Had lunch at the Riverview while visiting Troutdale/Gresham area. Impressed by the decor and beautiful setting, but that's about it! Staff seemed reluctant to provide service. They were short, and looked very unhappy. Still we wanted to give them a chance, and thought that, maybe, the food would be great and the server would warm up. WRONG! They maintained the gloomy aura the entire time. The server had, absolutely, no rapport with his customers. Besides a couple of occupied tables on the deck, we were the only other table to serve in the entire restaurant. It still took a full hour for our food to arrive! The entire time, the server hardly even came back to check on how we were doing. He offered no apologies for the food taking so long. We were basically ignored with the exception of filling our water glasses twice (without uttering a word while doing so) before the meal came. When I got my Crab Cake Caesar, the crab cakes were cold inside!!! The flavor of crab in the crab cakes were non-existant. I can taste more of the starch than the crab! I have always been very leery of sending food back fearing what the staff would do to it behind the scenes, but I had to send it back. It was, simply, not palatable the way it came. \r
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We were, extremely, disappointed with the entire experience. We had high hopes for this restaurant, and would have loved to be repeat customers. The menu looked impressive. We would have loved to go back for dinner; however, that is no longer the case due to the poor service. A piece of advice: Great service can make mediocre food taste great, but great food, can do nothing to improve horrible service.
Pros: Ambience, Parking
Cons: Horrible Staff and Service
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