Gem City Saloon & Eatery — Restaurant in Baraboo

I wasn’t going to share a bad review because it’s hard enough owning/managing a restaurant these days but the bar portion of this place was super unwelcoming. We started at Driftless Glen for an early tour/tasting and walked over to Gem City (at the advice of several pizza lovers) at ~4:15 on a Friday. It was well before any evening rush and certainly before added staff arrived because the bartender had to be our server at a 4 top. I say “had to” because it was apparent from her first word she was annoyed we were there. She rolled her eyes when I brought back the appetizer plates she gave us with grease and some kind of dressing from the last customer on them. She brought new ones with a “There you go” in a snotty tone, not even a good old WI “Ope, sorry!”, just annoyance. I was actually surprised as it got worse when she wrote down the wrong toppings for one of our pies and didn’t apologize or even follow up with any niceness when we said it was fine we would just eat it anyway. No eye contact or thanks when I walked over to pay the bill since it was obvious she wasn’t coming back to us. Also did not see any signs indicating surcharge for using a card. I feel like these complaints are minor inconveniences and specific to 1 employee so if you think you might go - you should! Just know you might want to wait until the friendly outgoing waitstaff gets...

We have had a hard time finding really superior pizza in the area, but our search is over. If you love pizza you have to at least stop and try. gem City’s version. Don’t get me wrong, 5 stars isn’t because this is a posh, fine dining establishment; rather it’s a “local eighborhood bar” that does it’s job extremely well. The bartender is friendly without intruding, greeting every diner with a smile — I watched. This is also a small town, so the menu isn’t extensive or filled with quirky ingredients. This is a great interpretation of local format it’s most generous, tasty, reasonably priced, quickly served food. Pizza’s here are limited in size, small (serves, they say 2-3) and large (serves5-6 they say) I don’t know what you do if there are 4 of you but these pan baked pies are overstuffed, and left in the oven long enough to achieve a little color! And we all know that color equals flavor! Let me warn you though, the crust isn’t your New York, or Chicago, of Neapolitan pedigree. Let me just say that it’s great, with a sprinkling of cornmeal on the bottom, but it’s not what you might expect as a traditional yeasted dough. Just go,try it and fall in love with a terrific product! Three of us had a small pizza, two reasonably priced apps and two drinks for $44 for lunch. Do yourself a favor and give this...

Took a chance with this place without looking at any of the reviews. Luckily the table next to us had ordered a couple of the establishments famous pizzas, so I got a quick look at those as we sat down. Walking into the place, our hearts were set on sandwiches, which I'm sure are great. However, after seeing the pizza we ended up ordering a small deluxe. And folks, don't let the word small fool you here. The only small thing about it was that it's smaller than their large size. The small is more than enough for 2 people. Me and my brother are known to have bottomless pits as stomachs and we were struggling towards the end of our task to finish the whole thing, but we endured in the end with only some minor discomfort as a result.

My only gripe was that our server was less than welcoming during our entire visit. Perhaps they were just having a bad shift, which as a previous employee of the customer service industry know all too well can happen frequently. Regardless, I hope whatever caused the aforementioned demeanor isn't lingering, and they find some joy in their work. The experience won't waver my decision to return for another visit in the future, but it was enough to knock a star off the overall rating, for now.

Do yourself a favor and go try out their pizza! I'm...