Gelston House

Recommends

kidsdaddy

Joined 5 years ago

Best place,food,service,attitude,. Hello there ccmom,,Gelston House,,,is one of the best places in CT river, i dont know what people say or think about this restaurant,but all i know is thats great place,the food ,service,attitude, everything is exellent

and the way they treat you there,its imposible that you can have that some other restaurants. I took my family there for Thanksgiving brunch,you just think that you are somwhere in vacation,or in paris,

there buffet was exelent,i had four Belgium Wafels,they were great,fresh french crepes,a lot of main course choises,and i will go there every sunday,so ican enjoy my day off, Try this place you won't regret

James,,OLD S

Recommends

ashleyGGS

Joined 5 years ago

Best place on the river. Have had great service everytime, Food declious as well. Highly reccomend. View of the river completes the dining experience

Doesn't Recommend

eileen2817

Joined 5 years ago

Absolutely Awful. The only reason I give this restaurant any star at all is because ofthe view. Sitting above the river watching the boats and the bridge is lovely. The food and service were terrible. We went tothe newly opened beer garden to celebrate my husband's birthday with our 25 and 21 year old kids. My daughter and I ordered cocktails fromt he list on the back of the menu. The server had not seen this addition to the menu. We also ordered the chili cheese fries appetizer. The drinks came in good time but the cocktails were weak and very sugary. It took nearly 30 minutes to get the fries. When they arrived there was no chili and the cheese had been drying out under a heat lamp. When we asked about the chili the waitress checked with the kitchen and reported that the chili was "in the fries"????????? We said this was silly and she went back to the kitchen and returned with a bowl containing 3 raw red chile peppers. An unidentified young man came to talk to us and was arguin that the jalapenos on the fries were the chili. I asked to see a menu and pointed out that the description said the fries came with "Three Alarm Chili". He said that the menu was misleading. Absolutely ridiculous!

Immediately our entrees came out. When a busboy wanted to take the full plate of fries I told him we had just gotten them. The entrees were mostly forgetable, but in my case just awful. Fried clams are not rectangular. Clams just are not that shape. I don't know what they were but I was not going to argue with a completely disinterested staff. When our dinner plates were cleared the waitress plunked down our bill. We informed her we wanted desert (only because it was a birthday, we werent' expecting much). The deserts were predictably so-so to bad.j It's a shame that the management of this place can't provide at least decent food in such a beautiful setting. If you are going to a show, go across the street or to another town. This place is just plain bad.

Doesn't Recommend

ccmom

Joined 6 years ago

not worth the visit. I do not recommend this restaurant. I came with my children to sit outside in the garden & listen to "Basically Blues" as advertised by the banner in front. Seat yourself, slow service, the drinks come, again slow, the food comes with very little appeal and taste. Martini made in a drink glass, so presentation does not matter. I went to get drinks at the bar, my table was then cleared, the food that wasn't finished cleared, book and pen and my pocketbook all taken away. My pocketbook was shoved in a corner at the bussers station. When mentioned all we get is a 1/2 hearted "sorry". After all this, I go to pay my bill, I am using a gift certificate that I have had a while, as the restaurant has been closed for over a year. The manager comes to me and says we will not accept this card, it belongs to the "old Gelston House, we are under new ownership" and walks away handing me my whole bill on my credit card. No discussion, very rude. If this is how you try and keep customers returning, you can bet that I won't. I live 10 minutes from this restaurant and will not return. I work at a very high paced restaurant myself and I couldn't be more proud of our service, food prep after seeing this. And by the way, Basically Blues wasn't playing that night after all, they just didn't take down the banner......great night :)

Recommends

momcox1

Joined 6 years ago

Fantanstic food, service, and views. My husband and I were taking a leisure ride last weekend and stumbled onto the Gelsten House. It was such a pleasant surprise to find a restaurant that has it all!! A wonderful victorian building with a very nice decor, great view of the Connecticut River, fantastic service and food. We sat in the dining room and watched boats and kayaks venture up and down the river. We could not ask for anything better. After we had two great meals (seared tuna and steak) we ventured into the bar for a few after dinner drinks. It is wonderful to finally have this restaurant reopened with such great service, food, and views.

Recommends

njpark

Joined 6 years ago

Above and Beyond. A friend and I drove to East Haddam last Thursday to see "Singin' in the Rain." We started out late because my friend had run into an accident on his way home from work. We ran into ANOTHER accident on the way down to East Haddam. We called Gelston House saying that we would never make our 5:30 reservation time - probably wouldn't even be there by 6:30. The hostess graciously suggested that we order over the phone, they would prepare the food and have the meals ready whenever we did arrive. Because after the accident we also ran into a heavy rainstorm, we didn't actually get there until 7:00 and the show was to start at 7:30! Our meals were ready and waiting, we started right in and even had time for dessert.

Aside from all that, my salmon cake was accompanied by a remoulade (?). The hostess didn't know what that was and the young waiter didn't know either, but checked with the chef and came back to report. It's a fancy tartar sauce.

All in all, we were very impressed with the helpfulness which was well above and beyond the call of duty - and the food was damned good too!

Doesn't Recommend

fastdoc

Joined 11 years ago

Cold shoulder. Almost 30 years ago I took my first wife to Gelston House for our 1st Anniversary. The place was grand, service, food - everything was wonderful.

Two years ago, (4 after my divorce) I took a very pretty date (that I wanted to favorably impress) there as well.

No sale.

Poor service - "iffy" presentation; and the only area smokers can sit is in a too busy (and way too loud) bar.

No thanks - I'll never go back.

Got the pretty date anyway - (I'm tenancious) and we'll be married in 2 weeks. Took me years to get this beautiful woman, but the Gelston House was NO help.

DCH

Southington, CT