Bistro on Main

What a rip off. The food and the atmosphere was enjoyable but the service, not so much. We opted to split a sandwich and split a salad. Yes, we missed the fine print on the menu that said there was a charge for this but our waitress never even mentioned it. When we received our bill we were charged not once but twice for splitting. When we spoke with management about removing one of the charges they declined! Nice.

Wish I would have looked here first. $$$ and ³⁄₅ starts pretty much sums it up. It’s pricey for the amount of food you get and it’s mostly decent food, not great. The $ 8 pimento cheese fritters are amazing, though. But you only get 3, not even enough to share with a group. A $ 10 «bowl» of soup is really only a cup and a half by volume. The soup was pretty good, but overpriced for the size and misrepresented. The quinoa salad was decent, but basically something I easily could have made at home without much effort. To be fair, the description matched what I got. Service was slow, but the guy had just started, so it’s understandable. He was very polite, though. I wouldn’t say «don’t go here.» It wasn’t bad. Just have average overall expectations and be willing to overspend a little and you’ll be fine.

Every year at this time when the summer season begins here in Highlands, restaurants that have been closed all winter begin to reopen. Some of them hang on to the kitchen and wait staff they’ve always had. Others experience high turnover. The Bistro seems to fall in the latter category.
So at some establishments you always hope that the new season will bring in a good chef who can really cook some good food. Not so at the Bistro this year. They had 3 stars last year and they are still stuck in mediocre land.
That’s not to say the food is bad here. It’s just average — not good, not bad. But they still charge Highlands prices, which are expectedly higher than other towns.
BUT, I will say that the Bistro has the best outdoor seating in Highlands. So, if you can’t sit outside, take a pass and find another restaurant to enjoy.
Today was Mothers Day and they had live music, a female singer with a beautiful voice playing the guitar. Every woman received a lovely red rose from the Manager, which was a thoughtful touch.
The Bistro has a nice variety of items on the menu. Sophia and I both chose the chicken salad melt which comes with one side item. I chose a Caesar salad and she had a house salad. They were just okay. Not a terribly big portion nor did it have much flavor.
The iced tea was weak, overpriced at $ 2.50, and served in a plastic tumbler (ugh!). If you like to drink, they have a full bar menu and the drinks did look pretty good.
But the weather was perfect and we enjoyed the live music. We’ll be back on another beautiful day because the setting is so perfect to enjoy a bird’s eye view of Main Street. Maybe a different menu item will taste better. We can only dream. ..

great food great service. Nice ambiance, the party room takes a little way from it though; An almost Vermont experience.

Service was great! Quick and courteous, not very impressed with the food, good size but not gourmet for the price. The quinoa salad had mostly greens and the dressing was ok

We have eaten here 3 times, with each time being an excellent experience. So nice to have a dog friendly restaurant with great food. Last night we enjoyed an outdoor table with a fire feature which greatly added to the experience. The berry lemonade drink was a little weak and not as full of flavor as before. The steaks and the trout were excellent! On a previous visit I had had the Mahi Mahi special, which was one of my favorite meals ever! We had two large dogs with us, and it was great for them to have plenty of room by us. We will be back!

We were there last night ⁸⁄₃₁ delightful experience. The fried green tomatoes were top shelf. Service excellent we all enjoyed our entrees. Will return on October.

Wonderful spot in Highlands to enjoy lunch outside. Great fruit flavored lemonades. Had a very good open faced chicken salad sandwich and my husband had a blackened salmon sandwich. Service was very helpful and enjoyable.

Average at best. Tourist beware! Quality and taste of the food leave much to be desired. We should’ve shopped around rather than being drawn in by the red umbrellas on the inviting patio.

Good food. Gioni was my server — he was great– a real hustler. Had kids with us so speed was appreciated. Never felt rushed though.

Our second time eating here. The service was good. We had 2 appetizers, fried green tomatoes and pimento cheese fritters. Lunch was very good. Classic sandwiches with a bit of a twist. Will definitely come back again.

