Slope Room — Restaurant in Vail

If I could give a negative review I would. For such a well-known high end restaurant, I've never encountered such horrible service. Granted everywhere was extremely busy due to the larger than expected crowds for the 2015 FIS Alpine World Ski Championship races but it's hard to overlook bad service when the restaurant plainly does not care. Our reservation was scheduled for 8:30 on Saturday evening for a party of 4. Because we were attending the free concert beforehand we were uncertain if we would make that time so called to request that we bump our res out to 8:45p. This did not seem to be a problem and was assured we'd be seated when we got there. We were able to arrive closer to the 8:30p time and were told that we would have to wait until our 8:45p reservation to be seated. We could clearly see they were slammed and happily joined the crowd at the bar to order a drink. After the first 20 minutes none of the 3 bartenders/wait staff even made eye contact or acknowledged us to ask what we'd like to drink, no offer of water, no apology that we're backed up but we will be with you as soon as possible. One of our friends went to seek out the manager to complain that we weren't even being acknowledged as we obviously had been sitting in plain view at the bar for 20 minutes. The Manager replied that our reservation wasn't until 8:45 and we would just have to wait. What?! Wait for what?! That's not even what we were asking!! We didn't care about waiting for our table! We just wanted a drink! Now at a 30 minute wait time, another friend leaned forward to the waitress behind the bar to inquire if we would be able to order a drink soon that we'd been waiting for 30 minutes. She was somewhat apologetic and said she would let the bartenders know and would get us some waters in the meantime. 10 minutes later (now 40 minutes waiting) she still did not bring us waters and the bartenders she told still would not make eye contact or acknowledge the fact we'd been waiting for an unnecessary amount of time. At this point it was after 9pm (past our revised reservation time that they assured us we'd get seated) so we left. Upon leaving the waitress that "appeared" to take pity on us looked at us apologetically and said she was sorry of which my friend replied, you're not sorry, you still couldn't even bring us the waters you promised! Clearly this restaurant did not anticipate the volume of customers they would be receiving for the race events as I've never seen such poor planning by a restaurant manager in my life. The entire restaurant was understaffed, but above and beyond all, the lack of acknowledgement was unfathomable! How can you not look up for 2 seconds from what you're doing and apologize for the wait, offer water, something! Anything! These bartenders not only were lacking in social skills, which last time I looked that's kind of a requisite working in the service industry, but they were completely inefficient at their job and unable to cope with the influx of drink orders. They spent the entire time making drinks for the wait staff and their tables instead of working on the customers right in front of them. They took way too long making the drink orders and rushed around aimlessly wasting time looking for the things they needed to make drinks. A really good professional bartender should have had drinks in front of all their customers at the bar while working on table drinks in between. I have seen two bartenders work a bar 3x the size 4 people deep with less than a 10 min wait. The lack of planning and poor social skills of the wait staff were enough for my friends and I never to step foot in this restaurant again. Perhaps their service is exceptional on an average day, but do not go when there are events in town as this quite obviously is too overwhelming for them and creates intolerably...

The food and service at the Slope Room were both truly subpar. We had a waitress who was incredibly rude (not sure what her name is, don’t care). The appetizers were underwhelming and bland as could be. The Wagyu that was served on a hot rock had virtually no seasoning at all, and for the prices they charge I was expecting a lot better. The waitress forgot to bring out half of my order, so my sister gave me some of her’s since she had gotten the same thing and I didn’t feel like waiting to order all over again. When she had come back to the table I told her she didn’t give me my mashed potatoes with truffle, and requested they be taken off the bill. She then begins to question me about how I had mashed potatoes in front of me, and seemed to have an attitude that there was no way my sister could have given me the potatoes, but she seemed to accept the fact and walked away. This waitress also came to our table and took the plate of food away from my mother who was still in the middle of eating her dinner. About 5 minutes after this, this same waitress comes back and, despite the pandemic and the requirement to social distance, leaned over in between my family friend and I, pulled her mask down and begin sniffing and investigating the mashed potatoes which had been given to me by my sister. I then had to explain to her again that my sister gave them to me, and told her that she could bill me for the ones she forgot because I was honestly over being interrogated for a mistake she had made. Due to all of this we requested to see her manager (I believe her name was Jessica) and she apologized to my family and I for the waitresses’ actions and was very polite. Following our dinner, my mother noticed that her phone was missing. We have retraced our steps from the night and the only place the phone could have been was in the restaurant/hotel. The phone has been turned off since it went missing after dinner, and when I called in an employee of the hotel where the restaurant is located named Gregory asked me many questions about the phone, seemingly implying he had it, or information about it. But by the end of the 5 minute call he settled on saying it was not there. Nothing is confirmed yet, however a police report has been filed and the police will be investigating the incident, once the police let us know what they found out I will update this review. However, even barring the missing phone the experience and food at the Slope Room were bad enough to warrant writing...

Atmosphere The Slope Room feels dated, from the weird plates that look like Grandma's dining set to the banquet hall room that feels like Grandma's retirement cafeteria. They should have had invested in some stately wooden or metal real doors. The automatic door was broken which makes sense due to the harsh Colorado weather, but it feels cheap and not fancy.

Food The Slope Room at it's face gives off a fancy 5 star dining however the food was disappointing, especially at the luxury price. It seems the restaurant was inspired a bit too much by fine dining French cuisine as the food portions were small and went delicate on the flavor, even the sauce lacked any deep flavor that flavor-blasted Americans expect. An American would expect an Elk Rack to be of significant size, however what was presented was TWO TINY bones with a morsel of under-salted meat for $72. It did not feel like 10oz even with the TINY bone. It would have been more satisfying to buy a 10oz steak at Walmart and actually have something flavorful and substantial to eat. As the sides are an additional charge, I would skip them too, because, again they lacked desirable flavor. If you do decide to eat there, I recommend a double portion of pork belly and don't expect to share it.

Service The service was really friendly and was the best part of the dining experience. However they should have warned us about the actual size of the portions of food.

Conclusion With so many other better fine dining restaurants in the valley, I can not recommend...