father's day: cold, overpriced, and leftovers.. i sent in this letter to management. i did hear back from phillip, one of the managers at this location who seemed to be making a sincere effort to resolve the serious concerns i addressed in my letter. however, it has now been a week since my last contact and although he promised to call me it has yet to occur, even after i called and left a message yesterday. if i hear back i will update my review accordingly, but for now all i can say is as of now i absolutely do not recommend eating here. also, upon looking at other reviews [on yelp], it feels as if the food issue occurs quite often and my experience was not an isolated one.
"i visited your establishment this father's day, june 15, 2014, for a 7:00 p.m. reservation and our experience was not only an absolute disappointment, it was astonishing to me how a restaurant would offer a buffet of such poor quality to their patrons.
i have visited your restaurant many times, most recently to celebrate my birthday and i have always been exceptionally happy with the service, food and attention i received at castaway. for this reason i thought it would be a great place to celebrate father's day.
your father's day buffet was an entirely different story. your establishment could not be bothered to keep the food hot, the buffet areas clean or keep the food well stocked. i was charged the same amount per buffet as guests who arrived at 9 a.m. and i expected the same quality or at the bare minimal a similar quality as your earlier guests. instead the condition of the food and buffet areas not only sub-par, it felt belittling to be served it and expected to enjoy it like nothing was wrong.
i had a serving of lamb from the carving station and upon taking my first bite i realized it was cold. not warm, cold. the gravy and biscuits were so cold and the biscuit so hard, i literally could not eat it because i felt i may lose a tooth in the process. my sister's eggs benedict may possibly have been delicious warm but cold were a different story. my honey-glazed ham was so cold it was sitting on a mixture of what looked like a thick syrup of pineapple glaze and was inedible. the wild rice was cold and hard as were the majority of your other available food items, including but hardly limited to your waffles, fried chicken, potatoes, baked beans, bbq brisket etc.
the only foods i found of somewhat acceptable quality were a salmon dish (which was served warm, definitely not hot) and a plate of pasta from your pasta station. at minimum the pasta was hot but still disappointing as you were all out of any sauces, other than pesto, and your pasta looked as if it had been sitting in the bowl for disconcerting length of time. by the time we made it to dessert the churros were cold and rock solid and there no cappuccino in the bin for my father to enjoy. at this point we were told by your staff that the buffet was on "last call" and that if we wanted anything else it was our last chance, at approximately 8:20 p.m.
it appeared that the castaway staff stopped bothering to restock food items well before our reservation time of 7p.m., leaving us with a buffet of what appeared to be and tasted like left-overs. we were not even allowed the opportunity to try some items on your menu because you were already "out" and felt the last guests were not deserving of these food options. if castaway had absolutely no problems with accepting reservations for specific time, 7 p.m., there is a reasonable expectation that we would at the very least be served hot food and not the entire day's leftovers, cold leftovers at that.
not only was the quality of food in a poor state the buffet display and presentation itself was in disarray. there was food spilled everywhere from previous guests that no one had even bothered to tidy up, and i noticed many of the "sterno" heat cans under your food stuff were out (likely the reason your food was already cold). despite these issues that were obviously in need of attention, staff members stood around buffet areas chit chatting. this observation is not inclusive of our server, a young blonde woman who was exceptionally bright, helpful and accommodating despite obvious dissatisfactions with everything else.
we should have walked through the buffet before we sat down, or perhaps even walked out after we realized the state your buffet was in, but my father was too polite to say much as this was our "treat" to him. on the other hand, i was too embarrassed to bring it up and instead hoped the buffet would improve and that our first impressions were wrong. needless to say it didn't and my father's day consisted of me apologizing for the way your establishment chose to conduct itself that night. i spent $200 on a meal for 4 people and felt that i could have paid much less elsewhere and at the very least enjoyed hot food. "