I really really really wanted to be able to write a good review for this place. Unfortunately neither the service nor food were worthy of a positive review.
First of all, let me extol the setting. The outdoor seating is lovely, the Inn (I only saw the lobby and bathroom) is inviting, and the menu is interesting. Unfortunately this is the extent of positives we experienced during our visit.
We first looked at the menu and were passed several times by a woman who ended up being our waitress. She told us they were only accepting cash payment as their internet had failed and therefore their ability to process credit card payments. This combination of events should have been a red flag, but we were not looking for such an omen. When she finally saw fit to seat us, we waited for menus, we waited for our drink orders to be taken, we waited for our food order to be taken, and then we waited for our drinks to arrive only slightly before the appetizer we ordered arrived. Having waited so much for so little, we decided our business would be best directed elsewhere for the remainder of our meal.
As for the food, it was edible. We ordered the fried green tomatoes, a dish that can be absolutely incredible and is fairly simple to execute well. The tomatoes were begging for salt (which of course was absent from the table) and the sauce was sparse. I believe it could have benefited from additional seasoning but we never received enough to fairly judge it. I realize I tried very little they had on offering, but the abysmal service made additional tasting of the food undesirable. When we finished eating we both sat back in our chairs enjoying the scenery. We never saw our waitress again. Finally, after waiting at least 15 minutes for the return of our waitress (who flitted about the patio but never saw fit to check in with us again) we left the appropriate amount of cash on the table and left.
This place has potential. With better training or more closely managed wait staff the service issue could easily be remedied. As for the food, it is essential that the items are seasoned appropriately if salt and pepper is not to be presented on the dining table. The pretensions of keeping the salt and pepper shakers off the table is only warranted when the food is seasoned well enough to make those pretensions well-​founded. A little attention by management to the food and service could make this place an extremely great restaurant for visitors and residents of the area. But unless these changes are made we will not return and would not recommend.

I had a few apps, which were great! Fried green tomatoes & pimento cheese fritters. However, my companion really did not care for his cheeseburger. He believes it wasn’t fresh beef and it was cold when it arrived to our table. Service was also pretty slow, we didn’t see the waitress after she took our order until the check came. Their patio was amazing also right on Main St.

Great staff! Food less exciting! I ordered the grass fed burger, it was obviously a frozen patty that sat under the heat lamp. The manager tried to make it up to me, but I was already over it! I think it’s very embarrassing for restaurant to charge what they charge for what they served me! I won’t be back

We have eaten Thanksgiving dinner here for 3 years now. The price is right. They offer all the foods we would want. Love the corn chowder. The service is always very good and friendly. The atmosphere is lovely and quiet. Our only complaint was in 2014, the buffet items were not as hot as should be.

If you want pay $ 10 for a burger that comes premade out of the freezer… this is your place. The vegetables were fine, but nothing special. The rest of my family’s food ranged from bad to okay. I just want to know how they go to bed at night knowing they charge $ 10 for a burger that McDonald’s patrons would laugh at.

