Ashley's — Restaurant in Ann Arbor

I was here on a Saturday night at 9 and not surprisingly perhaps, the place was full. Luckily for us, my friend and I were let in with just a moment's wait and we were assigned a booth so I was very happy about that. Our server stopped by pretty soon we had our butts into our seats and said - "I will be in to check on your drinks orders soon." Now, I should talk about their wide selection of drinks. They easily have one of the most extensive selection of beers that you will find at any restaurant and what's nice about their selection is that the menu gives you a pretty good sense of what each of the beers is like. They have a scale from 1-10 (where 1 is very light and 10 is very full-bodied) and they have almost all of their beers rated on that scale. In addition, they also provide the alcohol content for each beer. That being the case both my friend and I took a fair amount of time looking through the beer list only to be interrupted twice by our server with - "Decided yet?" Finally when I had decided on getting a Sam Adams, she said condescendingly, "All this time to decide on a Sam Adams, huh." That was the first sign that we had a server with basically a Why-are-you-guys-here attitude.

That said, our order of appetizers of pesto fries came soon and boy, am I happy that my friend had ordered it. They were easily among the best fries I have ever had. Both the seasoning that was put on those fries along with the dip that came with it were very, very good. The fries also had sun-dried tomatoes in them and that only added to the flavor. Quite soon, I found myself asking for a second serving of the dip since both my friend and I were using it in liberal quantities on our fries.

As far as the main course was concerned, I had a burger and my friend had a sandwich. None of them were much to write home about but they were fine - just about average. I would have liked to have the option of having a turkey burger but they did not offer that and in the absence of that, I went for a burger with a chicken breast used instead of a beef patty (the other option besides beef and chicken was a veggie patty made of beans and I wasn't too keen on that). By the time we were done with drinks, appetizer and the main course, we were both pretty full and neither of us had any room for dessert. That said, the dessert options looked pretty interesting too.

Finally when it came turn to receive the checks, our server brought us those promptly but I was VERY surprised to see a tip of 18% added to the bill. I am pretty sure I have never seen a tip of 18% being added for a party of 2 people and I am not sure why she brought us a check with that on. Had she not put that on, I would have put in the usual 15% but having had that 18% on the bill did leave a bad taste in the mouth. The total for the us came to $52 with tax and tips included.

All in all, I would say that the service was lack luster and that stood in the way of what could have been a pretty darn good evening. That said, I can't stop coming by to the pesto fries - they were really OMG good and so you should certainly try those. I am more than happy to give that place another try especially considering how close it is to U of M's campus and I just hope that I get a...

Ashley's has a good food and beer menu, it's in a good location and the decor is interesting and comfortable, but, the service is horrendous. The first time I went there I thought I probably just got unlucky and had a bad waitress, it happens, but have since found that it's simply the staff culture there. The service is bad enough that I would not ever go there go ever again.

The staff does not frequent your table enough, so it takes forever to put in orders, get drinks, get your water glass refilled (which you will have to flag the staff down for because they will not notice and let it sit empty). The staff is blatantly rude, I went there one evening with a few friends, we were seated at 9:45pm and they stop serving food at 10pm, someone in our party wanted to place an order for food then so he could get it in on time, the waitress didn't seat us with menus so when he asked her she replied, annoyed "We stop serving food at 10" and turned around and walked away as fast as she could so he couldn't challenge her. He then got up and followed her, told her he still had time and could he have a menu? She was blatantly rude to him the rest of the night for putting in the food order which was ridiculous. The last waiter I had there I had to flag down literally every time I needed something because he completely disregarded checking in on our table.

Also, maybe I pick poorly/obscurely from their beer menu but more often than not they've told me they're out of whatever I'm trying to order. I've come to find that their extensive beer menu is sort of false advertising because their more exotic things I'd like to try are never in stock.

Overall, I've enjoyed their food, you can get a good beer/drink but it is the worst service I have ever received and there for would not recommend. It's worth the walk to make it to the Jolly Pumpkin or something similar in more of the main town...

I don't normally review but last night's service was uncalled for. We came in wanting a quick beer and snack, we were pretty much ignored for the entirety of our service. Rachel walked past our table many times without checking in yet they were checking in with the rest of their tables. We ordered a second beer and it took 20 minutes to order, we had to ask them if we could order pretzels too. After ordering pretzels, we waited almost 30 min for them only for them to be given to another table. Without even asking if the pretzels were anyone else's, the food runner gave them to the table next to us after they even said they weren't theirs. Rachel saw this happen and didn't even bother to check in on us. Yes they were busy, it was trivia night, which we didn't know when choosing to go to Ashley's, but as a server myself, ignoring my tables is something I could never do. When our pretzels arrived, they were quite literally thrown onto our table at us and the runner walked away. We never received silverware, napkins, or plates which all of the other tables had once their food arrived. Even the table that received our first order of pretzels. I understand being busy, but last night was terrible. There's no excuse for being ignored no matter how busy the establishment is. Every single thing we ordered we had to flag Rachel down, even for our check. No one checked in on us, Rachel never stopped by on their own to check on us or take our order, they watched our food be given away and didn't bother to say anything to us about it even when we were visibly upset. This was my first time at Ashley's and I hate to say that I'm not very...