Upland Brewing Co. — Restaurant in Bloomington

The beer was great! However, the food lacked! Our starter was the pretzels with beer cheese. We got 3 pretzel twists and 2 dips in small ketchup cups. One was just straight Dijon, nothing special, very acidic from vinegar. The second was the one we were excited to try, the beer cheese. Tried to dip nothing stuck to the pretzel, just made an indent in the cup, finally scooped some up, and I got the worst taste and feel in my mouth! It was gritty like chalk was not creamy, did not taste good at all! So we just ate a pretzel twist, which was very dry and crumbly almost seemed like they were frozen and got freezer burned. Onto the main courses! I ordered the Americana Burger, and it came with pickle lettuce onion and fries as a side. I was excited because the beef was locally sourced! It was just a burger! I'm very sad to say I had better burgers at Wendy's! It had no flavor! It was merely sprinkled with shredded lettuce, had a super thin slice of onion, and 3 super thin pickles and what seemed like a sad attempt at a thousand island type sauce very little amount. The fries were cooked from frozen pretty well. They were good with ketchup. My husband ordered the chicken sandwich, and it came with coleslaw and sweet pickles on it. He said it was ok on the flavor, just not quite there, and the chicken was beaten to death before it was breaded and fried too long. The slaw needed more flavor! The pickles were thick sliced and good... It's a pickle. His fries were good, too. Honestly, I think they need to integrate fresh, not frozen. I feel bad for the local farm they support because the burger was not great! It needed some nice crisp lettuce slices, a red onion slice, house made or locally sourced pickles, a slice of tomato, more seasoning on the sauce or do like a real American burger and put mayo and ketchup on it or on the side. Don't mash and knead the beef so much it makes it dry! Really make that locally sourced farm fresh beef shine! The fries are good! Add some seasoning to your chicken sandwich! Go to Florida or Georgia or Alabama and get that same sandwich.... mmmm, taste that slaw and those pickles! Perfectly cooked chicken... That's what some of us expect to get when that southern food is offered. The staff was friendly. The atmosphere was weird. Maybe because we were sitting between the entrance door and the patio seating door... idk 🤷‍♀️ never been stared at so...

I want to give Upland a 5 star review. I really, REALLY do. My husband and I are from Grand Rapids, MI and have been following (or maybe, stalking) sour beer since 2014 when we first started dating. Over the winter, we tried an Upland sour at the 7 Monks Taproom in GR and were blown away. We thought, that's it! We have to go to Upland over Memorial Day when we have time off. So, yes, we planned a vacation to Bloomington to visit Upland. We arrived Friday night around 10pm to the restaurant. We called ahead to make sure they were open and that they were still serving food. They said YES. We arrived and the restaurant was not busy. It appeared there was a rehearsal dinner in their back room earlier that evening. Chairs were already up on tables. We sat out in the garden area and ordered our first sour. Amazing! The garden area is beautiful. The humidity is just right with a breeze cutting across the field. Our waiter comes back for our food order and he promptly delivers the black bean burgers. However, he sets our plates down and darts off and we don't have time to order another beer. The burgers are SPICY and my husband and I are both forced to stop enjoying our meal until we have something to drink. Fast forward 40 minutes and we are still waiting for someone to check on us and see if we're ready for another beer (or maybe just bring us water!). We finally flagged someone down to grab us another water and she seemed irritated that we had done so. It was clearly apparent that something was going on with the staff that evening. Other customers were complaining about the service and we could see the staff arguing through the doors into the main brewery. Maybe they were short staffed? Maybe something happened in the kitchen? I'm always one to give people slack when it comes to service because I know stuff happens but this got to the point where I was laughing at how awkward and uncomfortable the atmosphere was. Unfortunately, we'll be enjoying our Upland beer from home...

I’ve never been treated this poorly at restaurant that I can recall. Our server would only acknowledged one of us at our party of six. After bringing her a beer and the rest of water she left us twice without asking if we wanted something else to drink, and she proceeded to go to her other tables and take their drink orders. Our appetizer that we had ordered when my friend ordered her beer arrived at the table before we were ever asked if we wanted anything to drink. We proceeded to flag down the server and I admit I loudly said “We want to order something too!” After she took our orders a manager came over and proceeded to tell us they reserve right to refuse service to people who they believe have been drinking prior to coming to Upland. After he said this he then lied and said he could hear us from all the way inside the restaurant yelling at our server. Mind you I said 1 loud sentence. Also as soon as he said this you could tell he immediately knew that he was looking at 6 sober women dumbfounded by what was happening. We calmly said, “ok thank you please cancel our food we will getting dinner somewhere else.” He immediately went into apologies, but my friend explained to him it’s fine the damage was done. Before anyone gets defensive of this server half our table are former servers and one is a current bartender. We know what’s it like in the service industry so we are very aware of what to expect service wise and know the way we were treated would never have passed if we had pulled what our server did. The moral of this story is we offended our millennial server and the manager without investigating the situation or observing our behavior accused us of being drunk and yelling and making a scene and abusing our server. I hope most people wouldn’t experience this when they visit here, but we will never be back...