Rek-Lis Brewing Company — Restaurant in Bethlehem

3/5: the food and beer were awesome. their operations needs some improvement, as they were operating at a higher capacity of guests than they were successfully able to.

My friend and I went to Reklis on Sunday night of Labor Day weekend. We called ahead to get on the waitlist which was estimated at about an hour and a half. The wait actually ended up being an hour.

The hostess was polite but she could have been a bit more aware, as someone who was not originally waiting to speak to her got acknowledged and seated before us.

When we got seated our server came over a little while after and said she would be right with us- which didn’t really end up being the case. She was clearly very busy and had a lot on her plate. But since that was evident I didn’t really mind. When she came over she let us know that the kitchen times were very long and that we should order everything at once right then and there. We got our drinks, a water and beer, probably 20-30 minutes after ordering. That was definitely way too long of a wait so I’m not sure what happened with that.

Probably around the 40 minute mark our waitress came over and asked if we wanted any chips and salsa (on the house) while we wait for our food. We accepted and that was a nice gesture for her/the restaurant to do.

Our food came out a little over an hour after we had put our order in of a pretzel, fried chicken sandwich, and a quesadilla. We knew the wait was going to be long but an hour was also wicked long.

At least for the particular food we ordered, it was totally worth the wait! The pretzel was so delicious. It was the perfect combination of light and fluffy, a little doughy, and a little dense. The beer-cheese sauce was thinner than I have had before for that type of sauce but it was tasty! My friend enjoyed her chicken quesadilla and my fried chicken sandwich was really good too. It was a massive piece of chicken, wonderfully fried, and sooo juicy on the inside. The slaw and honey bbq sauce in it were super yummy as well.

We asked the server if they were understaffed tonight and she said that their kitchen is small and with them opening up indoor seating again, it was super busy and backed up. It did look like they had some additional outdoor seating in place, so if they’re opening indoors up again they might want to consider increasing their staffing level, taking away the additional covid outdoor seating, being smarter about their menu and put on items that they can have quicker turnaround times on, or even reducing their menu as it has a lot of dishes on it (which is great for variety but hurts when it comes to kitchen times). They also may not be doing food prep in the most efficient way which can hurt their kitchen times too.

It seems like their operations could use some (maybe a lot of) help, but the food and beer were great. I hope they can figure out how to operate more efficiently, because waiting as long as we did can really deter some people.

Also shoutout to our server for still putting on a happy face when you could tell she was drowning and exhausted. She still was working hard and zipping around all over the place. She had worked 26 hours in the past two days!

So despite the long waiting game here (at least on this particular evening) I would give this place a chance for good...

(8/30/22 at 5 to 6pm we were there)

The great

The beer. The atmosphere. The venue. The service

The not good

If I'm paying that much money for food. It's gotta be good. It was not. Not even close

My wife and I got burgers. (We are both culinary professionals with degrees and 30 years experience between us) hers was over cooked ordered med rare. Came mid well. I ordered mid well. It came rare. I can even look past that part as maybe my patty ended up on hers and hers ended up on mine. And I don't typically order rare burgers but I eat steak blue rare so I'm not afraid of rare. It's just not how I enjoy a burger .. toppings were good. What ruined it was two major things. Neither burger was seasoned prior to cooking. No salt. No pepper. Straight up bland. And that led to major issue number 2 .. I could tell from the ashtray / burnt cigar / super harsh bitter scorched flavor that the grill was in dire need of cleaning. And this wouldn't have been so obvious if the patties were seasoned properly. Salt makes things less bitter. It's food science. No salt caused us to taste nothing but bitter scorched bland ashtray. Clean the grill. Cook on a lower temp. Season the meat. They were borderline inedible and tasted like I was chewing on a cigarette butt.

Everything but the food was great. I was craving a really good burger. I could have cooked a 100x better burger at home for 6$. I still taste burnt scorched cig butt as I type this 2 beers and 45 mins later. Really disappointed. I type this all out of love and really want to give this place another chance. I empathize with alot. I've been there done that. Been short staffed. Short on time. Short on well trained staff. I know the song and dance. But serving a burger cooked with no seasoning is beyond negligence and its unacceptable. Cook it with seasoning. Cook it lower and slower and it would have been fire. The toppings on both burgers we chose were great. Fresh. Tasty. Prepared well. It's a shame the burgers were cooked so terribly on what tasted like a grill that hasn't been cleaned in a week at a temp that was far too high that the outside was scorched and inedible but the inside raw, ruined the clean prep work on the toppings and well thought out design / composistion of...

This is the first review I've ever written. I am doing so because our experience at Rek-List was That Good.

Last week we hosted my son's wedding rehearsal dinner in the Rek-List Pint House. Katie the Event Manager was a pleasure to work with, quick to respond to questions and made the process painless. Katie also did a wonderful job setting up the Pint House for our event of roughly 35 people.

The bartender Rebekah did a fantastic job. Of course, it is difficult to screw up pouring excellent beer. And the beer (I am a bit of a beer snob…) was top notch! Not only did she efficiently (and correctly) fill all drink orders and facilitate some special shot requests she also handled much of the bussing of tables for empty glasses and dishes, all while being exceptionally friendly and approachable.

We had the fortune of having one of the owners, Marlaina, in the kitchen that night. The food was amazing. I have been to many brew-pubs. This was WAY beyond typical brew-pub level flavor and food quality. Everyone in attendance kept commenting to me about how delicious the food was. I can highly recommend the Pretzel Bites and Chicken & Waffle appetizers. If you have never had Chicken & Waffles before, Rek-Lis would be the place to have them for the first time (as many of us did.) The Sirloin, Stuffed Chicken, Stuffed Sole, Garlilc Mashed Potatoes… Everything. it was all so simply outstanding.

I say this with complete honesty: Neither my wife or I, or anyone else there had anything to respond with to the questions "What didn't go right?" or "What were you not happy with?" besides "Nothing. It was truly wonderful."

Major Kudos to Rek-Lis! They did such a phenomenal job they drove me to posting some reviews! Go with Rek-List, you will not be disappointed.

No, they did not pay or compensate me for...