This review is for an experience we had with this restaurant about six weeks ago. My boyfriend, my sister and I came to the Main Street Inn’s café for lunch one day while on vacation on our way out of town to our next destination. After a twenty or so minute wait, we were seated. And then we wait for someone to greet us and bring water. And wait. And wait. We end up sitting there for more than 15 minutes before the server comes over. In all fairness, they were busy, and I could certainly overlook something like that if it weren’t for the events that succeeded it. He finally takes our orders — I order a salad with trout. Yet another twenty-​five minutes later, they bring out our food — but my salad has chicken on it. So all that time and they messed up the order. Keep in mind, by now it has been over an hour since we arrived and we are just getting our meals. Meanwhile, my sister and boyfriend are starving, so they begin to eat while I wait. And wait. And wait. When they eventually bring out my salad, my fellow diners have long since finished their meals. As an aside, the food was truly mediocre at best (several mushy, wilted greens in my salad, trout not well cooked, etc) — which, again, I wouldn’t take such issue with except for the fact that the entire experience was so unpleasant, upsetting even. They then bring out the check and my boyfriend puts down his card to pay. For context — my boyfriend is French and so is his bank (and therefore his card). So we wait for the card to come back. Now it’s been NEARLY TWO HOURS since we arrived. We look over at the server station and something seems amiss. The server is frantically searching for something. Two others join him. My heart sinks. Just as I suspected, the server comes to us and says most abruptly, even defensively «We can’t find your card. We looked everywhere. It must have fallen through the cracks in the deck. Sorry.» This would be irritating enough for most people — after all, when you hand the server your card to pay, it is their responsibility for those few minutes it’s in their possession — but since the card/​bank were French there would be simply NO WAY to walk into a branch and get a temp card or withdraw funds. Which meant that we had absolutely no way of accessing his funds until he could have a new card delivered, from France, a week later at an expedited rate. We tried to explain this to the manager — we were genuinely in distress at this point (not to mention already an hour and a half late getting on the road because of this whole ordeal) — and her response, in addition to comping the meal (the LEAST they could do!), was that they would have someone come and pull up the board to get the card out from under the deck, but that he wouldn’t be able to come until later. So we left, expecting to receive a phone call later that day with info about the card that they lost. Needless to say, we left Main Street Inn flustered, upset and stressed out. We never got that phone call, so we call the next day and get the owner on the phone. It’s incredible that WE had to call HIM to get news on the situation. A good — even an adequate — manager/​owner would have contacted us as soon as he heard what had happened. Instead we get this guy on the phone and he tells us that, no, they will not pull up a board to get the card out. He went on about it being ‘a historical property’ that can’t be tampered with. Hm. Didn’t know they had perfectly cut 2x4s back in the late 19^th century! We tried to explain to him that he should have had mats in the server station to keep things from falling through cracks, that it would be a simple procedure to pry up one deck board, and that, above all, he was putting us in a situation where we had no access to our funds for the rest of our vacation. Not surprisingly, given the tone of the rest of these absurd events, the owner was rude and defensive and utterly unapologetic. At one point he called me a liar (!!!) when I told him that there was no way we could access the funds — his reasoning being that he had ‘been to Europe before’ and knows how these things work (I just. can’t). The ignorance and boorishness were staggering. I told him that I would make sure to write a negative review of this experience and post it everywhere I could — so that’s what I’m doing — my only recourse after all of that. To close, we understand that accidents happen (even if they could have been avoided). But what upset us most about this experience was the shoddy way it was handled by the manager (who was dishonest when she assured us that they would have someone come out and pry the board) and the owner (see above). What should have been a pleasant last meal in Highlands became a headache we had to deal with for the rest of our vacation.
There are plenty of sweet little places to eat in Highlands that have decent food, good service, and would most likely show a modicum of regret for dropping your bank card into an abyss. STAY AWAY FROM HERE.

Food is very good to excellent. Have had lunch there on several occasions over the past 3 summers, and it’s never been a disappointment. Today was Shrimp and Grits, Ceasar salad with grilled chicken, and house specialty — Homemade «loaded» potato chips. Yum Yum on a big time scale !!
People next to us duplicated our order after they saw it. Portions are generous and very tasty.
Past sandwiches and sides are very good. Chicken Pot Pie is huge and excellent. Waitstaff is good to great. Sit outside if you can. Crowded during beautiful summer days. Get there by 11:30.
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My husband and I stopped here for lunch. I ordered the Turkey, Apple, and Brie sandwich with a side of cheese grits. My husband got the Deluxe Pimento Cheese sandwich with chips. My sandwich was pretty good — the turkey was moist and the apples were cooked in cinnamon. The bread was decent but I would have preferred a crispier bread for texture. My grits weren’t anything to write home about. I was hoping for a creamy, cheesy stone grits but they were lacking. My husband enjoyed his sandwich stating it had a little spice kick which added flavor. He said the bacon and tomato addition was great. He loved the homemade potato chips saying they were perfectly cooked and crispy. Overall our experience was nice. We ate outside where the weather was perfect and our server was attentive.

We had lunch here and it was fantastic! I had the best lobster bisque I’ve ever eaten and my husband had a delish chicken salad melt! We sat outside listening to fab live music!!!