Kootenai River Brewing Co — Local services in Bonners Ferry

Beer is consistent. Food has never been consistent.

Edit: My friends. It has been a long journey for me and the KRBC. I have supported this place since it began. Beer has always been OK (didn't help that for a while there they had a brewmaster that didn't drink beer). Food has always been hit or miss. But they had been getting better (but I will never forgive you for getting rid of the OG jalapeno poppers). However, today, 07/24/25, it might be the end of our relationship for a while.

I came in with my wife for an 8 year anniversary dinner (this has no relation to our experience, but hey, 8 years) and we settled in with our beers out on the patio that thankfully has a sun screen nowadays that works somewhat well. She ordered the Irish Melt, and I ordered the Pulled Pork. They smoke the pork in house, and I like to get it every so often to see if the person smoking the meat has gotten any better (and yes, they have for the most part...).

However, on my fourth bite of the sandwich, an odd texture hit my mouth. Anyone who has eaten food for more than 5 years of their life has hit something at some point that made you go, "huh, that is a bit weird". There, staring back at me in the dark, smoked pork was a flesh colored something or other. I pulled it out with my fingers, and what do you know, it was a band-aid (picture for reference).

Anyone who has worked in any sort of food service and has had a food handler's license (like myself for nearly a decade) should know that this should be an impossible thing. A thing that should not happen. Now, I have found hairs and other foreign objects in food, but never a bio-hazard.

That damn band-aid had aged inside that pork. No visible blood, but the pad was damn near off of it, soaked through, and unraveling. I got the band-aid, the disgusting prize at the bottom of the cracker jack box, but everyone else who had had a pulled pork sandwich from this batch have been infected with whatever was in the person whom the medical waste pork had been infected with.

This is not okay. This is disgusting. This is a complete lack of understanding in food safety. It is unreasonable, unfathomable, and I must say again, it is not okay.

This is not pretension. This is a huge, HUGE, medical safety hazard. It is unacceptable, even coming from a place that once fired a waitress because she wouldn't serve food that had visible mold and age on it (and don't think I am throwing that in willy nilly. It was years ago, and I thought the kitchen would be better by now).

Please, I plead for you to fix this. Completely revamp everything. I know that that is a big ask, but this is not ok. If the said band-aid man had some sort of blood borne illness, myself and anyone else who had that pulled pork sandwich from that batch are now infected.

To end on a lighter note, our waitress was wonderful. She was just amazing. Understanding, nice, kind. She wanted to comp our whole ticket but I wanted to at least pay for the beer. God bless her, she was great and sadly she had to be witness to something so egregious in the regards of...

I've never experienced service as bad as this, and I've been to some bad joints all over the country. Very disappointed since we've been here previously and had few complaints. My wife and I had dinner here tonight with family who we havent seen in two years, so we were very excited to be going out. That excitement wore off after we waited 30 minutes for the drinks we ordered. The restaurant was moderately busy, but not to the point that it takes 30 minutes to pour 3 beers. Not to mention we didnt even get a beer menu until after the waitress asked us what we wanted (we didnt know since we didnt get menus). It then took forever for the appetizers to come out. They were pretty delicious I will say. But then only three of the four entrees came out. A different waitress brought them out so she wouldn't have known that one was missing. Our waitress never once stopped by to check in, my mother in law got up to go find her. She finally comes over and asks how everything is, I explained that I never got my burger. She looked bamboozled and said she would be back. She comes back, turns out she never submitted my order. She then asked if I still wanted it because it would take a little bit to get. Of course I wanted it, I was hungry and there for dinner. I had to tell her to put a rush on it, since an hour had already passed at this point and the rest of my family was already done eating, and the waitress showed no sense of urgency. My family also never got thier salads that they ordered until they asked about them, and we asked for more water, which we never received. My meal finally came out and at this point we were ready to leave so I just asked for a box. The waitress brought me what had to be the smallest box they had. The burger itself was larger than the box. So I had to ask for a larger one (not really a big deal, but a customer shouldn't have to explain the job to the waitress). We finally get our bill and they gave us a 50% discount on the burger. Its insulting. We are not the kind of people who demand discounts or anything, and we like to pay what we owe, but still. This service was so bad that that response is garbage. We should have left after the first 15 minutes of waiting for our beers. Save your time and money folks. Go...

My husband and I went to the Kootenai River Brewing Company this Sunday night for dinner after a really long hike that day. We had our pup with us, so my husband popped inside without me to ask if they allow dogs on the patio. When the host confirmed, we were told that we could go seat ourselves and someone would be by shortly. So my husband and I walk around to the patio, find a seat, and start talking. After a couple of minutes, I hop up and head to the restroom. Once I come back, I ask my husband if anyone has come over yet, and he tells me no. He taps out and goes to make a phone call, comes back, and still no one has come over to us. This whole time, there are two waitresses (names omitted) walking in and out. We sat there waiting for over twenty-five minutes before we decided to just leave. Give or take five minutes, a waitress was outside on the patio for the entire time that we were seated there waiting. And in that whole time, they both just walked right by us. No one came over to hand us menu's or get us water. Not even a greeting or a "I'll be right with you guys!" We didn't have anything on our table to suggest that we'd already been helped. So we just decided to leave. Rated two stars because the host...