Bil-Mar Restaurant

Reviews 4

MI

Michael Cerier

I recently ate at this restaurant and I felt compelled to tell the local community or anyone who was considering eating at this establishment the horrible experience I had. Our evening started out with a lengthy wait to see our server. When our sever finally came by after twenty minutes, we had to ask for menus, drink menus, and cutlery(came out after our food). This process took an additional ten minutes. The server even failed to give us his name and this made it extremely difficult to attract his attention to our needs. When we arrived he had one other table of three and they left shortly after we arrived, in other words, the restaurant was not very full and we were our waiters only table. Our orders were taken after another ten minutes. One of our party at our table asked for a refill on his water and waited thirty minutes for a refill after asking several times. Our meals came out an hour after ordering and two meals did not come out. When he came back to the table several minutes later we asked where the meals were and he explained that one of the meals had been dropped and needed to be re-cooked, which is understandable, but did not comment on the other meal. One meal was overcooked one meal was undercooked and several meals were just wrong. When the dropped plate was re-cooked and brought out the second missing meal still had not come out. We had to ask three more times and finally my father had to go the kitchen himself to ask for the meal. My friend had asked for a steak knife and when it finally came out it was handed to him handle first with the servers bare hand on the blade. We needed to ask several times for refills on drinks and even those were hard to come by. I decided I thought the manager needed to know about their employees service. When I first asked for a manager a man talked to me and he said, and I quote, "Im sorry but there is nothing I can do. You will just have to tough it out". I refused to accept this and got a hold of the "real" manager and she was very polite and apologized for our servers actions. She also made several unreasonable justifications for her server. As the server saw the manager speaking to our table he was hiding behind a corner laughing with his friends while looking at the table. After coming up to assist the table one last time he pointed his fingers in the shape of a gun and pretended to shoot himself in the head as he walked away. She also did not offer any compensation for our meal. Two of our meals were not even eaten. After horrible food, horrible service, and blatant disrespect, even the amazing sunset will not convince me to return to this establishment. If you decide to eat here I would go in with low expectations, try to ignore the restaurant completely, and just enjoy the view. In my opinion it simply isnt worth any persons time.

AS

Ashley Boehle

This restaurant is not even worth one star. We had a family reunion in Grand Haven and decided a nice family dinner would end the trip well for everyone. We had a group of 14, all ages 18 and up. I arrived a little late and had to ask where my party was seated, because I wasnt dressed fancy, the lady assumed they would be on the back deck and rudely said "check the deck, im sure theyre out there " Not even willing to direct me where to go or let me look in the actual dining room. No one was on the deck. I go inside and ignore her and walk right into the main dining room and my party is there. After more than 15 minutes, we had gotten our drinks but still no menus. After menus came, it was another 20 minutes before anyone took our orders. When we ordered, we had four separate bills so they had 4 different waitresses helping us. Nothing was ever consistent and it was someone new each time staff came by. After an hour we got our food, well 11 of us. My sister, Aunt and Myself had to wait another 15 minutes before we got our dinners. My aunt had the Sea Food Platter, and the Lobster tail was forgotten and almost everything was overcooked. My sister and I got the salmon and it tasted like it was bought at Walmart three weeks ago. Dry, Dry, Dry. And my salmon was half the size as the one on the dinner my sister had! Also, the Seafood Chowder was made with imitation crab, the flavor was great but for a tiny cup of soup for $12 I dont expect imitation crab. When we got our bills everyone was shocked at how much the totals were. The menus say prices but the wait staff make suggestions or ask a question like "Soup or Salad? after you say your meal like it comes with your meal. My soup didnt come with the mean but she said that like it came with it. I wouldnt have gotten the soup if I knew. For three people, we paid $101.76. There is no way in hell that that dinner was worth that much money. I could see maybe $40. Its embarrassing to plan a nice family dinner and have it go that terrible. Especially since some of the family traveled form Washington state and Alabama. This place must thrive as being a tourist trap. It had a beautiful sunset view but in reality that is all that this place had. Im from Detroit, we do not take thinks like that well. Especially disrespect from the beginning. Our party was very quiet and polite and did not deserve a dinner that awful.

NI

Nicole Bowers

We had a 7pm reservation on a Wednesday. Were seated in the center of the building even though we request to be along the window facing the lake and there were several open tables available along the window. The smoked white fish dip was runny and bland, tasted like liquid smoke not smoked white fish. The lake perch was covered in scales. Our service was not the best, the waitress told us she was sorry our order took so long because the owner put her in "time out" so she could not bring us drink refills and prompt service. We were charged for the baked potato that came with the meal and never received the salad that was ordered instead of the potato. The prices were high, and the food we received was not what the menu stated, I was supposed to get coleslaw with my fish but never received it and the kids meal was literally noodles with sause, no bread/toast or anything.. most all beer is in a can. The manager/OWNER was very rude, never apologizing for the fact that we didnt receive our food until after 8pm and only had one drink refill which we got from another server. He told us the normal wait for food is 1.5 HOURS and that we should be happy we had food before their usual expected time. HE WAS SO RUDE!!! We will NEVER go back. DONT WASTE YOUR TIME AND MONEY.

SH

Sharon Paniwozik

We decided to celebrate our 42nd anniversary with a nice dinner and decided that the Bil-Mar would be nice since it has a view of the lake. As soon as we walked in we were hit between the eyes with a horrible musty smell. We did get a table by the windows since there was only two other couples in the place. We had gone online before leaving home to look at the menu and get an idea of what we would like to have - only to arrive and be handed a completely different menu with nothing on it that was the same as the online one. My husband ordered the special and I got the Top Sirloin and asked about adding a lobster tail. Our waitress (who must have been new) didnt know the price so we said to just go ahead figuring it wouldnt be that much. Low and behold when the bill came they charged an additional $20 for one tiny lobster tail - making my meal $42 - which was definitely not worth it. The meat was okay - not much flavor and must husbands was supposed to be herb crusted delmonico but there was not crusting of anything. The margarita I had tasted like they poured it out of a bottle over and ice and thats all. We wont be returning.