Stuart John's Sugar House

I’ve been coming to stuart john’s for years. it’s a splurge but the bottomless complimentary homemade maple syrup always made it worth it. today my friends and i came in on a double date, our first time back since they reopened for boiling season. i like to hope that today’s experience was an outlier as typically we enjoy ourselves despite the longer waits, but since our server was the owner i’m not certain we’d get different treatment were we to return.my group of four was sat promptly, but it took a while for our waitress robyne to greet us, her only table. so long that she came with her note pad asking what we wanted for both food and drink she likely realized we’d had plenty of time to review the menu and make selections, no apology for her delay in greeting us . after i ordered, i made sure to ask if she wrote it down correctly as i’ve had proteins omitted in error prior and wanted to be sure she did not repeat orders back to us upon transcribing, something she would later claim.our next interaction with robyne the owner was at least 50 minutes later young servers brought our drinks as robyne was busy doing anything but checking on us where we again received no apology for the wait. her unprompted, cheerful explanation for the delay was “the burgers have to cook 5 minutes each side” as if that made up for the fact we’d been waiting nearly an hour. she brought my boyfriend the entirely wrong meal and made things very uncomfortable when he pointed it out to her. again, no apology. someone else brought out his food when the rest of our party were finishing our meals. we’re not ones to ask for handouts or complain because awkward but if any, this seemed like an appropriate occasion to take my boyfriend’s meal off the bill.i approached robyne at the ice cream counter upon paying our tab as i felt compelled to calmly and politely relay how disappointed we were because it seemed like she had no idea anything was wrong. instead of understanding, she doubled down that the reason our meals took close to an hour to be served was because the burgers only one ordered at our table take ten minutes to cook? and that the reason several other tables came, ate and left within our wait time was because what we ordered was too complicated normal breakfast items, one burger and one special . to me, that doesn’t really make sense and it just felt like she was too embarrassed to admit maybe she forgot to put in our food order because she was too busy doing owner things behind the scenes. it felt very dismissive and unprofessional. she was unwilling to accept accountability for an overall disappointing experience.robyne did offer us free ice cream ?? after our conversation but still didn’t want to admit any fault. instead this ended up being the first time in my life i did not tip. unless you count the $3 fee for not using cash bringing our total to $89 for 4 … not sure we will be back, especially since the prices have skyrocketed and portions have shrunk. sad.edit: i now see the owner responds to all google reviews, good or bad. i’m hoping she won’t be disrespectful, dismissive, or dishonest about our experience to try and make it seem like we were the problem in reply. had the situation been handled cordially when our concerns were voiced politely, this review would not have been posted.

Excellent experience and food would highly recommend

A fairly large casual breakfast/lunch spot in a very scenic spot. We must have hit the server on a particularly bad day because we experienced several lapses in service that I don't think other tables had. As a result, I can not fairly judge the food. That said, I *might* go back another time to see if I have a better experience.

This place is a gem. It is one of the coolest breakfast spots we have found. The food was really great (get the Maple Pull Apart appetizer! . The atmosphere was everything. From adult coloring opportunities to questions to ask your table members for fun, it was just an experience. The baby cow barn was so sweet but know it smells like poop, as you would expect. Clearly the animals are well loved and the place was just special.

Really great place for brunch! Family friendly with really yummy food maple iced coffee. Best corned beef hash I’ve ever had. Dietary restrictions: Gluten free options available