Rock Garden Cafe

Rock Garden has been one of our favorite restaurants for a few years. We love to sit outside when the weather is nice. Food is always excellent and the staff have always taken great care of us. Tonight we brought our 2 yr old with us, which can tend to be a stressful situation fir everyone- staff, fellow customers and Mom and Dad! Our waiter couldn't have been nicer to us. They were all patient even when our dancing little one took off and ran behind the bar. She was not very good at the job so they showed good judgement in not hiring her 😉 point is, they are a courteous and caring establishment whether you're having date night or family night and I've never had a bad meal! Cheers!

So, we went here for my husband's birthday. And I didn't write a review at the time because it was an upsetting experience. While the food was good, the service was lacking. The waitress could not get our order right. I had asked if I could get the vodka sauce on penne pasta, instead of going and asking she stood there and wrote it down. I finally asked her to check because if I couldn't I would order something different, to which she looked a little dumbfounded. She finally asked and said yes, ok great. She then brings my husband's drink and immediately asked if he would like another (mind you he hadn't even had time to take a sip of his 1st). After the food was brought I had asked for a separate plate for the meatball as it was covered in marinara sauce-which was ok, but would have liked to have know that when i asked about the change. After the plate was brought by the manager, we did not see any staff till it was time for the check. Disappointing service, but the food was good.

My wife and I were there on 3/9 for dinner and we each ordered a burger with the tater tot appetizer. It was a bit of a wait, but when the appetizer finally arrived, the center of the tater tots were ice cold. Our very nice waiter apologized and took the plate back. After a long wait with no appetizer in sight, I stopped our waiter as he walked by and asked if he could fire our burgers even though we had not received our do-over appetizer yet. I asked only because we were approaching over 45 minutes since we first ordered with no food served. He said he would, and about 20 seconds later, he arrived at our table with our burger platters in each hand, followed by the tater tots. This is where the ONE STAR REVIEW TAKES PLACE. Our burgers were warm at best with cold french fries. As a former waiter and bartender with 30 years of experience, the breakdown is as follows: Our waiter initially returned our cold appetizer back to the kitchen, in the mean time our burgers were already fired and plated and sat under a heat lamp, or somewhere off to the side of a heat lamp while our do-over appetizer was being cooked. So when I asked the waiter to fire our burgers they had already been sitting for at least 15 minutes as this was obvious when he served them. We ate our luke warm burgers because we were hungry and the tater tots were cooked fully this time. What is so disappointing and obvious was the lack of a manager or owner during all of this. A manager or owner would have seen our two burgers collecting dust and getting cold and would have instructed the kitchen staff to make two new ones. I know this because I've witnessed this working in the business. Based on our whole experience, it was clear there was no manager on duty or owner in the house. If there was, one of the two would have approached our table at a minimum. In the end our waiter could not have been nicer and we were very understanding knowing this small disaster had nothing to do with him. Instead, a careless kitchen and a lack of someone in charge are to blame for this one star dinner experience.