Bear Lake Inn & Dingmans Beergarden — Restaurant in Bear Lake Township

I stopped in at 6:30PM on a Sunday with my wife and in-laws for dinner. We didn’t have a sever come by to get our drink order for 15 minutes. We ordered our food at this time as well. Once our drink order was in it took another 10 minutes to get our drinks. The restaurant was maybe 1/3 full, most of the patrons were only drinking at the bar.

My mother in law ordered French onion soup and it took 45 minutes to get the soup and it had almost no cheese on it and the broth tasted weird.

The rest of the food had still not arrived at the 1 hour mark when a man who identified himself as the owner came over to the table and stated “I just saw your ticket time and I’m sorry, I’ve told your server to make it right” before he grabbed his own food and left the restaurant. The server had just informed us before this happened that they only had one cook in the kitchen at the moment.

About an hour and 15 minutes all the fool came out. My father in law enjoyed the walleye sandwich and said the fries were great. My pepperoni pizza was also great. However my wives ordered the shrimp scampi and it was inedible.

The server seemed very nice and accommodating. She was truly sorry we were having a poor experience and we recognized that our poor experience was not her fault and lies more so with the kitchen and back of house issues.

My family has been coming to the grayling area for over 40 years and we frequent most of the local restaurants. We know that when it’s peak season you may wait for you food or for a table, that was not the case here. We were seated immediately and the restaurant was not busy.

They did comp our shrimp dish because we sent it back and they comped the soup because we sent that back as well.

It would take a lot to get us back in there again. I truly hope this was...

Update since reply from restaurant: I’m not sure why you some understand that someone would not go back to a restaurant if they food was bad. Well I believe in the 3 strikes your out rule and all 3 times were not back to back but about 2 months between each visit. So it saying one bad experience you would not give them another chance? We told the waitress each time. So we figured they would notify management. Also your restaurant is only a couple miles my from house so it would be very nice to have a good restaurant close. I do also see other negative reviews from the last few months and I believe the service and food had a big decline the last half year or so and the other reviews would indicate the same. I do hope that you take these comments and as yourself what has changed. Perhaps one day day I’ll we be able to return, but you stated you don’t believe that someone would go back after a negative experience.

We live a couple miles down the road. Was good 2 years ago. The last 3 times we went it has progressively gotten worse. The beer was warm and the food was the worse I have ever had at a restaurant. I ordered the ribs and they were extremely chewy, and tasted like they were frozen ribs that were freezer burnt and were microwaved with buffalo sauce. My girlfriend could hardly chew her chicken and she said seemed like it was frozen chicken that was microwaved. I wonder if they food cook they had 2 years ago left and the owner decided not to replace him and have the current staff microwave frozen food. We told the waitress, but nothing was done. 3 strikes...

Like others, we have eaten here several times, and really enjoyed it. Last night was a fiasco. I called early and made reservations for 12…then called back an hour later to add 1 more, and asked for inside. She saw the reservation and even called me by name, so imagine our surprise when they said there was no reservation. The waitress got our drinks, took our order… and disappeared. We went in to the bar to get more drinks. After an hour, we went in search of our food, it was sitting in the window under heat lamps. I located our waitress behind the bar, but she ignored me. Another waitress went and got our food. 3 meals were missing. After another 30 minutes, I went back in and asked for the bill, minus the 3 meals…it took her 3 attempts to get the bill correct. $239 was the total, and she is lucky she didn’t add the 22% for a gratuity, that she said we would get because we were a big table. We did not like the smaller menu, because some of us came for dinners, but several of us got the chicken fingers because they looked so good on another table. What showed up at our table were tiny, dry, chicken mcnuggets…nothing like the other ones we saw. The other food was not hot, or salads that had sat under the lights too long. I hope they get it together… this used to be an amazing place, that we bragged about, so we all drove over 30 minutes to get there. I was embarrassed because it was my...