Ice House Tavern and Grill — Restaurant in Brooklyn

This will be a 3 part review because I have a lot to say about this establishment ! I’ve been a customer at Ice House Tavern for the past 2 years. I’ve been supporting this business for a while, but never in all my years of living have I had a dining experience like how I had yesterday, 8/12/25. Me and my friend and her daughter (we are people of color, meaning African American) — I’m stating the race because it’s very important regarding this review. We just came in to grab some food from Ice House Tavern. As we pulled up, we were already greeted with dirty looks in the parking lot. There was a guy sitting on the side of the building. At first, we didn’t know who the guy was because he was outside smoking. We thought it was a customer at first. The big guy was giving dirty looks as we walked into the building. As we opened the door, we weren’t greeted by staff verbally at all — no one said “welcome” or “hi, how are you.” The only thing we were greeted by was dirty looks from the bartenders (lady with short blonde hair, looks roughly in her 40’s and resembles a dyke). The other staff had spoiled looks on their faces as well, as if we didn’t belong in there or we were lost. In the past, me and my friend experienced some strange looks from staff and their customers. We honestly didn’t think anything of it at first because some folks are just strange, but after yesterday it was crystal clear what this establishment stands for as a company. We experienced some extreme racism in this place. We went to seat ourselves in the dining area — it was fairly empty at the time. There was only 1 lady who came in AFTER us who said that she wasn’t ready to order yet because she was waiting for a party of 7/8 people, so she seated herself and got on her phone. Me and my friend, just a party of 2 because the child wasn’t eating or ordering anything, were seated across from her as well. Now we were fully ready to order and be greeted. We waited for several minutes; no staff brought us menus or asked if we wanted to get started with drinks first or anything. We were confused on the wait time because there were barely any customers in there at the tables — it wasn’t busy at all. After waiting a while, the lady across from us’ group of friends started to come in. Now it was a fairly large group, like I stated — they came in after us. All the time we sat back there, no waitress came back, but as soon as the lady’s friends arrived, we see the waitress finally rushing back with menus in her hand to serve a party of 8 before a party of 2. She skipped right over our table as if we weren’t even there. My friend had to get up out of her seat, walk over to the bar to ask if someone could bring us drinks. It wasn’t until the bartender came to our table that our waitress finally came over to say, “Oh, I can help them.” She came to our table and left the table about 10 times. It took her about an hour for our order to finally be placed in the kitchen, even though the table of 8’s orders were placed right away (yes, the table of 8 were Caucasian women). Before we ordered food, we ordered 2 more drinks. We were asking if the drinks we had could have been made in a regular size glass because they were made in shot glasses, and we didn’t want to put the waitress through the hassle of making multiple drinks if she could have put it in 1 glass for us. I guess our waitress delivered the message to the bartender the wrong way, because the bartender came from the bar to our table talking very aggressively and hostile. I had to tell her to change her tone and asked if everything was okay because she was coming off disrespectful. She asked what was going on; when we explained to her about the drinks, she completely understood and said the waitress came and told her something completely different, which frustrated her — but frustrated or not, this is not how we should approach...

