Daniella's In The Park

The area itself is beautiful. However Our server Valentina was very rude and unprofessional. I was Charged 8$ more for something I didn’t order. And when I tried to dispute the charge she said “oh Jesus” like helping us was just an inconvenience for her. She took off 2.95$ and acted completely annoyed by the whole situation. We’ve been here before and service was amazing but she completely ruined this experience for us with her poor attitude.

Sometimes a restaurant is just not firing on all cylinders. Here we were at Daniella's, in the main Lodge at Joe Wheeler State Park. There are three stars here. They all go to the kitchen. We ordered a bowl of chili, and a Reuben sandwich with onion rings. Though the chili wasn't Terlingua quality, it was very good. The Reuben was up to snuff, though we debated whether the toast was ryebread or not. And the onion rings were excellent. The kitchen at Daniella's takes the prize. The only sour note was the chili had gotten out of the bowl and some of it was splattered on the underplate. Table service needs some help. Not in numbers but in attitude. Our main server, a young man named A., walked around with one of those frill-ended toothpicks in his mouth. My wife called him out for this. His reply was along the lines of "The boss is out sick today, and this toothpick helps calm the stress. I have never been to a restaurant with staff that works with toothpicks as a calming agent. Stress in the dining room, yes, but not with toothpicks. This server cost Daniella's two stars.

We visited for Mother's Day and found that they had ran their prices up to $18.95 for adults the adult buffet and children under 10 years of age it was $10. Other people besides us turned around and left when we saw the sign with the price. My wife and I had our 2 year old grandchild with us at the time. He wouldn’t have ate a dollar’s worth.

We two paid $50+ for our seafood buffet. The banana pudding was fantastic and the deviled crab was good, as was the cornmeal fried fish. However, the boiled shrimp were tasteless as were the scallops, the fried shrimp was passable, the shrimp creole was cold, the clams and flour-battered fish were hard as a rock. There was no slaw, but the tossed salad looked good. The tartar sauce was heavy on the mayo. There were no lemons for squeezing on the fish. We got there as the restaurant opened so we got a seat right away; a line soon formed out the doors of the restaurant. The workers there were working their butts off (!) and the crowd was both patient and understanding. At checkout, all adults were busy serving/clearing so a boy about 15 came to check out those of us waiting to check out. We also ordered 2 pounds of crab legs for the rest of the family docked in their boat; hope they were worth the $48!