Village Tavern Restaurant & Inn — Restaurant in Town of Urbana

I brought my family of four here all the way from St. Louis, MO on the last stop of what has otherwise been a wonderful FLX vacation. Road weary, very hungry, and eager to experience Hammondsport, we made our way to The Village Tavern. The concierge at our hotel circled it on a map of town as a place with good food.

When we approached, I saw some food brought to the table out front and it looked really appealing. I said aloud “wow, that looks really good. We aren’t from around here—is this a good place to eat?”

The woman standing by the table enthusiastically announced “it’s the BEST place to eat…and I’m not just saying that because I’m the owner!” We were greeted inside and quickly seated in a booth. Menus, waters, drink orders knocked out pretty quickly—👌

Ordered appetizer, multiple $37 “tasting menu” meals, a bowl of crab bisque and a kid’s burger, the service consistency took a nosedive. We were never asked if we wanted anything else to drink, they never retrieved the menus from the table, one place setting short for the four of us. Since nobody would glance my direction and 2 different servers periodically brought food out then disappeared, I remedied each situation myself by returning the menus to the host stand, grabbing a set of silverware, etc. NBD—we are still doing OK.

1st course scallops over corn chowder—solid. Not much chowder, but the scallops made up for it.

2nd—mutant sliver of grilled sea bass. A comical amount of sea bass, but SB is expensive, so we just moved past it.

3rd Asian beef tenderloin over rice/veg

Wife’s was on the far side of well-done but she just decided to gut it. My daughter’s burger was so overdone it was a puck. I had Mine—when the tines of my fork could not penetrate the char-bark of this once tender loin I knew it was toast. Sawed into it just to see—no it was completely cremated. Inedible. White inside.

I looked for my waiter and the owner (bartending) saw me staring back towards the kitchen.

1 minute passed, 2, 3, 5… The owner, who raved on the way through the door and understood we were first-time diners from out of town could not be bothered to check on us. She looked over a half dozen times/made eye contact, but just looked down and did nada. I got up—found one of the two guys serving us and asked him to come to the table when he had a chance.

When he came by I told him/showed him how toasted the loin was and he asked if I wanted another one. “Yes, I would like another one, please, it’s just way way past well-done”.

He took it back to the kitchen and never asked “how would you like it cooked?”. We were never asked that upon initially ordering the meal either. When the newly fired meat came back out about 3 minutes later, it was sarcastically raw. I cut a chunk off the end and chewed it—cold in the middle. Purple.

He returned ten minutes later and I showed him. My wife, now upset for me, says “it feels like this is purposeful because he sent it back, it’s raw”.

So he took it back. Owner..crickets.

When Ethan brought me the check, he never explained if anything was taken off—the bill was confusing but I did some mental math and it seemed like they made one of our drinks free or something. When he came to pickup the check Ethan apologized and said he’s sure it was nothing like retaliation that they just had a couple new grill cooks the chef is training. Still—they sent it 2x and nobody cared it was inedible.

I still left Ethan $15 on $93 but I am disgusted mostly because the owner didn’t care and just sat there and watched it at the bar. Village Tavern—I hope you see this and respond. I’d love to give you another try, but don’t say “you should have brought this up with us before posting so we could resolve your issues.” You had EVERY OPPORTUNITY and chose to ignore it.

If you stepped out from behind the bar and asked what was wrong, I would have been extremely gracious with a resolution. I never even asked for anything to be taken off my bill. Just really...

My wife and I have been coming to the Village Tavern Restaurant and Inn in Hammondsport, NY for many years. The food has always been good and the service excellent. We’ve enjoyed our visits. Until yesterday, 8/30/2025.

Arriving at around 5 PM, we were greeted and seated promptly by the hostess. A server arrived at our table quickly with water and took our order for drinks. The drink order was promptly filled and the drinks were excellent, as always. And so ends the enjoyment part of our visit.

The server took our order for two of the $37 prime rib dinners. The size is fixed, as are the sides.

After a reasonable amount of time, the dinners arrived. The plates consisted of a small slab of meat, poorly marbled. The sides were cubes of potatoes accompanied by arsenic spears. The entire plate was slathered with some sort of cloyingly sweet sauce that I still taste a day after. Everything on the plate tasted like the sauce. The meat was more like a flank steak and was very tough. As I mentioned, it was tiny and very thin. The char on the outside of the meat, that I particularly like, was soggy and sugary. The potatoes resisted all attempts to be pierced by a fork. I found a piece untainted by the sauce and it was completely devoid of any seasoning whatsoever. The asparagus portion was meager and the asparagus also resisted cutting. I can state unequivocally that this was the worst prime rib dinner I have ever had. And I have had some stinkers.

As for the service….There were plenty of bodies milling around and they all seemed more intent on conversations with each other than attending to customers. In our case, the server performed minimally. She brought water, took our drink order, delivered drinks. Kitchen staff brought the food to our table. Server appeared once to ask if everything was alright, which was when I should have sent the food back. My mistake. At that time, she asked if we would like refills on our drinks. She neglected to fill our waters. Next we saw of her, she presented the check.

Not the worst service ever, but in the top 10 of worst, for sure.

It will be quite a while before we return...

Wow this place was a funky disappointment. We went here after seeing a show at point of the bluff and it was close by and the menu looked interesting...

So the name of the place is village tavern restaurant and it looks like a tavern but the menus totally Cajun lol. They threw up some Mardi gras type of cheap decorations and a few Mardi gras type paintings.

All that is fine, decorating wasn't their priority that's cool. The serving staff was peculiar. There was two really young people like in their teens early twenties and the rest were senior citizens. The girl who delivered her food could barely hold the plate in almost spilled it on the table.

We started with sausage stuffed mushrooms which had no sausage there were four approximately 1 in mushrooms... It didn't taste bad but also didn't taste great. It was about 90% cheese and breadcrumbs.

Next up was a peculiar bread delivered to our table with a undefined bowl of oil... The bread appeared to be one role that had been cut or torn into pieces? No explanation was given for this It was just set down and she walked away without saying anything.

Next up was our entrees The Cajun pasta and the prime rib. The Cajun pasta was supposed to have all kinds of seafood in it. We did find some shrimp but nothing else And it was ridiculously rich like not in a good way. Just by adding some pasta water to this sauce It would probably make about 3 lb of past lol. There was also about a half a cup of Parmesan cheese in a single pile in the middle of the pasta.

You don't get to pick your sides with the prime rib and I've never actually met anyone who likes creamed spinach so I can't really comment on on the creamed spinach. The mashed potatoes were okay. And the prime rib itself was edible.

Lastly there were beignets on the dessert menu and we could not resist them. We were shocked to find them stuffed with a random assortment of feelings. It was not a pleasant surprise.

Don't go here. Please. We saw so many delicious menus advertised while waiting for the show to start I wish we had done more research about where we were going to...