The Mount Vernon Inn Restaurant — Restaurant in Virginia

First, this goes without saying but the Mount Vernon Inn Restaurant is historic, beautiful, decorative, and cozy. The food is delicious. We have never had issues with a regular dine-in meal at this restaurant. We've always been seated quickly, and the wait staff are attentive.

That being said, planning a wedding here was different than just dining for dinner. I worked with 5 members of the staff, and my review is based on the staff we worked with and the service we received for our wedding:

Jordan - He is excellent and truly focuses on hospitality. He answered all of our questions, and even let us borrow his personal cart to wheel our heavier decor around the venue for set up. Very kind, professional, and helpful. Went above and beyond to help. ONE STAR.

Raleigh - He was the banquet manager for our wedding event. He made sure the facilities were functioning and that the wait staff were attentive. He oversaw the details of the meal/venue. As for the wedding meals, everything ran smoothly which we are so grateful for. We had minimal interaction with Raleigh, but he was very kind and professional. ONE STAR.

Ashley - She is the event planner for the venue, and she is what sold us on booking the Mount Vernon Inn Restaurant as our wedding venue. We found her to be communicative, reliable, and incredibly kind. We weren't originally going to use a wedding planner since a family friend had volunteered, but we opted to go with Ashley because we were so impressed. As luck would have it, she informed us a month or so before the wedding that she would be going on maternity leave. While this is not what we were expecting, we were very happy and excited for her, and grateful for the time/effort and expertise she provided before her leave. ONE STAR.

Janet - Because Ashley went on maternity leave, the venue offered to provide us an alternative wedding planner, Janet, a month out from our wedding. If I had known from the beginning that we would be working with Janet (and the level of service she provided us), I would have opted to go with our family friend instead. Janet gave us hassle with bringing our decor in (we were told previously by Ashley we could start bringing it in the week of the wedding). We sent her an instruction email and gave her a binder of instructions on where the decor should go, the guest seating chart and meal selection, and day-of contact information. I spent hours putting this information together. We went through it with Janet prior to the wedding, so you can imagine my disappointment when I arrived on the wedding day and the decor was not set up, and I was immediately pulled aside for 10-15 minutes to answer questions about information that was already contained in the binder. We had hoped to avoid this on the wedding day. Even after going through the information with Janet AGAIN on the day of, the following errors were made: (1) the ceremony programs were placed at the dinner table and not on the ceremony seats, (2) the place cards were not in the order which we had put on the seating chart (including splitting up couples and a handicapped minor was separated from his parents), (3) we opted to do an ice cream scooping instead of a cake cutting and the ice cream was not ready when the time came to do the scooping. She also lost a picture frame and antique match box from our decor that we still have not gotten back (8 months later). Very disappointing. ZERO STARS.

Anthony - We had minimal contact with him until after the wedding, when I asked for a refund on the event planner's services. We had several cards on file (since both me, my husband, and other family members had made payments to the venue). Instead of following common business practices and asking which card we would like refunded, he split the refund over several cards. When I asked to cancel and just do it on 1 card, he gave so much pushback. It ended up being a mess, as one card couldn't cancel the refund. On the phone, he was hostile and cold. We ultimately never got our full refund from him. ZERO STARS.

3/5...

Worst dining experience in a long time!!!! Very upset about this. This restaurant has always had great food and great atmosphere. We arrived around 4pm and were sat immediately. Which was fantastic with 2 small kids! However, it went all downhill from there. We waited a good 10 min before anybody greeted us (restaurant was not busy at all!!!) She took our drink order and right after she left another server came up and proceeded to take our food order. We told her we wanted salads to start and then ordered our meals . Once our drinks arrived a couple sat down next to us. They were served their food and were finished before we even got our salads!!! We never saw our waitress after we placed the order. Our salads came out with the rest of our food and we didnt even get our full order of food. A food runner was the one to bring our food so he knew nothing of the order. We ate the food that was brought thinking she will be back anytime to check on us.....NOT ONCE!!!! I was unable to order another drink and get the rest of our food order. After we had finished and waiting for our check we eventually asked for the manager so we could get our bill and leave. The manager NEVER came out to speak to us. The worst part was after waiting 20 min for our bill (we should have just walked out at this point) the bartender finally located our server and She brings up a card reader and has us insert our card to pay. Then we HAVE to pick from 3 options to tip 18%, 20% and 25% tip !!!!! Are you kidding me! She didn't do anything!!!! So after this horrible experience we were forced to pay and additional 18% . Both my husband and I have been in the food service industry before so we always tip very generously but with the NON PRESENT service we received (and no help was the manager or other staff) I did not feel we should have had to tip her at all. So yes, the atmosphere is great and the food is mediocre but the SERVICE is AWFUL. So do yourself a favor and skip this part...

Nothing was awful but it felt like the restaurant must be low on supplies and staff. They were in the midst of preparing for an afternoon event when we went, so perhaps it was not the typical experience there. I tried the peanut soup, which was interesting, and also eggs Benedict. The peanut soup was good though not something I would get again now that my curiosity is satisfied. The poached eggs weren't runny at all and regular bacon rather than Canadian bacon was used for the eggs Benedict. I like regular bacon, but it doesn't cut as well for something like eggs Benedict. My mother also had the eggs Benedict (which also had regular rather than Canadian bacon) and one of her two eggs was also overdone/not runny though her other egg was correctly cooked. We did have a table of six, so maybe it was particularly difficult to keep everything straight when they were also preparing for an afternoon event. My husband's order was not brought out with the rest of our table's with both the soup and the entrees and we had to remind them about it both times. The salt and pepper shakers were present on the table, but empty. We had to request ketchup be brought to accompany the meals with fries and hashbrowns. Three of four people in our party who got the crab soup said there was very little crab in the soup and that it was basically vegetable soup. Overall I wasn't very impressed with the food, but the restaurant is a nice setting, isn't too expensive, and was convenient to stop at after touring Mount Vernon with out of town guests. Parking isn't stressful as it often is in the DMV so despite some less than ideal aspects, it was still a relaxing and pleasant experience...