The Restaurant At Knapp Vineyards

After touring Knapp Winery in Romulus, NY on Cayuga Lake, Dad and I were ready for some lunch, and thankfully there was a very nice restaurant right there at the Knapp vineyards. The restaurant is located next door to the tasting room and retail sales store, which makes it super convenient for people touring the winery. The restaurant is also located along the Cayuga Lake winery trail, and that makes it a great choice for people touring nearby wineries during the day.
The Knapp Vineyard Restaurant sits in a standalone building with a view of their vineyards. In fact, there’s an outdoor terraced patio which is shaded by a trellis of grape vines that looks west to the estate vineyards.
The menu is surprisingly good with local ingredients from area farms, and including herbs and vegetables from their own garden. You can pair your meal with a glass or a bottle of their very excellent wine, or attend one of their special food and wine pairing dinners scheduled each month.
Chef John McNabb has created a locally-​sourced menu with recipes made from scratch to highlight the Finger Lakes region of New York. You’ll find a lot of small plate appetizers which are perfect with a glass of wine. That includes things like a country pâté, fried Bloody Mary olives, and a local poutine. There are homemade soups like red pepper & Gouda, and a wild mushroom Merlot. The menu has lots of sandwiches and burgers, as well as full-​sized lunch entrées.
I ordered the Knapp burger which was an 8oz. grilled Angus burger, topped with thick cut provolone cheese, balsamic bacon jam, lettuce, and roasted garlic balsamic aioli on a fresh brioche roll. The burger came with house-​made tortilla chips, a sour pickle wedge, and a cup of their ‘Cayuga Caviar’ which turned out to be corn relish.
I thought that the restaurant had a very eclectic menu, with lots of options. The setting is gorgeous, and it’s worth a stop when you’re in the area.

I would have loved to rate this place highly, as the food was good and we both enjoyed the meals. However there were little fruit flies bothering us during the entire meal and we had to constantly swat them away from our faces. Such a shame, it really ruined the whole experience and made us want to get out of there asap. Please do something about the flies!

This restaurant was part of a wine tour, we did not get to choose the restaurant. The portions were gigantic but everything else was lackluster. We chose our meals-​only 3 choices-​prior to arriving. It was supposed to be $ 15pp but upon arrival, we saw that the same meals we just chose were around $ 12 or less. I had the falafel salad and my boyfriend had the chicken wrap. It’s nothing to run home about but for its price, it really should be more decent.

After a very nice tasting in the winery we went for lunch at the restaurant. Although it was already 2 pm and not crowded the wait for our food unbelievable. We started to laugh with a couple seated near us about how bad the service is when it arrived the wait wasn’t worth it. I had a «bork» a combo pork and beef burger. It was dry and chewy. My wife’s vegetable panini was ok at best, she thought the cheese tasted «funny» — and not haha funny. All in all a disappointment after favorable expectations.

This review is based predominately on our experience in the restaurant. We really enjoyed our wine tasting prior to sitting down for a late lunch. The wine was great, especially the meritage, and the employees were very helpful and attentive. When it came time for lunch, we decided as a group to head over to the restaurant. In that it was around 2 in the afternoon the place was pretty dead with one table occupied inside and 2 outside. We had a group of 9 so we were aware that we were a larger group and understood that it takes a little more effort to accommodate such a group; however, it took 10 – 15 minutes to seat us in a practically empty restaurant which was a little odd. We shrugged it off and sat outside at our prepared table but quickly realized that only one of our tables had an umbrella and seeing as it was high 80’s it was really hot in the sun. So that everyone could be in the shade we asked if we could help the staff move some tables under the patio roof (there was plenty of room and extra tables). At first they looked at us like we were inconveniencing them with an absurd request, but we reiterated that we could move it ourselves if it was too much of a hassle and that seemed to convince them so they allowed us to move. We ended up directly under an inhabited bird’s nest but at this point we felt bad asking to move already and so we made it work as best as we could.
Our waitress came over and took our order, everyone at the table ordered a variety of items; beet and chevre salad with chicken, avocado seafood salad, prime rib sandwich, brie appetizer, pork and beef burger, bbq burger and crab cake platter and this is where the service fell apart. I don’t know if our waitress was new but she was not attentive at all. We had to request more water because she wasn’t refilling our glasses and the food took almost an hour to prepare and serve. Additionally, I prefer to dress my own salad so that it’s not really wet so I requested my dressing on the side and when it finally arrived it was clearly fully dressed. When I asked the waitress she said that it was not dressed so I pointed out to her that it had quite a lot of dressing on it already and it clearly wasn’t dry. She apologized several times but did not offer to rectify the problem. When she returned to the table with the rest of the food she told me that the chef said he only put the balsamic glaze on the top and not the dressing, again I showed her that was not even remotely the case as the balsamic was clearly very darkly drizzled across the top and the dressing was light and tossed fully with the greens. Again she apologized but then disappeared for pretty much the rest of the lunch.
As a waitress myself for 6+ years through high school, college and grad school I have a lot of respect for the profession but I also understand what it takes to do a good job and be attentive to details. If you catch an order that was done wrong by the kitchen (especially something easily rectified like a dressed salad) you have the kitchen correct it before bringing it out. If you missed the error you apologize and offer the customer to have it fixed. Chances are, I would have felt bad and just kept the salad without sending it back but the fact that she never offered to fix it was disappointing. Also, I would never dream of lying to a customer at this point and trying to convince them that they were wrong, it just looks tacky. So those issues, in combination with the aforementioned lack of attentiveness to drink refills, delayed service of food and the odd spectacle of trying to get seated led me to write this review and rate the restaurant as such. On a positive note, they did keep the last 2 stars for the actual food which was well prepared and presented, aside from the soggy salad.

