Griffin Claw Brewing Company — Restaurant in Birmingham

I usually do not write reviews, but I thought I needed too tonight after experiencing a very disappointing evening at Griffin Claw. We have been told by many friends and family that we needed to check out Griffin Claw, and we live in Ann Arbor, so we thought a nice night out would be a fun experience in Birmingham. (We drove 45 minutes to come here.) It was not a pleasant experience. For a restaurant/brewery in Birmingham, I would have expected a lot better service and quality of drinks/food.

Do not get me wrong, this is a beautiful brewery. Shiny on the outside does not mean there will be substance on the inside. We were seated right away, but we waited 15-20 minutes to have a waiter address us. I had to go up to the front to request someone to help us. Finally, we had someone come to us, no waters or no greeting. Very unprofessional for a "nice" place.

The beer was good (highly favored the Clementine Shandy), I imagine for a brewery, however, anything else on the menu was horrible. The turkey avocado wrap was disgusting and the salmon bowl was okay. The mixed drinks were not palpable at all. Only order beer from Griffin Claw, it shows.

I understand for an indoor/outdoor place that there would be a wide variety of people. However, I believe this is not the place for loud families with large groups of children. There were little children running everywhere, screaming, and playing with toys. No one was doing anything about this, including their parents and staff. I understand that kids can be loud and rambunctious, however, there has to be a consideration for other paying customers who are spending a lot of money for this experience.

I would rather go to a college bar in Ann Arbor than this place. The waiters/waitresses, for being college students, would be much more attentive and service-worthy than Griffin Claw. Put that into perspective. Many of the staff were also talking in a corner, while ourselves and others were waiting to hear from our waiter/waitress. It seemed like they were all on "island time" and were waiting to get off their Saturday night shift. I respect the service industry so much as I have many family members who are former servers, but this was immensely disappointing for a "high" quality place.

I would probably come back in the future, but I might just order Griffin Claw not from the source for now. Very disappointed, and I hope the service will improve in the near future. Not worth driving 45 minutes in...

I tried to fill my standard 64 fl. oz. glass growler and was informed that only "Griffin Claw" growlers can be filled. This happened about 18 hours ago and since then I have been trying to come up with a good reason for this rule and I'm still coming up short.

Back when Microbreweries really started popping up like crazy in Michigan, around 2010, most breweries that offered growlers just had plain, unbranded, glass 64 fl. oz. growlers. Since then, as we all know, brewery visiting has become a state-wide pass-time and most breweries sell a slew of merchandise: t-shirts, keychains, beach towels, etc. And of course, the ever-beloved growler! Most breweries now proudly emblazon their logos on the 64 fl. oz. glass growlers and it's pretty cool, I should know I have a collection of about 50 of them in my basement (much to the chagrin of my wife, but I digress.)

It is really frustrating that I wasn't able to fill my standard 64 fl. oz. glass growler just because I happened to grab one that didn't have the "right" logo stamped on it (I own 3 Griffin Claw growlers as part of my aforementioned collection.) It's surprising that a brewery of Griffin Claw's caliber would make such a callous misstep!

As a father of a 10-month-old I am only able to imbibe 1 or 2 pints while visiting a brewery, so the ability to take some suds home for later safe consumption is paramount. Unfortunately, now I'm forced to frequent other establishments, one's that don't have such silly rules surrounding growlers. Any parent knows just going for a brewery visit involves hours of preparation and I can't be bothered to make sure I grab the standard 64 fl. oz. glass growler that just so happens to have the "right" logo...

Really like the food and beer, and the staff are friendly and attentive, but management makes up so many stuffy, pointless rules about nonsense that I doubt the staff can even breathe.

They always run out of things, too. On just ONE occasion, for example, we tried to order burnt ends, then the smoked vegan pork strip tacos, then the tacos. They were out of all three. I've never managed to get there in time for the burnt ends, in fact.

But here's the part where I've decided I'm not returning: Some stodgy old coots a long time ago thought it was important that breweries in Michigan should only be allowed to fill their own brewery's growlers, and not growlers from anywhere else. In other words, we used to have to pay another $5-10 every time we went to a new brewery if we wanted to take home beer. We all wound up with 20-30 growlers from various breweries taking up space and collecting dust on the slim hope that we wouldn't have to get ripped off again just to buy a beer we like from a particular brewery. Those laws were ended over a decade ago, and the beer lovers rejoiced.

However, it appears one of the old guard owns this place because they won't fill outside growlers. Ridiculous! Pointless! Talk about getting between your customers and a sale! They're not in the business of filling growlers. They're in the business of SELLING them.

From now on, this Griffin Claw growler will only contain beer from breweries that fill outside growlers (which is, like, any beer except Griffin Claw,...