiting for our meal, we noticed 2 dogs going table to table essentially begging for food. When we received our meal, the dogs gravitated to us, panting, drooling, staring, and waiting for food from us. I love dogs, have a couple at home, but I do not allow them to be around the dining table at meal time, or let them beg for food. Wait staff would periodically call to the dogs, but would not go retrieve the dogs and put them away. There were also a couple of high schoolers bussing tables. While they seemed friendly enough, they were rather loud and obnoxious during their interactions with each other. I also found them dumping the unconsumed beverages into the herb garded and over the balcony a bit offputting. Another thing, while the food was adequate, I feel it was a bit overpriced considering the quality of it when we received it compared to how it was decribed in the menu. Finally, it was only when we were leaving were we given apologies regarding the dogs. I doubt we'll return to this...