Hamilton's Kitchen — Restaurant in Winter Park

Eating at Hamilton's Kitchen was the worst restaurant experience of my life. The theme of the night was cut corners; from the menu to the food, the service, and even the bathrooms.

Last week, while visiting from out of state, I was part of a nearly 20-person party for a wedding rehearsal dinner. Despite this being the most expensive restaurant I've ever dined at, it was also the worst place I've ever dined at, and that includes every small, cheap, and even fast-food chain joint I've ever eaten at since childhood. I am including hospital cafeteria food, as well.

I'll start with the two menu photos, which illustrate at least 13 formatting, grammatical, and punctuation errors that are basic enough for a child to notice. It's as if it was thrown together at the last second from a template, and not proofread at all. When I saw this, I immediately had a bad feeling about the service and food quality we were in for, considering the high price of the meal.

We were seated for quite a while before our orders started being taken, and that didn't happen until we tracked down and asked the waiter. He then, alone, slowly went around the room getting orders. There were 17 of us, and we had a time limit based on our hired transportation. Yet we had only one waiter. We went around him and asked for an additional waiter or two, to speed up the process. When someone eventually came, the first waiter sent them away, and made us wait while he took another several orders instead of accepting the help.

As an aside, nearly every member of the party was of a demographic that, to an expensive restaurant, should be well-known to suffer from lactose intolerance at a high rate, yet every dessert option was full of dairy.

For the appetizer, I chose the smoked salmon crostini, which, when it finally arrived, was okay.

I chose steak frites as the entree, cooked medium. When it eventually made its way to the table, it was slightly lukewarm, and mostly simply cold, as were the fries.

For dessert, I chose the key lime delight, which was sweet, but I had to stop eating it after three small bites because at that point, I had already exhausted my emergency supply of supplement pills that would help me digest the dairy.

I am including this as another aside that I'm not taking into consideration with my rating, but needs to be said publicly: over the course of the evening, the groom had to send his orders back at least five times by my count. And each time, whoever was in the kitchen initially thought they could get away with sending the same food back, slightly altered or microwaved, instead of preparing it properly, and fresh.

Overall, I have to say that this restaurant is sub par in almost every aspect. Even if they reduced their prices by 90%. There was an air of people not feeling motivated to do their best that hit me the moment I sat down and took a good look at the menu, and it shined through again in the slow service, again in the barely-edible food, and yet again in the half-stepping nature of how they responded when we took issue with the quality and temperature of our orders.

I don't know how any of this changes if you have a smaller party on a small table instead of one in a private room, but as it stands, the staff of Hamilton's Kitchen simply doesn't pass muster, across the board. Everyone was slow to respond to our concerns, the waiter was slow to act and largely unwilling to do anything about it despite repeated nagging to get more help or do something to not have us wait hours to eat, and the kitchen staff kept trying to cut corners instead of delivering the food quality and service being paid for at such a high price.

As for the bathrooms, I was pretty cross when I used a paper towel to grab the handle on the way out, only to find that there was no trash bin near the door, meaning I could keep the tissue or toss it on the ground. But there were no tissues on the ground. I can't speak to the ramifications of this. But they aren't good.

Because not everyone washes their hands.

Don't eat here until they're under...

So I saw this place on Groupon, and looking at the deal, it was incredible. I couldn't pass it up. We got two glasses of wine, an appetizer, two entrees, and a dessert all for like $65. It was an awesome deal.

We get here and the place looks amazing. There are several different types of chairs and candles and they're all spread throughout the place. It looks very eclectic and I liked it.

The appetizer we chose was the P.E.I. Mussels (Spicy Sausage, Tomato, Garlic, Parmesan-Truffle Broth). This was the bomb. The mussels were perfectly cooked, and the cooking liquid that it was served in was fantastic. The parmesan-truffle broth was beyond delicious, and the spicy sausage pieces throughout were yummy, too. All the flavor from it jumped into the mussels, and wow. It was served with bread so we could dip, and, in fact, if I had a spoon, I might have eaten the whole dang bowl as if it were soup. Not sure that's how you're supposed to do it, though..

