After attending my uncle’s funeral and a nice visit with family I haven’t seen in 15 years, we stopped at The Furnace Grill & Crabhouse in Thurmont, MD to eat before heading home. They have a good-sized open dining room with a patio as well. We sat at the bar. The staff was friendly, but unfortunately, that was the highlight of our visit.
We ordered the Crab Pretzel as an appetizer as well as steamed shrimp and the Crab & Steak Nachos for our main meal. The food was extremely slow. We realized that they had a very large to-go order that had gone in before our order and understood why the food was taking so long. Forty-five minutes after we ordered the shrimp and nachos came out. When we brought it to our server’s attention that we had not received our appetizer, she said that it would be out in a minute and that they didn’t control how the food came out of the kitchen.
The Crab Pretzel is a soft pretzel topped with crab dip and cheese served with a beer cheese sauce. The cheese sauce was tasty and I enjoyed the pretzel. The steamed shrimp was another story, however. The shrimp was cold and severely overcooked. Chris mentioned this to the server, who apologized but made no effort to fix the problem. The nachos had obviously been sitting in the kitchen for a while as well. The chips were soggy and the cheese had congealed, making for a very unappetizing dish.
A manager approached us to discuss the shrimp (we didn’t even bring up the other food problems). He apologized but made no offer to take the inedible shrimp off of the check.
We got the impression that this is more of a nightlife spot that happens to have a kitchen than an actual restaurant.
Cost for two beers and three appetizers $38.38.
The Crab Pretzel sounds good. Too bad about the shrimp being cold and over cooked though.