Eagle’s Nest On The Green

Been here dozens of times in the last few years. Love golfing and enjoying the scenery at Baird Park. Last few seasons, the service and food have been consistently good. Nothing great, but a good place to hang out, drink and eat. Since the golf season is now open, much earlier than last year, I’ve found myself at Eagle’s Nest on three occasions thus far in 2016. Something must have changed because my last two visits were poor.
Experience one: grabbed a beer bucket for golf round. No, issues, just limited selection.
Experience two: golfed 18, came in for a drink after with a few guys only to find that no one was there except a 20ish something cook, who was covering for his absent boss and bartender. Two gentlemen (and note that I use that term quite liberally) were eating and enjoying cold Stella Artois in the nice Stella glasses. After five minutes of waiting, my friend yelled into the kitchen to get any kind of service. The guy came out, looking confused and asked what we wanted. We asked for some draft beer, but he said that none of the drafts were working that day and/​or had not yet been hooked up for the season. My friend simply replied with «.then how come those guys have nice Frosty Stella’s?» The cook had no answer. From here our current mission was to simply grab any alcoholic beverage that came in a bottle so that we could enjoy each other’s company for at least another few minutes before we went on to separate adventures for the day. On display, there were a few bottles of Adirondack Brewing Company beer so we asked for a few bottles of their Naked beer. After looking around for a little while the bartender/​cook told us that those display beers were the only ones available in the bar. We could see that he was clearly uncomfortable and after trying a little bit more he told us that he was just the cook and that his boss had left the premises for a period of time and did not know when he would be back. Innocently though, he still offered us the Adirondack beer and because it was warm he grab two glasses and fill them up with ice for us. At that point we realized our efforts to get any beer was probably not going to happen this day at Eagle’s Nest.
Experience 3: On this particular experience I knew that the bar was pretty low, no pun intended, and I wanted to give it another shot, again, no pun intended. Knowing what I knew, this experience is entirely on me and I chose to come back and expected a similar visit. On this day, about a week after experience #2, I came here with a few colleagues after work to enjoy some fresh brew and to support this local business yet again. When I arrived, two of my colleagues were already seated at the bar drinking tap beer from frosty mugs. I was happy to see that they got their taps working finally and that maybe as the season was beginning, they had a few bumps in the road. When I sat down I learned that one of the beers was a Shock Top Pumpkin Wheat, which to my knowledge is far out of season. As much as I would like to say that this keg is new it’s hard for me to believe that it was. On a positive note this gave us plenty of material to make fun of my colleague for ordering a crisp pumpkin beer seasonally out of place in late April. My other colleague’s beer, however, was actually a bottle poured into a cold glass. The bartender was new and very apologetic for some of the miscommunication on their end, and was helpful in finding us some beer from the cooler, which in my opinion, had been sitting there all season. I started with a couple bottles and after two of my colleagues left, the bartender gave us a free beer courtesy of the manager. This is a courtesy that’s all too much forgotten, and most establishments these days, regardless of the quality of beer, price of food, and overall ambiance, don’t offer buy backs. We were appreciative and tipped her well. At one point during our ordering, I might add, the manager came out checked all the taps and realized that none of them were working because of issues with their overall system. He immediately called his distributor and attempted to get a repair guy into the bar that day. We saw this as a sign of good faith, however my issue stems from the time elapsed from experience #2 to experience 3 (about a week) when this issue could have been resolved, but wasn’t.
As I always say please check this place out for yourself and take what I say with a grain of salt because you may have a far better experience than me. Their menu has many options and the space is conducive for watching hockey, golf, or other sports. Outside they have a large three pole tent which I believe is used for special events. It overlooks parts of the golf course on a hill and is actually quite beautiful. I would consider having my engagement party there if my experiences inside had been better, and the outside area was cleaned up and free of junk, Power Equipment, and other things left outside for storage.

Nice rest stop when traveling on the Taconic — wooded setting/​decent atmosphere. The menu was limited and the service a bit slow, but the waitress was pleasant and that made any shortfalls in service tolerable. Food was greasy and my Philly cheese steak sandwich consisted mostly of white bread — but they did serve
Hunts Natural ketchup with no HFCS so that was nice. Good place to stop and relax.

The first 2 reviews have to be shills.

Always our favorite stop on the trip from NYC to Albany, this unexpected retreat can be a weary traveler’s dream. This is the «Restaurant» off the James Baird State Park exit on the Taconic Parkway, it’s worth the stop!
Above average pub fare, great drink specials and a gorgeous golf course surrounding welcome you. Just make sure you follow the signs to the restaurant! They have live music some evenings, car and bike enthusiasts seems to flock there. One last great aspect: their restrooms are far more reliable than so many other stops along the Taconic!

DRIVE PAST THIS ONE. Worst meal we have had in a long time. The waitress was very nice, but couldn’t make up for the very slow kitchen. The inedible food took 40 minutes to arrive. (There was almost no one in the combo bar/​restaurant. Perhaps that should have been our first tip off.) I think if we hadn’t asked if we might have our salad while we waited (after sitting there 30 minutes) it may well have taken longer than that. We started at twilight, but the longer we waited we found our selves sitting in the dark on the porch outside, with no silverware and had to ask the waitress if there were lights out there when she came out to ask if we wanted another water or beer. She said yes and turned on one side light at the very end of the porch. My husband finally got up and turned on the overhead lights.
My husband’s prime rib arrived as basically mystery meat. Whatever it was was mostly gray in color (he ordered a medium rare cut), greasy and tasteless. His plate had a mound of orange colored, greasy stuff, which he said he thought was rice, which I initially thought might be finely chopped carrots until I tasted one piece of rice — it was that bad and that strange. The french fries were tasteless, limp and greasy, The salad of mozzarella and tomatoes was made with limp greens, odd tasting, grainy mozzarella and not ripe tomatoes, drenched in balsamic vinaigrette.
My bacon cheeseburger’s hamburger part was burnt black on both sides, as were the two bacon slices on top of the hamburger. The melted cheese over it was fine. Placed in a stale kaiser roll with no condiments like mayo, mustard, ketchup available, so it was very dry. I got up and went to the kitchen and asked for some mayo, which the waitress pleasantly brought out in about five minutes. Same inedible french fries.
It was so bad it will go in the collection of «worst meals ever» and become a source of entertainment — which it was even as we were leaving. If you ask yourself how bad could it be — well, two hours later we still have a coating and taste of not quite clean grease in our mouths.

Finally an alternative to the Daily Planet. You don’t have to play golf to eat here! Right off the Taconic Parkway in the James Beard State Park. Excellent food and service, the quiet setting, the romantic covered patio and the free internet makes this my new favorite place in the area …