Cellaio — Restaurant in Town of Thompson

Re: Dinner Reservation on December 7, 2024

I am writing to review the Alder Hotel and Cellaio Steve Conant Restaurant. I was a guest of the Alder Hotel on December 7, 2024. I reserved the hotel and made a dinner reservation at the Steakhouse for 7:30 to celebrate my brother's 50th Birthday.

I am forwarding this e-mail which indicates my reservation via Open Table was canceled because it is not true. See attached photos of my brother and I seated at a table in the restaurant this past Saturday

My brother and I actually arrived at the restaurant a half hour earlier than our 7:30 p.m. Dinner reservation. It appears that the restaurant staff/manager reported that our reservation was cancelled to avoid receiving a bad review.

This is why I am sending this to guest services.

Our Experience:

I reserved a table at the Cellaio Scott Conant Steakhouse at Resorts World Catskills in New York for December 7, 2024 to celebrate my brother’s 50th Birthday. We arrived a half hour early for our 7:30 p.m. reservation confirmed via Open Table. We were told to come back at 7:30 p.m. “on time” because they could not seat us earlier. We waited outside of the restaurant and checked in again at 7:30 p.m. We were told we had to wait a while longer. After about 10 to 15 minutes we were seated. Our waiter shared the specials and took our drink order within 5 to 10 minutes. We received our Sprite and Wine as well as a basket of bread. We then waited for another hour and a half and received no meal and just one visit from our waiter asking if we wanted more bread.. We declined the bread and was told the kitchen is backed up. We asked for the manager and was told several times by staff that they were sending the manager over to our table. By this time my brother was frustrated and hungry so we decided to leave because this was not a good way to celebrate the evening of his 50th Birthday. Upon exiting and attempting to pay for our drinks the manager suddenly appeared and told that we didn’t have to pay for the drinks. He seemed very confused. Needless to say we received the worst service ever for a restaurant of this caliber. We are still puzzled why everyone around us appeared to come, eat and then leave and we remained seated without our food or anyone offering us anything as we waited or providing some explanation for the delay.. We had no other choice but to conclude that the waiter had an issue serving us because we are African American. The rude treatment began from the reception and continued through the exchange with the manager at our departure. We cannot give our opinion on any food because we never received it but this particular Saturday evening birthday celebration was ruined by the extremely poor customer service. The hotel staff reception at the Alder Hotel was also terrible. The staff acts like zombies and was very loud and obnoxious while checking us in. They acted as if we were bothering them... As for the birthday dinner, I took my brother to the adjacent diner where he enjoyed a steak. The staff at the diner was much better and we have no complaints about the Diner. We ate there because there were no other food options other than Chinese food… We did our best to make the most of the rest of the evening.

We will never visit this Steakhouse or the Resorts World Catskills Hotel...

Well…so disappointed. Showed up 15 minutes early for our reservation. Hostess (sorry to say she looked seriously disbelieved and not “fine dining” put together) asked us to have a seat as we were early. No problem. Well 15 minutes early turned into a 30 minute wait to be seated. Hostess was MIA. And when she finally did pop back to seat us (with a major case of RBF) she all but ran ahead of us to the table, dropped the menus and disappeared-even before all of us got to the table. sign oh well. We’ve eaten there before (sat at the bar and everything was delicious and service from the bartender was spectacular). Well she must’ve set the tone….took almost 10 minutes for our waiter to come over and when he did he was nice but a little odd (he was sweaty and rattled off his memorized script of his menu favorites and specials kinda roboty-but he was nice) but he did seem to want to rush us-we ordered our appetizers and he asked us several times if we wanted to put our entrees in even when we said we were t really ready. sigh. At least the food should be good. Eh. Runner was weird annd unsure where things should go-no big deal except when we tried to guide him to putting the right food in front of the right person he seemed a little “dazed and confused”. Ordered the Seafood Frite-YUMMY!!!! BUT the dirty dishes were left on the table until food arrived-despite our waiter coming to refill our drinks-piled them up to give him a hint. Caesar salad—have gotten better at TX Roadhouse. Breadbasket—Cisco rolls?! Eesh. Two skirt steaks-delish! Linguine Vongole-bleh (and to boot no spoon, no extra bowl or dish for shells-even when asked for) fettucini Alfredo made table side - fun but seriously lacking any flavor and for $48 totally not worth it at all. Creamed Spinach-this is the dish that beckoned our return visit…boo! Was on the low side of OK. Applebees kinda level.

All in all not a horrible experience but really subpar dining masked as a fine dining experience …had there been good service the snag food probably would’ve been overlooked some or had the food been stellar the poor service wouldn’t have mattered so much. This place and the staff from hostess to waitstaff to kitchen needs an overhaul and some retraining or something. Definitely not worth my 20% mandatory included gratuity on our over $400 bill. Expected a higher caliber of service and flavor from a restaurant with Scott Conant’s name on it. The whole experience was the equivalent of Scott being served raw red onion over and over.

Def needs...

I’ve visited Cellaio several times. My prior visits have been good, but not exceptional, which is OK. However, I visited with a party of six tonight and we had a very unpleasant experience.

Let me preface my review by saying that at 6:30p the restaurant had several tables seated but was by no means overwhelmed. Here are my chief complaints from my visit: • The service was poor. Side dishes were missed or entered wrong and the replacements that were provided were not as ordered. I waited over fifteen minutes for my water glass to be refilled. The waitperson was missing for lengthy periods of time. We asked for salt and pepper and never received it. • The porterhouse was cooked medium to medium well, not medium rare as ordered and we didn’t see the waitperson until well into the meal. To be perfectly honest, our local Outback does a far better job of ensuring that food is properly prepared as ordered. • Once our dissatisfaction was apparent, two different managers came by to try to resolve the issues. I just felt like there was nothing to be done so I asked for the check, paid and left. • Everything about the experience left me feeling like the restaurant has an attitude of ‘we’re special and we can do no wrong’ and I didn’t feel like any of the apologies we received were genuine.

I’m hopeful that this was a one-off bad experience but I hope the restaurant realizes that customers cannot be taken for granted. I understand that Cellaio is a premier restaurant in the context of southern Sullivan County, but they would do well to measure themselves up against the competition New York City. There are a number of steakhouses in NJ which are exceptional in comparison and honestly are probably worth the...