Fireside At the Partridge Berry

Service was mediocre. Food was above average. Good choice of local wines. Dessert menu was very predictable. Would we go back? Yes. Nothing was awful but there really were high points either. Atmosphere was more of an attraction than the food.

I’ll probably re-​review this place in a while after the anger simmers a bit, but this place did its best to ruin our valentine’s day.
Our reservation was at 7:30 and pretty much right away they told me it was going to be a wait, which I can understand being the biggest date night of the year. We get some wine and hang out at the bar, at 8:15 I walk over and ask the hostess and then we get seated a few minutes later. So we sit down and after waiting about 15 minutes some guy comes over and seems really annoyed that we’re sitting there and gets a little huffy when we ordered a glass of wine. Ok. Then we look over the menu and figure out what we want pretty quickly, then we wait for the guy. and wait. eventually he tries to give us the wine and run, but we stopped him and gave him our order. 9:00 and we order. We get our salads a few minutes later and had to send one back for just being destroyed with parmesan, easily two cups on a small salad, so we’re still trying for nice and ask for another and we get it. At about 9:45 the waiter gives us some free appetizer we didn’t ask for to excuse the slowness and just wouldn’t come back. At 10:15 I just started hailing over anyone I could, so we could go home. A different waitress noticed me and said she’d figure out what was going on and a minute later the manager comes over and starts apologizing and offers to comp the meal – I get it, damage control, but comping the only $ 15 we could manage to spend over the last three hours was just silly. I didn’t want to yell and I didn’t, but the only reason I could come up with was that the waiter just didn’t care at all.
This is one of the only date restaurants in town, but wow. This place needs to get their staff in line. I’m usually really nice to waitstaff and I kept my cool with this guy, but I’m surprised he wasn’t fired on the spot. By time we left the place was already quiet and most people were already done, so it wasn’t busy anymore, just seemed like the waiter didn’t put our meal in the system or maybe just took a 90 minute break and didn’t want to tell anyone.

I give this place a «4» out of «5» — the food is pretty awesome! It’s located east of downtown Watertown on Hwy 3, kind of near the Felts Mills and Black River area. I have been here several times in the summer and fall this year — I don’t know why there aren’t more reviews on this place!
Ambience — 4.5. The interior has a lodge-​like feeling, a big fireplace, awesome wooden beams, a great feeling to the place. Big windows throughout to see the beautiful trees outdoors. The reason why I didn’t give this 5 stars is because several times the music choices that are being played are a little too soft (volume-​wise), or the music itself is kind of a humdinger. However, that being said, we were here on a Friday night about a month ago and there was live music in the lounge area (another beautiful part of the restaurant) and it was perfect.
Food — 5. House salads have housemade dressings of your choice — I loved the blue cheese dressing and my husband loved the housemade French dressing. The French onion soup is perfect. I had the scallop risotto last night — scrumptious sea scallops perfectly seared and placed on top of the creamy risotto that had cremini mushrooms and spinach throughout. This is the kind of place that makes demi-​glacé for their steaks, various reductions and sauces for their entrees. The cheescake with berry sauce — if I had no shame, I would have licked the plate clean of the sauce, but since there were others around, I held back (seriously. That good).
Service — 3. The server was waiting on our table of four, another two tables of 3 – 4, and a larger table of 8 — so service was less than stellar, however, she was moving as fast as she could, and definitely polite and friendly. Biggest hangups for us was asking getting more bread that we requested (because their bread is delicious), and the communication between her and the bartender was spotty — mixups with a dirty martini (no olive brine was included), and a double scotch kinda dampened the mood, but she was apologetic and got it fixed.
My recommendations for improvement for this place — better wine label options for glass pours (to match the quality of the food), monitor the background music a little better to provide a better setting, and educate the servers more on mixed drinks so the communication between them and the bar flows more smoothly.
The prices here are definitely comparable to other local and chain restaurants, which in turn, is a huge value considering the quality of ingredients and cooking that is evident in their dishes.
I would go back here in a heartbeat — I read about their Thanksgiving menu reviews on a different website, and as someone who always make Thanksgiving dinner from scratch, prepping the ingredients two days before Thanksgiving, I am seriously contemplating doing next year’s turkey at this restaurant!