Crooked Pint Ale House — Restaurant in Apple Valley

Crooked Pint F(Ale) House

As our meals arrived to the table, our eyes had that "that looks tasty" look, but it was short lived. My wife started to take bites of her fish taco, prepared with deep-fried cod, cabbage slaw, pico, avocado, cholula mayo, and fresh cilantro. She quickly realized she wasn't happy with her decision and finished just one taco. Not the best tasting fish and really not much for flavor either.

I started to dig into my juicy and was really looking forward to tasting this thing. Prepared by stuffing it with creamy beer cheese and served on a pretzel bun, topped with bacon, bistro sauce, haystack onions, and a slice of pepper jack. Sounds good, right? It had potential, but like their French Onion Soup, ZERO CHEESE to be found inside. Essentially, I had a large bacon & pepper jack cheese burger with an air pocket in the middle. Check out the Juicy Lucy Challenge to see how they did against the competition. Hint, not so good!

So, not the best first experience, but hey, we should give them another shot. Round two! My wife ordered their Buffalo Chicken Wrap which is prepared with melted bleu cheese, wrapped in a whole wheat tortilla and served with celery. No frills, no holy cows and nothing to brag about. "Hey honey, how is it?" She replied with a shoulder shrug and a "Meh, it is what it is!" So far, so good...

I went with their Lobster Grilled Cheese. The name alone will catch anyone's attention if you like seafood and grilled cheeses. I myself love seafood and thoroughly enjoy the grilled cheeses my wife and I create at home. There's just something about my wife's grilled cheeses that I love and we usually use a couple different cheeses and sometimes will throw down a little parmesan to crust the outside. The F(Ale) Houses rendition included lobster, monterey jack, parmesan, garlic pepper sauce, avocado, and tomato on sourdough. What could go wrong?

It looked delicious, but not the best tasting at all. The lobster was far too fishy tasting and I mean the bad fishy taste, like bad fishy tasting sushi. I'm not sure where the cheese was on the inside and thankfully, the garlic pepper sauce I could sort of taste was actually pretty good. Here's my 2 cents for the Crooked Pint... Preparing lobster isn't a mystery, so tackle that first and foremost and put some cheese in the darn thing. It IS a grilled cheese by the way. Now that I think about it, I think the F(Ale) House has something against cheese! :) It was lacking in every meal they prepared that was SUPPOSE to have cheese included.

If you're fine with mediocre food, feel free to stop by and take a stab at their cuisine. They have plenty of brews on top to satisfy anyone and they even have wine on tap. As I mentioned earlier, ownership is different for the two locations. Maybe (that's a big maybe) the Minneapolis location has a better culinary team. I have my doubts and will probably refrain from visiting the other location, but then again, I have a certificate for there to use up which by the way is not accepted by the owner in Apple Valley. Never really understood why the same company would have different "rules", but oh well. Sorry F(Ale) House, but there are better spots to hit for food and we'll...

This is one of the worst dining experiences I’ve ever had! We went here for dinner one night, because it was highly recommended from a friend of ours. We were so excited to see all of the gluten free options! So we order, honestly the food itself was really good. It was the service that was horrendous. Our waitress told us because we were gluten free for sides we could only have a salad.. okay cool. They then brought out salads that had croutons. Which are obviously not gluten free. They brought out ‘new’ ones. You could still see the crouton crumbs on the salads. So we didn’t eat them. Then our bill comes out and we noticed we had been charged 6 extra dollars for a salad ‘upgrade’ so we talked to her explained how we were confused as to why we would be up charged when we didn’t have any option but to get a salad due to dietary restrictions. She then brings out the supervisor on duty and tell us he will not remove the fees. He then proceeded to call us incompetent because we didn’t read the menu close enough to notice the fees so that was on us. THENNN.. the waitress sent out someone else to collect our check because she was too scared, those words coming from the waitress who ended up taking our bill. I couldn’t honestly believe it. It was the most unprofessional thing I’ve ever seen. Also keep in mind we were never rude or mean about the situation to her or the supervisor. So she had to reason to be ‘scared’ to come back to our table. I was too tired to deal with figuring it out so my friends and I paid and left. The following day I called to talk to a manager, he was not in. So I left my information and was told I would hear back from someone the following day. it’s been 2 WEEKS, 2 freaking weeks people and I have left multiple messages and still no one has responded to me. I was so disappointed and I can’t believe I wasted...

5 years ago I gave this place a 5 star review. But I have been there now twice in the last 7 days and it has gone down hill. Went on a Sunday (10/31)and was the 2nd person to walk in. Once my party arrived, our server took our drink order. When she brought the drinks, she took our food order. And then never checked back the entire time we were eating. We had to flag her down for a box. She brought our tabs with the boxes even though we didn't ask for our tabs. Nor did she ask us if we wanted them. We had to flag her down AGAIN to have her take our empty plates. I had to order our 2nd round of drinks with the bartender, since our server would just walk right past our table. Yet she stopped at the table next to us multiple times. Went again today (11/5) for lunch. This time our server was one of the bartenders. It took her about 3 mins to stop and get our drink order and bring menus. Almost 15 mins later she came to see if we wanted to order lunch. She was too busy making sure everyone at the bar got their pull-tabs before she did any drink or food orders. Our food then sat in the window under the warming lamp I'm sure for about 5-10 mins before a different server brought it to us. We had to order our next round through her, as our bartender/server never came back to check on us. Again, too worried about the pull-tab players at the bar. Even though there were 2 bartenders working. I'm in the industry and know that food and drinks ALWAYS come before pull-tabs. After these last 2 trips, I won't come back again. It's too bad because the food is good. I understand in this climate it's hard to find people that want to work. But those that are,...