MacKenzie River Pizza, Grill & Pub — Restaurant in Beavercreek

This is going to be a book but we very much enjoyed the experience here. We visited on a busy night and understandably, took a bartender a few minutes to greet us. It quickly wound down and we recieved excellent service from our bartender Cody. Being a former bartender, and frequenting bars in the area with OK bartenders, I was extremely impressed with his knowledge of product, excellent customer service and overall professionalism to us, and other patrons. I'm a sucker for anything smoked and hot sauce... and this place makes their own smoked hot sauces. By the name, I was afraid that this place would only have pizza but the menu did not disappoint. I got the spicy chicken sandwich, which was blackened grilled chicken with a pineapple salsa. Though, I didn't care for the salsa, the rest of it was excellent. I will order it again. My boyfriend got the taco trio. I tried all three. My favorite was the shrimp taco. The chicken taco was still good but a little bland. Each taco came with it's own dropper of hot sauce, which I found interesting and fun. We also ordered the pretzels. I've been looking for a place that serves fried hot pretzels in the area with no luck. I don't know if the pretzels here are fried but they sure tasted like it. My friend ordered the smoked Manhattan, which is such a cool idea. They pour the liquid ingredients into a releasable bottle and put hickory smoke in it, then you can swish it around and serve it over a big ice cube. I'm not a big bourbon drinker, but this cocktail was mild and delicious. The smoke and peach bitters mellowed out the bourbon. I guess they can do other smoked cocktails, as well. Being from Colorado, the decor is a breath of fresh air and nostalgic to me.  There is a wall of aspen trees in the middle of the dining room. We're going to enjoy the garage doors when they open up in the summer time. Conveniently, there are outlets with usb plugs at every table and almost every bar seat. This place thought of everything! I also like the fact that they don't serve straws unless you request them. Oh, and the entire bar has a strip of frosted stainless steel that will keep your drink cold until the last drop. How cool is that! Overall, this is our new favorite go to spot to hangout. The prices are average, the service is excellent, and the food and...

F - for FOOD FAIL Absolutely hate ruining a date night and spoiling starting a nice evening with a bad experience- don't make the same mistake.

As a hobby reviewer and google recognized contributor I love providing restaurants that aren't known as much an opportunity to get some attention. I wanted to try MacKenzie River Pizza, Grill & Pub because I saw from the responses to their customers they are striving to please customers and taking all reviews seriously. They claim to be listening and fixing issues and making things better for their customers. However its a cycle and easy to see this place continues to provide pre-formatted replys/responses with no real true personalization for those taking their time to provide feedback. Owners should want the good, the bad, and the down right horrible. This should always be reflected ethically and honestly. You will see this in all my reviews.

Understanding that MacKenzie River Pizza, Grill & Pub customers have repeatedly been disappointed and owner has continually heard that they didn't meet expectations of their guests. I see nothing they are saying or doing to make things right by their customers- This is a concern. This restaurant does seem to be regularly busy and that's wonderful for them, but for me: I felt ripped off from the the start by the alcoholic drinks being extremely weak, and a very expensive appetizer flat bread for $12 that was horrible. Honestly we almost couldn't have gotten fabulous small pizza for at Marion's. The Grizzly burger was a chain style burger and absolutely nothing to write about. Was horrible and dry- same with the standard basic fries. Overall the restaurant was a huge disappointment and gave us nothing to come back for. Definitely we will save the money and go to the proven "Applebees, Red Robin or Chilis" because it's all the same but at different pricing. I will recommend that you pass MacKenzie River Pizza, Grill & Pub up because there are a lot better quality places at more reasonable prices. One last thing: Max and Ermas have slowly vanished because of these same issues - my thoughts that this is a way to re-brand Max and Ermas with a twist - but they are delivering the same low quality products that put them under...

We were excited to try a different place tonight, but the experience was so bad that, for the first time in over a decade, I asked for a manager.

We were greeted at the door by the bartender and told her we’d like to sit at the bar to watch the game. This was a mistake as we then we had to overhear a drawn out staff conversation about a coworker coming in drunk. Basically the employees were standing in the drink pass area accusing each other of snitching and discussing the details of their workplace drama. I get it that stuff happens but it was very uncomfortable to basically be sitting in on what felt like a family fight. I wanted to ask for a new seat but no one checked on us.

All of our food came out at once despite ordering an appetizer and a salad. All the food was cold and the only edible dish was the salad. I liked the anchovies. The “lodgepoles” were were just cheese melted on pizza dough, served cold. The fish and chips were also completely cold. My boyfriend’s buffalo chicken pasta was cold yet overcooked at the same time - I assume because it sat in the kitchen while the staff was having their collective freak out.

Oh, and about the game: the bartender didn’t even care to get the Buffalo/KC game on the tv despite this place being covered in tvs and us telling her that we were here for the game. But we also couldn’t get her attention to even ask - again, so caught up in the drama. Eventually someone got the right channel, but by this time we were already ready to run out the door because the vibe was so bad.

Overall it’s obvious that this place has a huge problem with its culture and the attitude of employees. We don’t expect perfection, but also aren’t going to choose an experience that makes us feel so uncomfortable, with nasty food to boot.

We left hungry. I appreciated that the manager comped our bill, it was the right thing to do and I’m sure he felt very embarrassed. Pretty sure the rest of staff did not care at all. I’d start over with a new front of house staff if I were him, but we...