Kitchen & Kocktails — Restaurant in Brown Deer

TLDR: Tiny portions and expensive prices. Stick to the fish if ordering food. I will not be coming back!

We stopped by today to try out the new local restaurant. We came in during normally slow restaurant hours (between 2pm and 3pm), and there were only 2 other tables seated and a few people at the bar. The Hosetess couldn't figure out how to seat us until the owner (on the phone in the bar area) instructed her. Lots of friendly servers, and the owner stopped by before I had a chance to try my entrée. There was a weird, almost pine-candle smell as soon as you walked in (possibly mop water smell since the floor was a little sticky). Couldn't smell the kitchen cooking.

The salmon bites in the appetizers menu were fantastic, but barely 8 bites for $14 is very expensive. My partner got the Hot Honey chicken sandwich and said it was fine, but you only get 2 tiny pickle pieces on it. I mentioned to the server that I am lactose intolerant when ordering my burger and asked for no butter on the bun, which the kitchen followed, but I forgot to say no cheese because I missed it on the menu listing. Servers should be informed of ingredients on each item and understand food allergies/sensitivities, and double check if I had wanted cheese. Thankfully, I had some emergency lactase pills with me because I hate bugging servers over my own mistakes. However, I had to ask for a menu from a second server to double-check that I was missing ingredients from my burger. The owner discounted my burger for the missing items, which was nice, but I wish I could bring myself to waste food and had returned the burger to the kitchen. If you cannot make burger paties from scratch, don't offer them on your menu! It honestly tasted like the burger paties were purchased from the Pick N Save next door from the freezer section and made here (the big discount box style). They do not ask how cooked you want the meat because it is already over-processed and cannot be cooked to order. Also, the top of the pile of fries was nice and crispy, but the lower level were all soggy. The buns for both sandwiches seemed mass produced elsewhere and used here. I understand that not every kitchen makes everything from scratch, or that some owners need to cut costs when possible to stay in business, but cutting back on food quality so close to opening your restaurant makes me think it won't be around for long. Side note: I was afraid to ask for water because the menu listed drink options as soda for $3 (not sure if refills would have been included) and bottled water for $6, and I didn't want to pay $6 for...

Reading some of these reviews I'm wondering if we even visited the same place? I saw this restaurant driving by one day and invited a couple girlfriends to try it out and to catch up with each other. We got there about 5 minutes before they opened on a Sunday. While waiting we saw workers walking in the door. If you open at 4, why are employees walking in the door minutes prior? Right then I knew this wasn't going to be our best experience. Our waiter arrives to our table and tells us all the items that aren't available on the menu, several in which we had planned on ordering. There were several items "not ready" at the time of us ordering because "we just opened 10 minutes ago". Again, if you open at 4, shouldn't employees be there hours before prepping food? So if food had just been prepared at time of opening please explain why the food was served cold? I orderd wings, mac and cheese, and corn bread dressing. The wings were very small and extremely over cooked, the dressing wasn't even baked. It was gummy, cold, and tasted undone, and I never received the mac and cheese. The water with lemon taste like it was water with onion. The only GOOD thing I had was a lemon drop. While sitting there we noticed people around us were displeased with their food and either sent it back or left. Eventually the "manager" came over and asked how the food was. He seemed very rude as each of us were trying to give our feedback he only made eye contact with one of us and seemed to only be listening to that one person. He ended up giving us our money back. The ambiance of this place was on point. So was the DJ/music. This place has potential if they can just get the right cooks in the kitchen. Unfortunately I was so disappointed in this place I don't think I'll...

We visited on a Sunday night and although the place was not crowded, the service was extremely slow. I had to ask repeatedly for water and the waitress shared with us that the bartender didn't know how to make the cocktail I originally requested (a mule) which was on the menu. So she brought me another drink (old fashioned) which took about 15 minutes to bring out. She also proceeded to tell us that they were out of desserts, yams, catfish, oxtails, lobster and several other items that we inquired about. The food took about 40 minutes to arrive and some of our sides came several minutes before the main dishes which were lukewarm. Then my aunt and sister ordered fried cabbage, but the side came with a little bit of cabbage and a lot of peppers and pork sausage which my sister can't eat. That was not listed on the menu or shared before we placed our order. Also, the cabbage had a taste as if it hadn't been cleaned before being cooked. When we requested of they can remake it without the peppers and sausage, the waitress replied they were out of cabbage! Although our waitress was kind we felt these issues deserved a conversation with a manager. The assistant manager came out and was apologetic saying they were short staffed and their truck didn't arrive as scheduled that day and that she'd contact the owner to see what she could do to compensate us. After several minutes she came back and only gave us 20% off the bill after removing the cabbage. We definitely will never visit this establishment again. It was not worth the...