The Waterfront — Restaurant in Town of Pulteney

Cool place, the deck looking out over the water is gorgeous. Eating and drinking out on the deck is quite an experience. Unfortunately, as a standalone restaurant it’s just ok. The food is average. The prices are high. And the service is average/slow. I’ve been coming here for years and the place seems to have gone downhill recently. It is a very busy restaurant, weekend nights it can be too full to even get a table but if you show up early or late and/or on a weekday it’s not bad. Lately it appears you’re more paying for the views and experience of eating on the lake than the food or drinks. Certainly the views and experience are worth something, but if you’re looking for really good food and excellent service, this is not the place. It seems like they are constantly understaffed. It’s quite a large restaurant, with seating for maybe 100. A few times when I’ve gone, there were visible open tables on the deck and inside. I would guess the place was at best 2/3rds full and myself and my party still had to wait for a table and when we were seated, the service was slow. This would seem excusable if the restaurant is totally packed. But it wasn’t. I’m guessing the owners don’t want to hire enough cooks and waiters in order to save money. So when it’s busy the staff can’t keep up. My family usually likes to go for crab legs night, all you can eat crab legs for $30 or maybe $40? Sounds great but, I was left feeling underwhelmed. Our waitress seemed so busy she was having trouble bringing crab legs. I would end up eating all the crab legs and then staring at an empty plate for 10 minutes. The waitress would come over eventually and ask if we wanted more crab legs, yes we would. Ok she’ll go get them, another 5 minutes and we have another plate of crab legs and repeat. I did not think the crab legs were very good, they were generally cool when they were served to us, and essentially cold by the time you ate the last one. Likely they were preparing the plates ahead of time before sending them out as needed. The crab legs were also small, but this could be due to a shortage that year or something. And it was technically ‘all you can eat’ but like sushi places, that’s dependent on how long you want to wait for a refill. So overall if I could I would rate 3.5 STARS. Definitely worth trying if you’ve never been. Views and scenery are amazing, interesting groups of people and fun watching people dock their boats. It’s definitely convenient if you’re boating because they have docks you can pull up to. But if you’re expecting quality and service to match the price, you might be...

I have gone to the Waterfront for the past several years and have enjoyed myself every time. I have also encouraged others to go there. I went again today with a group of friends because of those past good experiences and we will not return. When we arrived (on a Monday at 7 pm) we were told it would be a while until we would be seated inside or outside and not given a time frame. We said we would wait at the outside bar. Within 15-20 minutes we were seated at a table on the deck and we're told we may still have a wait but at least we would be able to sit at the table in the meantime. Our waitress came and took our orders (3 burgers and 2 seafood dinners). The menu is considerably smaller than in years past. 4 of the 5 of us got side salads since the meals no longer come with sides or salads (also a change since we were there previously). Even the side salads which were simply lettuce celery tomato and cheese took more than 20 minutes to get to our table. When they brought the salads out we asked for bread and we were told that they ran out. Less than 5 minutes later another waitress served baskets of bread to 2 tables beside us. We asked again and received bread. Then we received our food 1 hour and 45 minutes after we arrived at the restaurant. Keep in mind we have been there before and seen this place packed. There were more than 50% of the tables open today. Our waitress said the kitchen was backed up. We immediately asked for our checks when we got the food expecting that to also take forever since everything else had so far. We were all done eating before we saw the checks. When asked if we could receive a discount for the wait, our waitress said no. We asked to speak to a manager and that took another 15 min to get them to come to our table. It was a 2-woman team and they initially accused us of choosing to wait rather than leaving after we knew how long it would be. No one gave us time frames. Explained our other frustrations and continued to get told that we should not have waited then. Said the kitchen was so backed up from the huge crowds of people all ordering at once (there were NO huge crowds). They refused to discount our meals and were blatantly rude to us. We then watched them go another table and do the same thing motioning accusations at them. That table was smarter....just got up and left. We will never return after being talked to like that. And we will tell everyone we know in the area to not spend their money at...

We have gone to this restaurant twice now. The second time we only went there because the switzerland Inn was completely full. We told ourselves after the first time we would not go back. But we wanted to try one more time. Is the only good thing I can say is the view. Both times our service was not stellar. Both times we were rarely checked on. To the point where we had to go to the bar to get more drinks. The first time I had ordered an appetizer and never received it until I reminded the waitress and she brought it out with my dinner. Both times we were one of the first people seated and yet one of the last people to get our order taken even though we tried to do so with our drink order. The second time it took a total of two hours to get our dinner. That is completely unacceptable. The first time, we also had to wait a long time for dinner, but not two hours. The only time the waitress said anything about what time our food was coming out. Was when I think she realized? We were going to walk out without our dinner. And then want to talk to the chef Which we were told we had to wait another ten minutes for our dinner. Which was three kids meals and four panini's. At the time our dinner came out, we were so upset, we just got it to go. We got nothing but an, I'm sorry, When we were clearly upset that we had to wait that long. You would think after waiting 2 hours and a $200 bill. That something would have been written or taken off. But again nothing. WE WILL NEVER...