Uptown Food & Beverage Co. — Restaurant in Ankeny

My wife, and I, are trying to visit/revisit some local restaurants before we move out of State shortly. We hadn't been here for a couple years, and decided to give them another try. Last time we went, the service was lousy and the prices were starting to creep up to near unacceptable. Well, on 7/29/24, the service was still lousy, but now the prices ARE straight up unacceptable. I mean, $9 for a half order of onion rings? I should have snapped a picture of them. Pretty sad quantity. We got a two topping pizza, of which I think the base (no toppings) price on them starts at $19. That's a stretch when so many other pizza places, which are much better, charge less. At Abbie's Pizza, out in Bondurant, we can get the same thing for $10 less, AND it's ten times better. Even Wig & Pen doesn't fleece you, and it's better, too. Also, our waitress kept disappearing, and it took her 3 trips to the table to get our check so that we could get out of there. The pizza has a decent taste to it, the onion rings were alright, too. Even if we weren't moving we wouldn't come back again. We're pretty free with our spending, but this place has no value at all. My rating is really about a 2.5. So, like they taught you in math class as a kid, round up. Hence the...

Came in around 2p and the place had 1 other table. We're greeted with "sit wherever you like". We wanted to watch the little League world series so we sat in the bar area. Only 1 server on which is expected once the lunch rush is over. Drinks came quickly but the server went back to rolling silverware which from being in the business myself when I was younger I knew that. Unfortunately, she was talking/or listening to music on her cell phone with ear buds and came back 10 minutes later to get a food order. Once we ordered it didn't take long for the "bar food" quality to come out from the kitchen. My wife's fish sandwich was lukewarm at best and my chicken parmesan sandwich looked like the marinara was in the crust. That too was lukewarm at best and the bread was rock hard. The fries were better than the sandwiches but you only get a small handful of you're lucky. Was only given one drink refill and the server "handed us" off to the bartender who was more worried about talking to the kitchen staff and doing ordering and getting ready for the night shift. He came once to check on us and before I could ask for a refill he left to answer his/restaurant phone and then the...

.... I really enjoyed the atmosphere here I was just kind of disappointed in some of the food.... Definitely not disappointed with the pizza, but the pasta sauce is not what I expected it's just doesn't taste like pasta sauce.... I don't like reddish orange pasta sauce, pasta sauce should have a complexity of flavors from deep to rich to " OH my gosh I just want more" . And toasting bread just on one side that's just not a good thing.... And I wasn't the only person that noticed it had this weird kind of aftertaste that tasted like fish I don't know where that comes from. But yeah I was not thrilled with the bread. Bread that is only toasted on one side that's just never a good thing. They should get breadsticks instead if they don't want to toast both sides of the bread because breadsticks ... they'll get done on both sides. I'd like to go back and revisit this place I definitely love the pizza maybe some of the other dishes are better than what I had. But it's nice that there's a place like this right in Ankeny that actually is thriving and is a...