"This place is awful. I 've been there a few times now for friend 's parties or whatever. I now feel confident that my experiences were not one-off bad days or what have you.Let 's start with the obvious. This restaurant is very expensive. An entree and a beer, split an appetizer, expect $150 for two people. That puts it in the highest price bracket in Santa Cruz county. With that in mind, every bad thing I have to say about this restaurant is just doubly bad.The food is consistently lackluster, at best. Until tonight I have literally never had a lasagna that I didn 't like. Theirs was soggy and heavy, but largely devoid of meat without either being vegetarian or having the panache one would need to put into a vegetarian lasagna to be taken seriously. Cheese was cheap, meat was mostly subbed out for soggy flavorless mushrooms and similarly uninspiring spinache.Several friends offered me portions of their food, none were good. I do not recommend the veal, it was horrifying.Service was only marginally better than the awful food. One waiter, also handling bussing for every table there. We couldn 't get this guys attention if we were on fire. To his credit, ha seemed like a nice man, but he did not seem overly experienced, and could not have handled even the modest number of customers by himself even if he were the best.I saved the worst for last. We were a party of 10, several couples. Naturally we would like separate bills. They demanded a mandatory 20% tip, extra for splitting the bill, and YET EXTRA per card. It was insane. It ended up being something like a 35% sur charge on top of their very high prices. We rebelled and one of us paid by card and the rest of us venmo 'ed him our share of bill. Still we were stuck with a 20% mandatory gratuity for terrible service.In summary, there are other, much better places to spend your $75/plate. Shadow brook never disappoints for about the same price. Crow 's Nest rarely disappoints for about the same money. And, of course, Scopazzi 's is just a little farther down Highway 9, about the same price, and fantastic every time in every dimension of what one could want in a restaurant."
