Prelude - Rohnert Park

Just had dinner here, prior to a concert. Excellent food, great service and a very nice start to the evening. Lovely surroundings.

Food was amazing! Service was bad. The waitress was new and she was sweet but I felt the issues were somewhat out of her control. We asked her and then another staff member for wine and it didn't come for 30 minutes until the end of our dinner so we had to chug it before the concert which wasn't enjoyable. The employees all seemed new and confused.

This was our first time dining at Prelude. We were disappointed with the food. I ordered the filet and based on my experience at high end restaurants, this filet was a glued one. I asked for rare to medium rare and I got medium. The manager returned it to the kitchen but then brought it back and said the chef said you should cut into it first because the center is medium rare . What?? So I 'm not supposed to eat the outer portion of the filet? When I cut into the center, it still was medium and the cut seems to fall apart (meat glue i was referring to). She took it back and they brought me a new cut which was cooked properly but wasn 't juicy at all. It tasted very bland. My partners email was pasta. It was sticky and under cooked and warm. Needless to say we will not be returning to this restaurant.

Shrimp Parfait was excellent. Lamb chops a bit of a disappointment; too large for lamb, very fatty, and bland. Bland treatment. As usual, only very token vegetables; I wish Prelude would serve a complete plate, not just the protein. Flan for dessert was excellent.

The serving staff and hostess need MUCH better guidance. It is the service industry and they should only be there if they take pride in providing superlative service. They were ALL consistently indifferent , uninformed, and mechanical, from the hostess 's greeting to the delay in appearing at the table, to how the order is taken, to refilling water glasses to serving the various courses. Sure there are the requisite social boundaries but being engaging, gracious and hospitable goes a long way , over mechanical, indifferent, this is something I have to do temporarily attitude. The chilled potato leek soup (formerly a.k.a Vichyssoise) was awesome, incredible. The Arctic char was overdone/dead /dry, the risotto , of sorts, was over herbed, too strong too many competing flavors, should have shown some restraint to better reveal the nuances of the herbs and not overwhelm the char, AND the corn in the risotto was the toughest most tasteless corn I have ever eaten, worse than frozen corn, inexcusable during peak sweet corn season in an agricultural community. The ambience is lovely and the convenience of being able to dine so close to the performance we were attending were the redeeming factors.