Pond House Christmas Decorations Presents Problem For Jewish Celebration

The managers of a wonderful West Hartford restaurant and the devoted parents of twin 13-year-old girls could have avoided a nasty fight this month by having details of their arrangement spelled out in writing.

Eric Applebaum and his wife, also of West Hartford, wanted to celebrate the Bat Mitzvah of their daughters on Saturday at the Pond House, a hidden gem in Elizabeth Park – near the rose gardens where many people including myself have gotten married.

They checked out the banquet room and like most people who go there, loved it.

Pond House Cafe Christmas Decorations

While there were no Christmas decorations while they were there to post their $1,000 deposit in the fall, they were told there would be some Christmas decorations still in the room in late January.

However, Applebaum wrote me that he and his wife were stunned when she went on Jan. 10 to check out the hall, finding more than 10 Christmas trees, sleighs, and Christmas ornaments.

“It was over the top. Interesting to note that their holiday décor was exclusively Christian based. No Kwanzaa decor, no Jewish stars or menorahs. Nothing else represented but Christmas.”

He said he would have been fine with a couple of Christmas decorations, but this was out of the question.

They informed the managers that they were not told about these decorations and wanted them removed for the Jewish celebration of turning into adulthood.

No problem, they were told, it would only cost them $1,200 to have the decorations removed.

“It’s like a bait and switch routine,” he told me. “it’s a different room on the inside than it was when we signed the contract. If we had known what the room was going to look like when we reserved it, or told there would be a charge to put it back to non-Christmas form, we would have gone somewhere else.”

Now for the other side of the story.

Manager Kim Yarum said that another manager, Lisa Deedy, told the couple when they first came to the Pond House that the banquet room does have Christmas decorations every year through early or the middle of February.

She said they offered the couple the use of their Glastonbury facility and tried to work with them but the Applebaum’s were unreasonable.

“I was relentless in trying to resolve this,” she told me.

Eventually the management reversed its position and agreed to remove most of the decorations for free.

However, Yarum says the incident left a bad taste in her mouth.

She said Applebaum “bad mouthed me all over the place. We were simply negotiating. A gentleman would not do this.”

She said she would purposely stay away from the Jan. 29th event so she doesn’t have to run into Mr. Applebaum.

Applebaum agreed that he played hardball and put pressure on the Pond House to reverse its position by contacting me as well as the publisher of a local magazine that was doing a piece on the restaurant.

Yarum said she did learn a lesson from this incident and from now on will make it crystal clear what the banquet room will look like in January and early February.

I suggested to her that it be spelled out in the contract.

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