Solid Grill & Bar — Restaurant in Boise

Good things happen when you meet strangers-- Yo-Yo Ma.

This is the 124th Yelp review for Solid Grill and Bar, downtown Boise, next to Liquid (fitting), the Knitting Factory, and much more! This is my 426th review on Yelp.

I've been here three times and each time I had a 5-star experience.

This particular visit was led by fate as was who I was with. The quote above is, in essence, my motto for YELP and sets the tone for this review.

After a yelp event, My Yelp friend turned real-life friend Chanda and her friend went looking for a place to eat. Someone saw us walking by and suggested that we eat at Solid. I am so glad we did!

We walked in and were seated on the patio. There we saw my Yelpie Dani (again, good things happen when you meet strangers, right), and her dining companion. The music was so beautiful and I quickly realized that it was a person singing LIVE! What a treat!

The food was super good as well. I got the Portabello burger (mushroom in place of meat) with onion rings. My dining companions got risotto bites and a hummus platter. A full bar with a bartender that knows how to mix a drink, reasonable prices (especially for the location) and a superb atmosphere!

Then our Yelp ambassador here in Boise, Amie, walked in, with her beautiful smile! All these friendly strangers eating at the same place seems like a touch of fate to me, or perhaps a few shots of coincidence and technology, but I choose fate. What...

First time to Idaho and excited about good French fries! Only in Boise for one night and did a pretty extensive search for a bar and grill with good fries! We both order burger, add cheese and asked for our onions not to be raw; grilled or caramelized .. our waiter was awesome, Brando, he came back and said the chef won’t cook the onions! I’m like, hmmm never had a problem with request anywhere EVER, and I’m old!! So waiter apologized and tried to ask him again and is told that if he cooks the onions for us then he’ll have to do that for others or, when we come back! HA. God forbid pleasing your customers?!!! We laugh it off and the food comes, I’m super excited about fries cuz waiter said yeah, they’re good! Soggy, limp greasy fries. SO bummed. Couldn’t eat the burger cuz it was loaded with garlic. The fry Sauce tasted horrible and full of chipotle or hot pepper spice, NOT what one expects for fry sauce. So, I don’t eat. The bill comes and right there on the receipt it charges us for CARMALIZED onions; under build a burger. SO they actually advertise them but chef can’t be bothered to fix em. Jeesh what is the world coming to with bad customer service ( not the waiter tho, not his fault)! You know, it’s just not that hard to make a good burger and fries, ( when you’re a bar and grill, right)? or TRY to please customers! Nothing Solid...

Unfortunately this restaurant has gone downhill.

Went there today and the host said they were out of menus so they gave us one menu to share which was fine but it was also covered in dried old food.

There were only 8 occupied tables including ours.

We ordered drinks and they were fine.

Ordered 3 appetizers and no meals. Took 45 min for the apps to come out. The risotto bites had a hair in them and we never got our third appetizer.

When we got our appetizers the waiter said they didn’t have any clean dishes and were working on washing them so we waited for 5 min. After 5 min she brought out plastic utensils and couldn’t give us plates.

After 45 min of finishing food had to walk in and ask the bar for our check. Which they brought and had our third appetizer that we never received on it so we had to ask them to adjust.

Again, only 8 tables and there were two waiters. Likely they are trying to balance too much behind the scenes, our waiter was working hard but awful experience overall.

This place used to be good, it’s a bummer. I have kept going every few months hoping it returns to the level it used to be but it’s progressively gotten so bad.

Hate to leave this review but the experience...