One of the finest meals the area has to offer. Relax on the patio and enjoy a glass of local wine with your meal. Menu offers a selection to suite all palates. Especially love the cauliflower bacon soup! Would return again.

If you are out on the wine trail… And you get a feeling of hunger … No matter where you are … You need to get over to knapp for the best food on either lake. The chef is a genius. He knows how to work with flavors you wouldn’t even think of. Get there and enjoy this awesome spot. You can not to better. Plain and simple.

Bad Restaurant Food Ever! Very disappointing!
We were touring the wineries around the area and got this place for lunch. The servers are nice and welcoming, menu looks nice and price is very reasonable. Finally our food arrived, and just after few bites all of us gave an awful face. We have 8 people ordered different kind of dishes, NONE of us like our dish! The presentations of the food look ok, however the taste are horrible. They are all simply tasteless like just cooked with boiling water only. Or something just got out from the microwave. Even the fish steaks are no taste at all but very fishy and did not feel fresh.
We are no picky persons, and we all found how surprise that all the dishes are evenly horrible. Hence, we saw many other customers cannot finish their dish as well probably coz of the taste. I would really wish the chefs reconsider their cooking method before they go on the business… and I suggest you all go to any other fast food than here!

The dinner was pretty good. However, neither my wife or myself liked the wines. We had two flights of Red Wines. We didn’t like any of them, and they all seemed the same to us. As a result, almost gave this place only two stars, but their food was good.

Stopped in on our way to the east coast. What a pleasant treat, just what we needed to break our long days drive. We ate out on the patio, and although our server was new we were treated royally. The brie was a wonderful starter, and the loganberry sauce was so tasty, we used the rest if oyr bread to get it all!
I had the quinoa black bean burger, very tasty and my husband had the salmon cake special, also earned high marks from him.
The restaurant is a great showcase for the wines we bought. It would be great if they had a tapas style pairing menu to taste the wines along side great food … just a thought I wanted to share.

Came here with my husband for lunch. Ate out on the back patio. Relaxing and quite. Service was very good. I ordered the seafood salad which was delicious. My husband ordered the turkey panini which was good but standard. His panini came with tortilla chips and their homemade salsa which they call ‘caviar.’ It was tasty. Overall very good; would certainly come back.

This is what I emailed knapp wineries with no response… to sum it up the brunch hot foods were cold to barely warm making the food blah with most likely unsafe food temperatures. Service was okay. I believe we were over charged as we had a bill for $ 95 with 3 brunch @ 20.95 a piece, 2 OJ, 1 coke, 1 wine @ $ 4.50. This was a big Mother’s Day disappointment.
I am writing to share our experience at your Vineyard Restaurant on Mother’s Day May 12, 2013. We were a party of three that had reservations for three o’clock and arrived promptly. The service was great however we were very disappointed in that all but one hot dish was lukewarm at best.
Furthermore, we were shocked when we received the bill which totaled $ 95.xx for three brunch meals, two orange juices, one Coca-​Cola, and one glass of Black Cherry wine. With the brunch at $ 20.95 per person I am not sure how our bill totaled close to one hundred dollars. Nonetheless l wouldn’t have minded so much if our meal was at least warm enough to enjoy.
I hope that with the next brunch the Vineyard hosts, better care will be taken in keeping the meals at a more palatable temperature.

Food is good. The seating in the backyard definitely makes for a lovely meal. The wine was pretty good too. I forgot the name but the dry reisling that was recommended was nice.
Cheese plate was just ok. The cheeses were local. Except the goat cheese, the others were not to my liking :(
The garden salad is HUGE! The crab cakes were delicious!
I had a nice experience.
Bought their ice wine.

Nice lunch after a difficult time being seated, of all things. Waited over five minutes without a hostess appearing. Went back into the winery and complained to a very helpful woman who turned out to be the retail manager. She got us a table and a dozen apologies from everyone to boot. Ordered a special pepper soup that was good and spicy. Then had morel Napoleon with hummus, and a delicious lamb burger. Waiter paired entrees with wines perfectly. Very impressed after initial frustration.

Had a fantastic lunch here! We sat on the back patio, overlooking the vineyard and the atmosphere is completely relaxing. I went with a group of 6 people and we had the cheese platter for an appetizer and it was a perfect starter. I ordered the stuffed portabella at the suggestion of the waitress and it was delicious! Everyone else enjoyed their meals too– there was not one complaint. We had a completely attentative waitress… I would definitely recommend and would definitely go back!