A friend of ours hosted a nice party in the private dining room at Mestro last night (Saturday). We decided to use that as an excuse for a little weekend getaway, and stayed at the RC all weekend. The room was great, the hotel staff was generally fantasic, the breakfast buffet was wonderful, and even a room service lunch was delicious. But our two dinner experiences were underwhelming.

Friday night we ate at The Steak House. I must say that the "team" service worked great here--we were well attended through the entire meal. The French onion soup and the lobster macaroni & cheese appetizer were quite good. My wife had the horseradish-crusted seabass quich was actually quite tasty, but the side items were dry and bland. I had the crab cakes which were passable. Not much crab, but the Hawaiian sweet potatoes were great. Dessert was weak--she had panna cotta and I had vodka-soaked berries. The panna cotta was the consistency of wall spackle and about as tasty. The berries were actually dry and not very fresh. I guess we left feeling underwhelmed because things went downhill from the start of the meal to the end, and because we expect so much from a Ritz-Carlton restaurant. I also learned a lesson I joked about before the meal began: when you're eating in a place called "The Steak House," it's probably a good idea to order steak.

The even bigger disappointment was Maestro. Again, our expectations were high as this is a AAA 5-diamond restaurant that is often reviewed as one of if not the best restaurant in the mid-Atlantic region. We had a five-course dinner with two or three choices for each course, plus wines. There were 14 people in the private room, which is the maximum. I won't review the food specifically, but will just say that there was a lot of discussion about how uninteresting it was. My overall impression was that the chef has put all his effort into presentation but has forgotten about taste.

But it was the service that really shocked me. One problem was that only one waiter was assigned to the room of 14 guests. Others did help with serving each course, but the one waiter was incapable of keeping wine and water glasses full. He also had a huffy attitude, and acted as if requests were a total imposition on him. As an example, one woman asked if there was any kind of bread available other than the sourdough. He said no, but luckily a manager stopped in at one point to ask how everything was going. This woman said that it would have been nice to have more varieties of bread available, to which the manager replied that there were 7 or 8 different kinds--which would you like? (That's the kind of response the waiter should have given.) I asked for a slice of lime for my sparkling water, and he finally dropped off a dried-out piece about 30 minutes later. And to top it off, all evening long people kept having the wrong items delivered to them. With only two or three choices per course, this was inexcusable.

Were my expectations too high? Probably. If I recalibrate my thinking to consider the Ritz-Carlton simply a high-end Marriott then most of my complaints wither away as insignificant. But I won't be able to think of Maestro as anything but an overrated, overpriced restaurant.