Part 3 review , I’ve also gone through the reviews just now while about to leave my own review and seen that recently somebody had the same interaction with this establishment — his burger was burnt and they removed it from his receipt. And he said 2 of the cooks came to his table to speak with him. Hmmmm… funny, right after we were informed that food wasn’t allowed to be taken off receipts and kitchen staff couldn’t come to customers’ tables. The waiter brought us the owner’s (Debbie) number because she said there was no manager or supervisor on shift with the staff, so if an issue occurred during business hours there is no one in charge to hold the employees accountable. Shortly after, she went and told all the other staff in the bar. We had multiple staff coming to our table talking to us, asking what happened. After I explained to the staff, even they said that they were in the wrong on their part. I was told by two separate staff members that the extra crispy wing cook time was in fact 25 minutes and not 30 minutes. So if I asked for my wings to be cooked 5 minutes under the cook time for extra crispy, wouldn’t my wings have been cooked for 20 minutes and not 27 minutes? I only said 25–27 minutes thinking that was under the cook time, and my wings were actually cooked 7 minutes over the time they should have been cooked. Staff were telling me there was a huge mix-up, so for multiple staff members to hear the story and agree with me, the customer, and still tell me I can’t get the item removed from the receipt is insane. Our waitress started crying, saying the situation was frustrating. I asked her, shouldn’t I be crying as the customer being forced to pay for food I can’t eat? That’s even more frustrating. She has a sister who works there who came over to our table with the other bartender who had the short hair giving us dirty looks when we arrived. They were very aggressive and disrespectful, slamming two receipts on the table and saying, “So look, y’all are going to pay for everything.” We said we were going to pay anyway — there was never a time once in this entire encounter that I stated I wasn’t paying. All I asked was if the item could be removed; I never said if it wasn’t removed I wasn’t paying. The sister snatched the paper off our table that had the owner’s information on it (Debbie). I was told we weren’t allowed to have the manager’s number and that they called her, and they told me she said to them, and I quote, “Tell them to pay for their food, we aren’t taking anything off, and after they pay, tell them to get out and never come back here ever again.” So at this point, we are being attacked by staff members, arguing with staff, being disrespected, and told to never return. They even threatened to call the police on me for no reason, because my food was overcooked and I was informed incorrectly about the wing cook time. To top it all off, they didn’t even offer to just re-cook the food for me so I could pay for what I actually ordered. Why, as an establishment, didn’t it just cross their mind to take the old wings back and fix the order and give me new wings — and still make me pay? When we were leaving, two of the cooks were standing at the side kitchen door while it was open, laughing at us and talking about the situation as we left. They were rolling Black & Milds in between their hands and cooking food in the kitchen with no gloves on. The whole situation was handled so poorly. I’m very disgusted with them as a staff and business. Debbie supports their behavior; she even enables it, so they will never grow. She is losing money and doesn’t care as long as it’s the...

Review PART 2 , So now we get to ordering our food. We went over our order details very carefully and repeatedly with the server to ensure our order was correct. She asked if we wanted our wings extra crispy. My friend said yes for hers. I told her every time I come and order extra crispy, they are fried way too hard. I asked if my wings could be cooked 5 minutes under the cook time for extra crispy because I wanted them crispy but not too hard. I was informed by our waitress that the cook told her that the cook time for extra crispy wings was 30 minutes — yes, half an hour! So I told her no, that’s way too long; ask the cook if he could cook them for 27 minutes instead, which is UNDER the cook time, so they could be crispy but not hard. She told me she didn’t know if he could do exactly 27 minutes, so I told her to just do 25 minutes. When we received our food, my friend gave me one of her wings to try, and I gave her one. We noticed that my wings were fried harder than her wings, but she wanted hers more crispy than mine, so I was confused. I asked the server to come over to our table and I told her, as she approached us, “Hi, I don’t mean to be a bother but my wings are fried way too hard.” The meat was even dry. I asked if there was something we could do to fix it. I offered to give the NON-EATEN wings back to the kitchen, especially with the basket of wings still being full. I asked if they could just take the 1 item off my receipt, even though I had 4/5 other items still on there that I was paying for. That caused the waiter to start saying out loud, “I can’t give you free food, we can’t give you anything free.” She said that about 10 times, that we were just trying to get something free, and I told her she must not understand how getting something for free works. I would have had to ask to keep the merchandise, or I would have had to eat all the food, then said, “Hey, I want this taken off my receipt, I didn’t like it” — that would be me trying to get free food. You don’t return the merchandise and ask for a refund; that’s not how “free” works. She informed me she was afraid to let the chef know what was going on because he would say no to taking the wings off the receipt, etc. So I asked if I could just speak with the chef personally. She left the table, came back, and told us that staff from the kitchen aren’t allowed to come to tables and speak with customers, which is a lie because, as I stated, I’ve been here for 2 years and I’ve had a cook come to my table before in the past because I wanted to give feedback and compliment my food, and it wasn’t an issue. So it’s okay to come to my table as a customer when I want to give a compliment and feedback, but when I have an issue with my food no one can come out and...