49th State Brewing - Denali Park — Restaurant in Alaska

Hate giving bad reviews of places that shouldn’t get bad reviews. I know the food is good, it’s a great atmosphere but read on.

60 minutes. 4 kids 2 adults. Not busy.

Showed up and was sat almost immediately, not bad, very friendly hostess. Waiter showed up quickly. Very nice guy, 100% was hyped for a good experience. Put our drink orders in, sodas for the kids and simple adult beverage order plus a pretzel appetizer.

Locked in! Now we get a few minutes to look at all the amazing food that we are going to order. 5 mins went by, meh okay… 10 minutes went by…. Alright alright, it’s not crazy busy here but maybe the waiter had to use the bathroom…. 15 mins went by… okay now what the heck?

Minute 17- here he comes… has 4 sodas. Adult ones are on the way.

Oh?

20 mins went by… okay really this is how this place is going to go? Looking at other tables getting things a tad bit quicker and we are still waiting for 2 drinks and a pretzel.

Minute 23- other person who isn’t our waiter swings by with the last drinks.

Minute 25- the pretzel rolls out and by this point we have decided we will probably not order food here and head down the road to somewhere that we can at least get food in what I imagine, would be much quicker.

We inform our waiter and he says oh okay and off he goes.

We divide up the pretzel and pass it around.

Minutes 25 to 43- we ate the pretzel, talked and then started looking for the waiter.

Minute 44- time for the check, I waved down the waiter, he was on his way to place water on some tables, told him we are ready for the check. He makes direct eye contact with me, nods his head like he will be right there.

My oldest says how long do you think this will take? I said 5 mins? Wrong. He started taking orders for a giant table, didn’t look back. My family went outside to wait for me.

Minute 60, a waitress who had been servicing a table nearby came over and asked if we were doing alright. I said, doing fine, just been waiting for 15 minute for the check. She apologized, looked back over at her coworker who was happily snagging up orders for the big group, cheeks turned red and said I’ll get your check, less than 45 seconds she had my check at the table.

$55, 4 sodas, a pretzel, and some beer later. I am out the door.

Listen this place is nice, it’s near a tourist location. I’m all about experiencing Alaska… but a lot of folks visiting this location during the summer don’t want to sit in and wait, lots of them are on tour buses or driving thru and have schedules to keep too.

Then to make us sit and wait because you think you aren’t going to get a good tip due to the way we are reacting to your service so you go off to a big tour bus group instead of treat all the customers kindly. Who does that?

This guy...

I have really mixed feelings here, so I’ll do a tl;dr and full review. TL;DR our server was fantastic. The beer is really, really good (the nitropical hef and apple fritter ale were of particular note) and the atmosphere was great too. However, wherein lies my problem is the terrible unapologetic management.

The review: We waited over 2 hours for our food as did many others around us. The servers were treated terribly by other customers even though the mess wasn’t their fault, so poor management really put them in a tough spot. When our food finally came out, it was cold, buns were rock hard, the “smoked wings” were clearly fried without a hint of smoke.. other people who came long after us and some other would randomly get food first.

I’m not sure what was going on in the kitchen, if there was a mass call off or something, but if things are SO bad that you take hours to get food on the tables and that food is cold and not cooked correctly.. at that point management should start limiting guests and start turning people away. Management should have been in the kitchen and running food, making sure things didn’t just sit in the window for 30 40 50 minutes.

When all was said and done, we were not even comp’ed for being served cold food after having waited hours.. just a measly 25% off on food half of our group didn’t even eat.

I hate to leave bad reviews, especially as a tourist to a place I don’t live or work. But management needs to do better. This is not a complaint agains the wait staff or chefs, and as stated, the atmosphere was great and the beer was honestly a highlight of the trip. But management needs to own up to this one and have a better strategy for when things get in the weeds. I really hope they don’t take things out on the rest of the staff because the mess was not their fault.

Final verdict - go for the beer and the atmosphere, but have a plan b for food. Tip your server even if things aren’t great; it’s not their fault, talk to the manager about that one.

Last thing… start canning that nitropical and apple fritter, I’d love to be able to take some home. I’m honestly surprised the beer here hasn’t had farther reach, seriously some of the best...

Arriving at the 49th there was a queue for a table and the place was busy. Both are usually positive indicators that this is a good place for dinner.

Sadly this proved to be the opposite !

We put our name down for a table and our phone number was taken together with my credit card details taken to allow 49th to text a link to check our position in the waiting queue.

So while waiting we'll get a drink.......I queued for over 17 minutes to order a couple of drinks..... There was a queue in the outside bar and the server was slow, having to validate ID and Credit Card before serving An IPA and a Cider The IPA was served in a Cider glass leading to somebody expecting a Cider pulling a face when tasting IPA, funny on one level, sloppy attention to service on another.

Why not validate once and allow a name check to speed bar service?

Once seated at our table we hit a problem that on one dish they were out of their signature sauce? No problem can you serve Sri Racha instead? Yes no problem.....

One order of food arrived, 8 minutes later the dish minus signature sauce arrived with Oli Olli ??

The server was told and we waited..... and waited .... still no Sri Racha.

I chased down the duty manager, gave constructive feedback and he personally went to the fridge to get the sauce for a dish now cold, no apologies provided ??

In essence there is a need to review the processes adopted and improve them to deliver faster and accurate service. Something that currently seems the 49th brewery in Healy may have difficulty attaining.

Despite this I recognised the young server was not at fault and I added a 15% tip despite the disorganisation.

In uploading the bill I noticed there was a guest count of 3, even though there were only two of us.

Sloppy beyond!

The management needs to do their job and get the service right

My scoring was epitomised in the bus feature in the...