The Retreat — Restaurant in Town of Salina

The Retreat has indoor and outdoor bars and dining areas. We chose outdoor dining because covid was still surging in upstate New York. Dinners come with a choice of salad or soup. The salad, with thousand Island dressing, was excellent after removing the tasteless, lye-cured black olive slices. The seafood chowder was also excellent getting our meals off to a good start. I ordered sauerbraten because I had read in a review that the restaurant was known for this classic German dish. The dinner with sides was so large that it had to be served on two separate dinner plates. The sauerbraten and egg noodles with gravy on one, and the red cabbage, applesauce, 2 potato pancakes, and a side of sour cream on the second. Unfortunately, it did not live up to the sauerbraten I had had on a number of occasions at Danzers German Restaurant on Ainsley Drive. The meat was not cooked long and slow to tenderize it and the sweet/sour sauce was too sweet with too little contrasting red wine vinegar. On the other hand, the potato pancakes and red cabbage were excellent, and the noodles were briefly fried to make them crispy on the edges. A very nice touch. My wife had much better luck with the turkey dinner with mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, squash and gravy. (also served on two plates), with enough leftovers for a full second meal at home. UPDATE-1: On our return visit, the weather dictated that we eat indoors. We were seated at a very comfortable booth in one of the smaller dining rooms. As with our first visit, the meal had its ups and downs. I was very happy with my Reuben sandwich even though the presentation was different than that described on the menu. It was supposed to be open-faced because it was said to be so big that you had to eat it with a knife and fork. In reality it was served as a normal sandwich but the ingredients were tasty and the marble rye was perfectly toasted. When I ordered, I declined the accompanying fries but asked instead for a small side salad. I thought there might be an upcharge for the salad, but instead they charged its full price while omitting the fries. No problem, the price was reasonable anyhow. I ordered a slice of raspberry pie for dessert with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. The pie was totally forgettable. It might very well have been purchased frozen in a grocery store. My wife had a problem with her turkey special. If you look at the picture from last year they served the gravy on the side. This year they ladled large amounts of it all over the mashed potatoes, dressing, and turkey, reaching a depth of a half an inch in the middle of the plate. We decided to box it and take it home so we could rinse the turkey for use in turkey sandwiches. The turkey, by the way, was excellent hand carved from a turkey breast and not from a turkey roll as is the practice at some restaurants. Balancing things out, my wife had much better luck with with her dessert than I had. She ordered a lemon blueberry mascarpone cake. It...

I went to the retreat today to meet a friend for a late lunch. We arrived at 1:30 but didn’t get seated until about 1:40 and ordered drinks(lemonades) and got to chatting, we haven’t seen each other in awhile. The waitress came back to check on us and we weren’t ready to order, we were still reading the menu and chatting. The waitress left for a few minutes. All of a sudden, a tray table collapsed or something and made a very loud crashing sound. We peeked over and there were dirty dishes and food all over the floor near the entrance to the kitchen, we asked the group of four ladies across the aisle what happened and they said the table just collapsed and it was like the table gave out and one joked it was a ghost. Nobody came out to check on the sound for a few minutes. The woman at the other table commented on nobody coming out to check to see what had happened. The waitress finally came out and immediately said that my friend and I must have done it, and said, “ I knew you two were trouble when you walked in” and I was insulted and said excuse me!? The woman from the other table came to our defense saying we had nothing to do with it and that she saw it fall. Then she told us that the waitress was just joking that she didn’t mean that we actually made the mess. The waitress came over to our table and asked if we were ready to order and was was annoyed when we told her we weren’t quite ready, she got annoyed and stated “well this side closes from 2:00-4:00.” I looked at my watch and saw it was 1:55. She mentioned something about the bar being open(I was there to have a lunch with my friend and catch up). She then continued on saying that we bumped the tray or she knows “maybe there’s a witch in the place, maybe two” I found that very rude and unprofessional! If it was too late to be seated we shouldn’t have been sat in that section. If an accident happens you shouldn’t blame patrons for the issue- then complaining openly about the time we took to order, then name calling. We asked for the check for the drinks and said we would go to eat somewhere else. She started apologizing saying that she was only joking.. and we were adamant that we wouldn’t want to inconvenience her and said we would leave. We meet 4-5 times a year at the retreat and have never been treated like that. We will not be going back because of the service we received today. We left and went to il-limones and received great, welcoming service from the staff there. We spent $120 today and tipped $40 at another establishment, I suggest you to steer clear of the retreat. Sad because we love supporting local restaurants. Shameful how we were...

I had called ahead to make reservations for 2 for a Thursday evening but when we showed up at the restaurant, there was a sign for patrons to seat themselves and no host/hostess in sight. We sat down and a waitress quickly came over to take drink orders. (I explained we had reservations just so they didn't think we bailed on them.) I hadn't been to this restaurant in many years and it looked different than I remembered but the atmosphere was warm and casual. The menu was extensive and we found the sheet of folded paper containing the specials on our own - the waitress never mentioned it. We ordered the salmon cakes appetizer for starters and then I ordered a special of sirloin tips with noodles that sounded good on this rainy evening. My friend ordered the shrimp skewers with risoto. I'm not a fan of crab cakes so I wasn't going to even try the salmon cakes but I'm glad I did. They were delicious and tasty with a slight crunch from the panko. The cakes were accompanied by a small container of creamy dill sauce which had just the right amount of dill as to not overpower the cakes. My friend devoured his shrimp and had a few bites of the risotto. He wasn't expecting a tomato risotto but he still took the leftovers home for later. I have to be honest that when the waitress set my dish of sirloin tips and noodles down on the table, it reminded me of a dog bowl with food in it. Heck, it even sort of looked like dog food. However, one bite of this dish made me fall in love and shamefully regret the aforementioned comparison. The gravy was a perfect consistency and the beef was fall apart tender. The noodles were also cooked perfectly - not too hard and not too mushy. There was also plenty to take home for lunch the next day. The restaurant wasn't as I'd remembered it so long ago but I had a new found infatuation for it, and will...