Gessner Colorado Mountain Grill — Restaurant in Vail

Overall our experience was mixed, but in the end Chef Dan proved himself competent and we enjoyed our dinner.

Because we stayed at the Grand Hyatt Vail, we looked into it’s restaurant, Gessner. In very plain language, the “About” tab of this restaurant on Google says enjoy “vegetarian to vegan options,” so we were excited to try it out.

My wife and I made reservations, put on some nice clothes, and went to celebrate the anniversary of our engagement.

Things started to go sideways when our server, Rafael, told us there were no vegan items on the menu. I politely encouraged him to ask the kitchen if they could put together something for us, and he refused. He told me that this was a steak restaurant, and if I wanted vegetarian food I should go somewhere else. Obviously I found this sentiment extremely off putting, and I felt very embarrassed and unsure if I should just ask for a bill for my drink and leave. I tried once again to smooth the situation down and try to convince Rafael to ask the kitchen about what accommodations could be made, and he went very reluctantly.

Well, in the end he returned with some options for us, and we also were introduced to server Doug who checked up on us a few times that night (we also had the pleasure to see him again several times in the Fireside Lounge over the course of the trip). Our food was good, and we were very pleasantly surprised that Chef Dan prepared a special off menu dessert for us and served it to us himself.

This is a battle of restaurant paternalism vs customer autonomy, and Chef Dan’s willingness to be flexible to please us as customers is the only reason we had an enjoyable evening.

I have never been asked to leave a restaurant before in my life, and although Rafael didn’t say “Get out,” he effectively did communicate that message to me when he told me I should try to eat somewhere else. Honestly baffling behavior considering we were two of the 4 or 5 people in the...

We came here for restaurant week. The decor was very, very nice. Ideal for a stylish date night or business meeting. Wait staff was mostly professional. Setting was clean.

The dinner was just really disappointing. The restaurant week entree ended up being 2 chicken tenders, a smear of mash potato and an undercooked slice of of sweet potato. The chicken was underseasoned and lacked sauce.

For the appetizer the onion soup was legit pretty awesome, as was the bread pudding. Wine was very good.

The cocktails were not made correctly and were massively overpriced. The drink should have been shaken with ice and strained but instead the bartender just poured a warm cocktail, no ice and no this was not a whiskey drink. I switched to coke but the fountain drinks were flat. Stick with the water.

Overall i was just really disappointed, for restaurant week I’d love to see the skill of the kitchen rather than just bland...

Really underwhelmed with our breakfast experience here. We had read the mediocre reviews on opentable but decided to give it a shot since we had a free breakfast with our hyatt status. Upon being seated we saw grumpy guests all around complaining to servers already. When we sat the guy next to us said “get the buffet - I’ve been waiting almost half an hour for my eggs”… so buffet it was. The selection was similar to something at a 3-star free lobby breakfast, but worse. Food was cold or stale and there weren’t many options at all. I can’t believe they normally charge $35 for that. Make sure you ask to go in and look at it before you decide to do it. Even with another day of free breakfast we won’t be going back. Hoping the Hyatt can up their restaurant game to match the quality of the rest...