Bad Review Ritz Carlton Bacara Santa Barbera California

First an apology. I have not published any new articles for some time now. It is because I have had no new travel or dining experiences worth writing about. It goes along with my basic philosophy which is to provide you with information on exceptional, spectacular, worth you time experiences in wine, travel and food at a reasonable cost, or rarely experiences you should avoid. So arriving in Santa Barbara, California I was provided with a wealth of information to share with you some good, and sadly some bad. We came to attend the Chaine des Rotisseurs Mondiale weekend at the Ritz Carlton Bacara for the Jeunes Sommeliers Final Competition to select the Sommelier of the USA will attend the World Sommelier Competition in Europe representing the USA. Sixteen years ago we attended the same event here at the Bacara and were overwhelmed as to the luxury and world class food and service we experienced. For the past 16 years we have considered the Bacara one of our top 5 destinations in the world so were highly excited to return now so any bias I may have had would be positive.

The Ritz Carlton Bacara

One of my favorite books is "You can't go home again" by Thomas Wolfe. A large part of my life was coming to peace with the fact that as much as I fantasized as to how wonderful places I had been and lived were so great I had to learn to accept that when I returned years later it simply was not the same place I remembered and too many times the reality of today was that those places had changed for the worst and were nothing like I wanted to remember. Very sadly we are highly disappointed on our return to the Bacara. It is not what it was 16 years ago. The good news is the physical plant, buildings and architecture, and grounds continue to be beautiful and compelling. Other than that the place has gone down hill.

To begin with there was a serious lack of dining venues. My understanding from discussions with some resort managers is the hospitality industry as a whole is doing away with room service, fine dining, and any kind of up scale food service and instead concentrating on banquet services and low end dining venues with very limited menu selections at fairly high prices for what you get. Example a $30 hamburger or a $26 Pina Colada or a $48 breakfast buffet and all of them ++ and I should say for parties of 8(think families with small children) a 26% service charge the highest I have ever seen. They say they lose money on food and beverage especially room service. How the Bacara loses money is beyond me at those prices. All the bean counters do is concentrate on the bottom line of every venue. Instead of looking at the bottom line at the end of the year for the venue as a whole and a list of happy complimentary customers who appreciate the good service and great dining options the company higher ups decide to only concentrate on the big ticket items like gala dinners for 200 people at a company function. We live on an Omni Resort that has publicly stated as far as they are concerned they would offer no dining options on property. To their credit on check in they provide you with a list of nearby restaurants to go to for meals. The evening we arrived at the Bacara there were no available dining options for dinner other than limited room service as they were involved with a large corporate event that for all intents shut down everything. When staff was asked what alternatives they might recommend they stated "We don't know please hold why we ask someone else? In addition we had breakfast one morning that for two people was over $100 and had to complain to the manager as my wife's meal was never delivered to the table. Excuse me? Coming from a high end Ritz resort. To me unacceptable.

There was a serious lack of attention to detail. Our first night after arrival we tried to turn on a lamp only to find out the bulb assembly area had broken loose and the bulb and wires were hanging down. We wanted to use the coffee machine only to find the water reservoir with a crack in it. We requested special bed linen procedure due to a medical condition and just prior to bed on returning from a walk they completely ignored our requests. But what was most alarming was every day we were there even after explaining the situation to the housekeeper in the room they just ignored us and refused to follow our requests, despite this being less of a comfort option and more of a medical need. Again too many small things which pointed to a lack of care and attention to detail. When were they going to replace a broken lamp, once someone got electrocuted? It seemed that no one communicated concerns or areas that needed attention and certainly did not reflect the kind of attention you should expected based on the price they were charging. It was clear communication that management is more interested in making money than taking care of their customers which is a 100% deal breaker for me and mine.

I am more than willing to pay high prices for outstanding products and service. My experience is you get what you pay for and I expect to receive the service paid for. But at some point prices become completely offensive and have no relation to what you are receiving. I believe today it is because today's managers are following what I have been told is the Harvard business model which is to charge whatever the market will bear and you will eventually learn how high you can go when people stop buying your product. This is in contrast to what I believe should the model which is what I call the Henry Ford model which is produce and make the best high quality product at the lowest price possible making a reasonable profit and make money by selling millions or billions of units of your product. It took a while but I finally reviewed their better wine list and the wine prices were the highest I have ever seen and to me offensive. In general you did not receive good value for the prices Bacara charged. In comparison today we love Pelican Hill in Newport Beach, California whose prices are as high or higher than the Bacara but the food, beverage, and service, even at a higher price, provided us with great value and we can't wait to return to Pelican Hill and hopefully it is a place we can come home again without being disappointed.

It is my opinion that staff was unable to deliver service because their hands were tied by managements policy and procedures. It is obvious every staff person has been trained to say at the end of their conversation with you to say ":And if there is anything you need please do not hesitate to ask and we will take care of it immediately". It was very frustrating to speak with staff and have them tell you they could not help you and then tell you to go ahead and ask again for anything. It was maddening and obvious that management had no intention of the staff being authorized to do something different other than to tell you please ask for help over and over. We asked for housekeeping cleanup between 9 and 10 AM and vacated the room so they could do it. We returned at 11:30 AM and they had not been there and the rest of our stay showed up later in the day usually when we were trying to take a nap. Staff was friendly and available but in the end lacked any authority to actually help you. Here is an example of what we expect. We arrived at the Grand Hyatt in Tampa years ago late at night and worn out. We were going to get room service but nothing on the room service menu appealed to us. We called the front desk and explained the situation and they said let us bring all of our restaurant menus to your room and you can order anything from any menu and we will deliver it to your room. Forget the Bacara doing anything like that, they might lose $20. I can tell you to this day we have driven 100 miles out of our way to repeatedly return and stay at the Grand Hyatt Tampa which we highly recommend to you. The Grand Hyatt staff is empowered by management to care for their guests and make on the spot decisions to solve problems for their guests. Our experience is that the Bacara does not, but trains the staff to always say “Please call us anytime for anything and we will take care of it immediately”.

One small insult was when we checked in a hold was placed on my credit card at check in to guarantee payment. This is not unusual as most hotels today do this but it is usually a modest amount so far in my experience. What was insulting is the entire stay plus in my opinion an excessive additional amount was added to I assume cover 3 meals a day at inflated prices again to guarantee payment that of course would not be charged at check out if not used. But ask yourself what message does this send. I received the message we are primarily interested in full payment or guarantee of same at the start of your stay and we do not trust you and frankly don’t care because what is important to us is the money and not you. In the end we were terribly disappointed during our stay at the Bacara and have no intention of every going there again and recommend everyone else stay away. I have seen comments on Trip Advisor where I note multiple terrible and poor reviews echoing my comments. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.

Santa Barbara Wines

I am also sorry to report that I have no specific Santa Barbara wines to recommend to you which was one my intents for this trip. I will say in general the Samsara wines are ones to try. They are of course good and great wines. My primary problem with Santa Barbara wines is with style more than anything. As a general observation I found all of them somewhat higher in acid than what I like. It makes them food friendly of course but to me due to the higher acid presentation they tend to me to be less complex. I also am highly biased towards Burgundy Pinot’s and have yet to find a Pinot from elsewhere that I can recommend other than the Del Dotto Pinot’s from Napa that I have found compelling this past year.

Coming up soon!

Clark and I are off to New Orleans for a long weekend for food, wine, and fun. Right now we have reservations at Antoine's and Revolution. We will be staying at the 4 star Troubadour Hotel just down from the Roosevelt Hotel. So hopefully I will have some good recommendations for NOLA soon. Stay tuned