Review of Lunch at Lakeside Grille at Ramsey Golf & Country Club

Today we went to visit some of my family members in New Jersey. We decided to stop by the Ramsey Golf & Country Club for some lunch. Warning: Abbey’s, the actual restaurant, is closed for lunch and requires reservations for dinner. Anyways, because of this reason, we ended up entering through the back door of the restaurant and through the bar to the hostess’s podium.

The restaurant was completely empty (my family tends to have really late lunches). The hostess seemed nice (at first). I was trying to get us a table while my family was hung up talking to a waiter about why the Abbey restaurant was closed for lunch. I wanted to get things moving, so I got us a table… but my family had already arranged to sit on the indoor porch with a view to the golf course through the waiter they had ran into. The hostess seemed a bit annoyed when the other waiter came over to update her, and she said to him with a deep sigh “so you wanna take this then??” I just walked to the new table and let them figure it out.

When we sat down, we looked at the Lunch menu with a bit of disappointment… we are used to large meals for lunch, but they just had the small lunch options. We dwelled on that for a little while, and then the horror began: our waitress came over. She was talking unusually loudly for a waitress at a high-class place. You could hear her echo across the room at the other side of the porch. She seemed to have a bit of an attitude going with that voice. I was already uncomfortable by this, until she did the unthinkable: she talked back to my father.

When the girl asked him what he wanted to drink, my father just said “1 more minute please,” in a very quiet voice. She obviously didn’t hear him, so she came back even louder “and for you SIR??” He turned and said “I said I needed 1 more minute” and she said “I’m sorry SIR, but you were not looking at me when you said that, so I didn’t HEAR what you said.” I was APPALLED!!!! I COULD NOT BELIEVE THIS!!! SHE DID NOT JUST SAY THAT!!!

We finished with our orders and I was PISSED. I told my father I wanted to go talk to the manager to get a new waitress. He told me to let it go. I looked at my husband, and he said that if she did anything else, I had his permission to go. (Not that I ever need his “permission” to do anything, but knowing my temperament, I trust his judgment in situations like this more than my own). So I had to let it go, but it had already ruined my lunch.

After the main course, I went to the restroom, where one of the waitresses (a different one) came in to talk to her boyfriend on her cellphone.

I came back to the table. We were ready to order dessert. I saw our waitress approaching us from across the room, and she yells out “How are we doing? Are you guys all set?” My jaw DROPPED. Did she really just yell out at us from across the room?

On my way out, I took a picture of the dinky pathetic little fountain that was right next to our table. I thought it was a perfect metaphor for our experience at this place: I guess it’s supposed to be a high class fountain for a high-class restaurant, but it just ends up being a low-class dinky place completely lacking the class worthy of customers with any level of self respect. I felt like I was at any old town diner as opposed to a membership country club. Actually, I have been treated better at town diners than I did here.

The food was pretty good. If you can let go of customer service, then you’ll have a great meal.

ina