Tony K's Bar & Grille — Restaurant in Berea

In our continuing quest to try out the local restaurants in the area, our search brought us to Tony K's Bar & Grille.

Upon entering the restaurant the first thing we noticed was a very strong smell of cigarettes. Not sure what was going on but that smell persisted through our entire visit. We originally thought it might have been a patron that had recently walked in but it was prevalent through the entire meal in both the dining area we sat in as well as in the front lobby. My nose is hyper sensitive to it so it was an annoyance through the entire visit.

Besides that issue, the service and food were great. The menu is very interesting having a mix of standard American tavern/pub style foods with more exotic Mediterranean style foods. We went back and forth on options but settled on more tavern style food for our visit.

We started with an appetizer of a bowl of house chili with cheese and onions and pretzel sticks with what appeared to be a house made beer cheese. Pretzels arrived out very fresh and hot. Well cooked and not salted to excess. Beer cheese had a good flavor and was a good compliment to the pretzel. Chili was well seasoned and flavorful and was a great pre meal soup option.

For the main entree's, I ordered the pecan grilled chicken salad with raspberry vinaigrette and my wife ordered the patty melt with fries. We also wanted to try out the pizza so we ordered a 10" cheese pizza as well.

Must say the chicken portion was great for her price. The chicken was cooked well and the pecan coating added some good texture and flavor to the breast. The blue cheese crumbles paired well with the mandarin oranges, mixed salad, dried cranberries, and the raspberry vinaigrette.

Wife enjoyed her patty melt indicating it had an excellent bread to burger ratio. Fairly low profile bread so it didn't overpower the rest of the ingredients. French fries were solid and we both munched on them through the course of the meal.

The pizza was a hand tossed and was somewhat of a thin pizza without being crunchy thin. Marina sauce was good and the pizza had a good brick oven style flavor to it.

For dessert, wife ordered vanilla cheesecake. It was served with a side of whip cream with a Hershey syrup chocolate drizzle. Cheesecake was good and stood out as it was crust less. Finished on the outer edge with what tasted like almonds.

Overall, it was a good visit and would like to return again to try more from the menu. The variety and options left it open for several choices depending what you were in the mood for.

As a forewarning to anyone paying with a credit card, they do add a 2.5% surcharge onto the bill to cover the credit card transaction fee. Had no problem with it but sharing for awareness...

We had a large group for a Christmas party here in Dec 2024, service and food was disappointing. 1). Our group organizer pre-paid a party room fee but then we were just crammed into a corner section in the restaurant that really wasn't big enough for our large group. It was difficult to walk around to talk to people during the long wait to order food. 2). Just a couple days prior to our event our organizer got a phone call demanding that he pre-order 2 appetizers at a cost of $130! 3). At the end of our party our organizer was presented with a receipt charging yet another "banquet fee" of $28, and the calculations for fees based on percentages were wrong. When I pointed out these errors we were told we had to pay it and could talk to someone "tomorrow" on the phone to fix it. So I had to shell out extra money to our organizer because what he had collected per person didn't end up being enough. Keep in mind, this all is on top of what each person individually paid the restaurant on our own separate checks for food and drinks that we ordered. 4). I ordered the fish and chips and got fish with a small cup of coleslaw and a large bowl of coleslaw instead of fries! When I asked the server what was going on she insisted that's what I ordered (I didn't), but the waitress fixed it. 5) when we got our meals they didn't bring any silverware and griped when we asked for some. They expected us to eat out expensive meals with the cheap plastic forks they had out for the overpriced appetizers our organizer was forced to pre- buy. I will never...

We have been here before and were pleased with service and food. Not this time. The hostess sat us at a table and gave us our menu's. The waiter showed up shortly afterwards. He took our drink orders and sat the coasters down. 15 min later the hostess looks over at us and started talking to another waitress. That waitress comes over to check on us. She asked if we have been helped and noticed the coasters but nothing else. About 5 min later our waiter shows up with watered down drinks (ice melted) aplogized and took our order. That should have been a sign,it did get worse. He comes back to tell my wife that what she ordered wasnt part of the special today. So she orders something else.....nope the were out of that, so she settles on something. Her brother ordered a bacon cheeseburger, it came with 1 small slice of bacon with no cheese. We got that taken care of.....remember the watered down drinks? The waiter comes back and ask's if the drinks are ok, they were having problems with the CO2 system. He couldnt bring us anything to replace the drinks because of that. We did finish eating. The food was ok, not as good as previous visits. We asked for desserts, well about 20 min later we did get some, oh, and replacement drinks. Nothing like a fresh drink before you walk out the door. A lunch that should have taken 30-45 min was...