Portermill - Des Moines

Incredibly slow service. No fault to the servers there were only two of them hustling to handle nearly a hundred guests at lunch rush. Took 30 minutes to even place an order; not ideal when trying to catch a flight.Food was mediocre. Ordered a Caesar Salad, added chicken for an additional surcharge. Almost sent it back because I thought it was missing the chicken, but eventually found the three small cubes of chicken hiding amidst the croutons. Hard to justify the $3 up charge for just a couple grams of chicken.

Alicia (Ah-lee-see-ah needs an attitude adjustment, or to get out of the food service industry. I hope she 's proud of herself for making a mom cry. The kitchen was I incredibly backed up because they were not prepared for the junior Olympics coming through town. We were warned when we came in that it would take a half an hour just to take our order. (The kitchen was backed up, but the servers were wandering around aimlessly. There 's no reason it should take half an hour to put in an order. I asked the food server if I could at least put in a drink order, but he said I would have to wait half an hour even for that(?!!? . I have a baby, so I could not sit at the bar. But I am breast-feeding and extremely dehydrated. There were two bartenders, and only a couple of people sitting at the bar. So I went up to the bar and asked for a soda. Alicia said I needed to place my order at the table. I said I just need a drink. It 's not just that she said no for no reason, it was how rude she was. She said, but those aren 't bar drinks, are they? And proceeded to ignore me. That is a new kind of low. That level of rudeness was unprecedented and unnecessary. She was serving food and drinks to people that were not ordering alcohol. There is no reason she could not have given a water or a soda to someone who couldn 't sit at the bar. I was a food server. I understand what it 's like. But when you are sitting around doing very little and ignoring a breast-feeding mother with a screaming baby out of spite, you need to re-think your career choice. Or, at the very least, your manager needs to re-think who interacts with customers. I went back to the table and, 30 minutes later, placed my drink order. While crying.

I got the salmon dish for $20. It included brown rice, red cabbage, guacamole, and some random creamy sauce. The salmon was good enough, but that bed of stuff it was sitting on…. Seriously the most random ingredients that did not go together at all!They were completely out of chicken the afternoon I was there. I was told they do good burgers, but I wasn’t in the mood for something that heavy before I flew.

Started off with a cranberry juice which was good but super sweet with way too much sugar.The cheese curds were amazing however they took probably over 30 minutes just to get. Which is ridiculous considering the place wasn't nearly that busy, which is why the low rating because the service was below par for the amount of customers in here. I watched the waitress a handful of times and she would just wonder around aimlessly or stand there not doing anything at times. Never coming back to check on our drinks except when our order was delivered, never brought us napkins.I also watched her deliver the wrong food to a table, and then give the wrong check to a different table. So it wasn't just us she was messing up. This is why you don't hire tweakers.Not to mention the airport alarm was going off for about 5 minutes only to find out from the managers that there is a malfunction in the security system. Therefore only the 2 star rating for atmosphere

Last Wednesday, I got dropped off at the airport just in time to miss my flight. The airline was able to get me on the next flight to Phoenix, but it was gonna be a 9-ish hour wait.I wandered around, got a bottle of water, ran down the battery on my phone, and took a nap.About 6 hours into this mess, I got hungry. Not a ton of options at this airport, but I wanted something hot and a place to sit for a while.Seemed that there was only a bartender and a server on duty.I didn't want any alcohol, so I chose a table against the wall because I spied USB outlets under the bench.The lone server greeted me promptly and grabbed my beverage when he brought my menu. A quick look, and my Juicy Lucie was on the way.This is a good sized place, and this one guy worked the whole floor by himself, apparently.I must say, he did a pretty good job of it, too.The restaurant itself is a nice looking place, well furnished, and a nice view of the tarmac to watch planes come and go.I will say, though, the the food was typical of most airports. It was okay, but no better than that.My server really made the experience for me because he had a great attitude and a good hustle.