The Terrace at Hilton Short Hills

Wonderful cowboy steak and tilefish. Very good service and wonderful dessert. Appetizers were great. Place was very quiet for Saturday night

A three-​day conference meant three days of lunch at The Terrace. And since I arrived a night early, I also started my trip with dinner here. Two themes worth highlighting are 1) the great and friendly service and 2) the ridiculously long wait times for food.
The food itself was solid and I was impressed with the rotation of options over the three days. Yes, I’ve been at conferences were you were fed the same meal every day for lunch, and no The Terrace made sure that did not happen (unless you chose it). The staff was friendly, knew about the restaurant offerings, and were very accommodating. Of course, they had to be accommodating as we were kept waiting for our meals every day. After the first day, we placed our orders in advance and were still kept waiting. In fact, we were told on the last day that our meals were «on the table» only to find that they weren’t and that it took another 20 minutes to get the first course out!
My dinner night followed a similar tune. Average food, above average service, and an above average wait. Hence the themes noted above…

It is unfortunate that sometime in the past two years someone decided to mess with what had been perfection. The Sunday Brunch at the Terrace Restaurant in the Short Hills Hilton had been ledgendary for its quality, service and selection. It is now only a shadow of its former self. The buffet has been cut in half. The price has been cut from $ 50/​pp to $ 42/​pp but with that there is no longer any complimentary champagne or Bloody Mary’s. The waffle station now serves pre-​made waffles from a chafing dish, all the hot «lunch» dishes had pumpkin in them or on them for a fall theme and the deserts were tasteless and inedible.
As I stated, there was just a very limited selection if you attempted to compare the brunch to what it used to be. As for service, we had to beg to get coffee, and around 2:30pm they started breaking down the tables all around us even though we had arrived for the second seating which began at 1:30pm. All in all there are much better places to go for brunch. This is not the «special» place it used to be which is very sad.