Old Chicago Pizza + Taproom — Restaurant in Bozeman

Hit or miss, it really depends on the visit. I've had great food and service. I've also left feeling like I didn't want to go back. If it's a good visit it's usually amazing. Friendly service, quick turn around on food, quality eats. But when it's bad, it really sucks. My last visit was a busy Friday evening. Just wanted some drinks an apps to tide me over until our friends arrived and we were heading to Logan. Sat in the bar and our server was either overwhelmed or new, or both. Hubs ordered a Captain and 7 (mostly ice) I wanted to try a cider on the menu. I was told it might not be available. Pregnant pause. Ok, can you please check? Begrudgingly left to go check. Came back, no not available. Ok I'll have this instead. Ordered appetizers. Before they arrive she asked what we were ordering for dinner. Let her know we were just having apps. Huffed and left. 10 minutes later our pick 3 appetizer arrives, but the runner hands it to the table next to us. And they just take it and dive in!!! Who does that? So another 10 minutes goes by, no appetizer. We flag down our server because she had been MIA and even intentionally went a route to avoid walking by. I mean we both have been in the service industry, we aren't aholes and are polite. Ask her if she could check on our appetizer. Huffy again. 2 minutes later the manager comes over and apologizes for how long our food is taking. Tells us it will be right out. Gives us half off the food ticket. Um, alright... Ok, so they are firing it in the kitchen as we speak in other words. 2 of the 3 apps come out??? And they are so hot it's scald your mouth you aren't tasting anything else tonight. The jalapeno pretzels and deep fried pickles we're good. The pretzels we're actually amazing. Then the onion rings arrive. My husband had a couple, I take one and bite into it. The inside was raw batter. 🤢 Time to pay the tab. Annnnnd where's our server. Haven't seen her since she went looking for our food. Well we've seen her, just not at our table. So hubs goes up to the service station to pay. Oh yeah, I'll be right over, she says. Pay, tip (although not 20% as you can imagine) and head out. Haven't been back in the past couple weeks, but we will. Just going to make sure not to sit in...

8:30 pm, July 18th. Bozeman has great food and great drinks. Went to Old Chicago several times in the past, great food, good service. Totally opposite this time, and it is definitely a management issue. After waiting for 10 minutes, the hostess finally arrived. Free seeting in the bar area, a 5 minute wait on the restaurant side, so we elected for the bar side (we wanted an appetizer, drinks and dessert). They took about 15 minutes to clean the table in increments, finally brushing the food onto the floor. I'm surprised nobody slipped on the fries. We waited another 10 minutes for a server. A young female server took our order returning with the drinks quickly. The food took a while, and we didn't get the ice cream we ordered. One drink we ordered was the Chicago 7 Mary. What we got was a tomato sludge with water on top and a lemon and lime garnish. NO ALCOHOL. We waited another 15 minutes for our waitress and finally had to go get her. Asked for our ice cream again. We asked what the drink was, she said it was the Chicago 7 Mary, except they ran out of skewers. She explained it was the Ketel 1 Vodka that makes it a Chicago 7 Mary, not the garnish. We asked why there was no garnish and she explained that they ran out of the skewers, so they just served us the Chicago 7 Mary without the garnish because "it's just garnish". We tried to explain that if she had told us that they were out, we would have ordered a beer instead. She said "I didn't make it, I just brought it". She ended up rolling her eyes and storming off as we were trying to resolve the problem. Up walks the manager/bartender who explained that even without the garnish, the $8.49 tomato sludge on ice was still the trademark Chicago 7 Mary, bloody Mary cocktail. She finally took it off our check. The cookie was raw in the middle, the Ketel 1 vodka bottle is apparently just water, and we never got...

I went to Old Chicago after I realized it was football Sunday. Buffalo Wild Wings was playing extremely loud football commentary over their speakers. Old Chicago was a second choice. We went & got told that on the right they were serving us but if we wanted to wait, we could & get a table. We got seated & waited. We waited over 10 minutes before another couple of people came in & sat at a dirty table. The server then came around & offered them menus. Not only did she seem like she didn’t want to be there but her attitude was terrible. We were being blatantly ignored. Apparently it must have been our mistake in choosing a sports bar to eat at, but after working & being hungry, I will not be a returning customer. Especially after the server who seemed to be having a bad day with her crappy attitude.

Updated review as of 9/20/24

We decided to give Old Chicago another go as the last time we ate there, our waitress was terrible with her customer service & it was football Sunday. We walked in, we were told we were more than welcome to sit at the bar. We asked how long of a wait, the gal told us about 10 minutes. She didn’t seem very happy that we walked in. She leaves and a couple of boys come & stand at the hostess stand. There was us (a couple) & a DoorDash driver/Uber eats driver. One of the males told the food delivery driver to cancel the order. He has been there too long & to cancel the order. The male who told the guy to cancel the order then walks back to the hostess station & begin to put whatever to go boxes in another stack with attitude. We didn’t even bother to stick around after having seen how the food was being handled. Much less, we waited all of 7 minutes to hear back on a table. To add, we weren’t concerned about the wait, but instead of the service...