5 Lakes Brew Pub — Restaurant in Byron Township

This plate feels like it was designed in a lab to be as unappealing as possible. The haphazard sprawl of food thrown into a messy heap. The staggering amount of cracked and broken onion rings. The plastic cup of a mysterious substance that the menu describes as “‘O'-sauce” perched precariously on the rim. It’s unappetizing, to say the least.

Of course, the onion rings themselves are obviously frozen, despite 5 Lakes claiming to cook their food from scratch. Indeed, I’m certain they are the same ubiquitous “Brew City” brand of frozen onion rings that infest this city like cockroaches, a choice as tasteless as it is uninspired.

Besides the cracked onion rings, the batter is relatively consistent in color and they seem to be more-or-less cooked the same. The vague specks of seasoning (probably just salt) on the “flash-fried” onion rings suggests that there may be a hint of flavor.

Frozen onion rings are universally bad, but there are certain things you can do to make them slightly more edible. Cook time, seasoning, and even the sauce pairing can sometimes breathe a small bit of life back into these flavorless husks.

Not so here. They are completely tasteless. The batter is bland and dry, any moisture they may have once had abandoned on the floor of a McCain Foodservice Solutions processing plant, with nothing but a thin film of grease providing even a hint of wetness. Being overcooked, the onion interior is just as flavorless, a limp strand of nothing.

Not even the ‘O’ Sauce, same Frankenstein-esque combination of the kind of Ranch dressing that comes from a plastic tub, food coloring, and a homeopathic dose of horseradish, can save these rings. The sauce is thick and goopy, an active impediment to its consumption even as it slides its way on top of the bone-dry onion rings, nothing more than a tool to shovel industrial grade slop into your mouth.

I suspect that restaurants who try to pass off this hideous concoction as legitimate food put all their chips in on the batter, figuring that if it’s crunchy enough nobody will notice or care. Overcooked frozen rings do tend to have a rigid batter consistently applied, but that is completely undermined by the thin, sloppy noodle of onion lurking just beneath the surface.

It oozes through the cracked rings and slides out of each and every bite in a stunning display of slippage, the crumbling edifice of the uniform batter collapsing before my very eyes. They are crunchy, but also dry and structurally unsound.

This isn’t the first time I’ve paid around $10 for a mid-sized plate full of frozen and terrible onion rings, but this is the first time it wasn’t at a tourist trap on Mackinac Island. I am astonished that they have the audacity to charge $10 for this. It is a borderline scam, or at the very least a shocking sign of disrespect for any customer that walks through the doors of 5 Lakes Brew Pub.

Perhaps their business model relies on shoveling slop to whatever mall traffic from Tanger Outlets wanders through their doors. Perhaps they think that people will blindly accept their unhinged claims about “cooking from scratch” and providing “specially crafted appetizers.” Perhaps they simply don’t care about the food, or the people, that they serve.

Whatever the reason, these onion rings are an overpriced, tasteless disgrace that sicken me to my core, much like 5...

I usually don’t leave reviews, but going out is expensive and we are all trying our best out here. I wouldn’t go here again if I could help it, even if the food was good. Super bummed because when the food came out the second (and third) time, the food was hot. After our order was taken, the server was pulled behind the bar and she didn’t come back for another thirty minutes (I started to time it). I went up to the bar and couldn’t get any help. I flagged down another employee and asked about our food. It came out and mine was cold. The server came after another five-ten minutes after we tried twice to flag her down at the next table, with my friend yelling “ma’am” to try and get her attention. I let her know my food came out cold. She resent the order. Later, half my order came out and I was told the other half was a minute behind. Almost ten minutes later the rest came. Both hot tho, so that was good. In the interim, I asked another employee if I could please speak to a manager. No such luck. Our server came back. We were relieved to get our water filled. Meanwhile another serve comes out with my order again and looks at us and say, “oh” and then turns around and leaves. We were running so far behind and my friend had to leave so we asked for our checks. She took my card and left for almost ten more minutes, and started pouring and serving drinks behind the bar (I timed it). So you know, my order was the steak bites and onion rings. Two apps, with one of them being the most expensive. It took Almost an hour to get those and a glass of water. Two hours to walk out with our cards back in our hand. When the food was hot, it was good. My friend enjoyed her meal as well. The second set of steak bites had some fat pieces that you couldn’t eat, but the flavor was good. To have that experience and not have a manager come, to not have anything comped, to have my card disappear for ten minutes is not good. We still tipped because I don’t know if this was just a bad day. But to have no one check on us or come to talk is through that was crazy. When I went into a shop nearby and the workers asked how my evening was, they affirmed that that was their experience too. Decent food, terrible customer...

The service was great. They were really busy at first but our server still had a great personality and was awesome. Service gets a 5 star review. My issue was this: we ordered the Loaded Tots that were supposed to come with a “drizzle of ranch”. My mistake, I didn’t realize it was topped with the ranch. It came out drenched in ranch and the ranch was hot… because the food was hot which is great! I tried one because I didn’t want to complain, but couldn’t do it. There was way more than a drizzle. Every tot was coated in hot ranch. I spoke with our server and she said she could remake it but had to bring it back to the kitchen which I understood, because some people might complain just because they want free food. I get it. 20+years in the service industry. I get it. Absolutely, bring it back, I literally can’t eat any of it and apologized profusely for not realizing to ask for the ranch on the side. Had it been a drizzle, I could’ve made it work… but it was drenched. She returns and says they can remake it but I have to pay for an entire other order via management. I did not have them remake it, since the first order was $11. They can keep it. I paid for it. But seriously, they’re tater tots…not a steak, or salmon, or something that was costly to the business. Our bill was over $100 for 4 of us. I just wanted new tots not drenched in hot ranch.

A letter to management. We used to come here all the time. We’ve spent a lot of money at this restaurant. We even tipped our waitress 25% because she was awesome and it wasn’t her fault. But to not remake an order of tots because your kitchen staff put so much ranch on top of it that it literally almost made me sick, is pathetic.

Sadly, we will not return. I hope you get...