Anywho, the entrees we chose were both the Porcini Dusted Filet Mignon (Smoked Mushroom Duxelle, Oven Roasted Roma Tomatoes, Horseradish Aioli, Blistered Asparagus). We didn't want to share a dish that sounded like that, so we both got one. The filet itself was cooked perfectly at a medium rare all the way through, and the sear on it was nice, too. Salt and pepper on point. The chef knew what he was doing with this. I had no idea what mushroom duxelle was when I ordered this, but image a mushroom puree and go check out my picture of it. It was yum. It was like a sauce-ish, but that was pure mushroom. Omg good. There was one tomato on my plate, and it wasn't roasted to the level I would have liked. The aioli was great, too. I avoid horseradish like the plague. It's too harsh, but this aioli was flavored with it, but not too much. It was super buttery and it was slathered on the steak, so it was unavoidable, but I didn't want to avoid it. Yum. And the "blistered" asparagus was not blistered. It was barely roasted. In addition to the menu items, there was a red, super sweet sauce on the plate, too, that was a great addition. Everything mixed together was awesome. Definitely not the best steak I've ever had in my life, but this was hands down the best steak dish I've ever had in my life. The only things that let me down just a little were the side veggies, but that's ok. I still fell in love that night.

For dessert, we had the Macallan 12 Yr Butterscotch Pudding (chantilly cream, sea salt chocolate toffee). The toffee piece on top was delish. I love sea salted sweets. The pudding itself was very butterscotch-y. Like a super Worther's Original, but in pudding form. There was also legit vanilla bean inside the pudding that added a great amount of texture. The dessert was good. It was served in a tiny little cute mason jar, too. Good way to end the meal.

Overall, this meal was awesome. Well worth the price of the Groupon, so be on the lookout for another one. I would say that it was worth the price outright, but I'm not in that tax bracket as of now. Either way, yes, come...

I was excited to join friends (party of 4) for Friday brunch/lunch at the beautiful Alfond Inn. Our experience was very disappointing. The 2 men at our table received their eggs benedict a full 10 minutes before my friend & I received our meals. The eggs were cooked well, the ham was good but the hollandaise was thin and only a mere drizzle (barely a tablespoon full) topped the eggs. After 10 minutes my friend received her entree salad and lukewarm soup. Her salad tasted good but all ingredients were in the bottom of the bowl and not on top of lettuce. Not as pictured in other reviews. It was another 5 minutes before I received my salad Niicoise that was described as having Nicoise olives, artichokes, tomatoes, green beans, seared tuna & eggs. I noticed the olives were missing and the server went to retrieve from the kitchen. I then realized that salad was also missing artichokes and tomatoes. So half the advertised ingredients were missing. I like a green bean with a bit of snap, but these tasted cold, raw and not cooked at all. The tuna was not freshly seared. It was ice cold (not quite defrosted), watery, rubbery, gray in color and tasteless except for a slightly fishy taste at the end. The server explained that the salad cook was new. I sent back my salad to order something different It was another 10 minutes before server returned for my replacement order. At that point everyone else had finished their meal. I ordered a cup of soup because I thought it would be quick. It was not. It was also lukewarm. Server then tried to remove everyone else's plates while I was just beginning my soup. The cost of the entree salad was removed from our check but at no time did a manager approach our table to apologize or see what he could do. No other accommodations were made. Our server apologized as we were leaving and told me that the new salad cook would undergo additional training for the future. Weird comment, and what good would that do me? The Alfond Inn deservedly is a 4 star hotel. I would expect the service and food at Hamilton's Kitchen to meet the same standards. We had bad food, bad service. I am not a complainer and rarely send back food, having spent time as a server many years ago in my college days. Huge disappointment. I would...