My original review below was posted on April 5 after our Easter brunch.
I travel 45 weeks a year and rely on reviews on Yelp to be accurate when I'm picking out a place in a new city to go to. So I'd like to retract part of what I originally posted. This morning (4/6) the GM of the Statehouse gave me a call and apologized for our experience. He said he has been in the job a short time and knows they have areas that need to be addressed and he is working on them and appreciated the comments. He urged me to give them another try, which we will.
So I retract my comment that management doesn't care, as it appears they are paying attention to Yelp reviews and recognize the need to fix service issues. We'll try again.
Original 4.5.15 posting:
Great views, that's about it though. We've been to the Statehouse twice, each time the food is average and the service is awful. I don't mind spending on a meal (this one was $250 for 4 adults and 2 kids for a brunch), but there are lots of places in Madison that consider themselves high end that have better food and decent service.
Today we went for Easter brunch (ordering a four course brunch off of the menu). It took 25 minutes to get a server, it took 45 minutes to get the first course. The total meal took 2 hours. You might say "well it was Easter brunch", but at this time there were at least 6 open tables and a lot of the rest were people sitting waiting for food. Any food. There were servers standing around, but it looked like they had no food to serve - lots of cooks in the back but it was a scene right out of "Hell's Kitchen" - lots of activity with no results. The team in the back would have had to face elimination.
If it wasn't for the view and the hotel I'm not sure this level of service and food would allow this restaurant to be viable. I see a lot of negative reviews for the Statehouse on this site. It doesn't seem the owners really care because these negative reviews start on opening day and continue to now. Six months is enough time to get some value to equal the price.