Dirty's Bar & Grill — Restaurant in Charleston

Positives first. The restaurant looks clean with nice natural lighting. Dining area and bar are each small but the bar is visually appealing. Several TVs on the walls and the noise level was about what you would expect from a restaurant/bar that has no partition between the two. Overall, not a bad restaurant rebuild, but that’s where they start to fail. Service is slow, the staff has no training, and the food and menu are bad. I’ve been a couple times and just like people here and on urbanspoon, the service is SLOW! From the initial greeting by your waitress, to the drinks, to the food, it’s all slow. AND THE PLACE IS SMALL! I don’t understand how it can be this slow. Even when I sat at the bar the service was slow, even though at times there were 6 waitresses behind the bar (which is about 12x10) at once. What a mess! They all pile up behind the bar but don’t seem to know much about the drinks. My waitress couldn’t name the 7 or so beers on tap, couldn’t describe the seasonal beer at all, was unable to suggest a martini, and when asked if they were ever tested on that information, she laughed and said no. She didn’t know the specials that were written on the board 20 feet away, and oh yeah, even after she took the order, everything was SLOW. When asked how long she had been working, she said about 4 or 5 months. Where’s the training???? Where’s the management? The martini’s were poorly made and way too sweet, which could have been due to the sugar running down the sides of the glass and the gob at the bottom of the drink (see picture of a similar Dirty’s martini preparation). On one visit, the bartender, I think her name was Haley, was maybe a little talkative but very nice with a great smile. Until… her manager came over, literally yelled at her right in front of all the guests at the bar (and the staff behind the bar), and threatened to fire her right then by asking “do you want to keep your job” because “everyone is replaceable!!” Talk about rude and disrespectful!! I asked another bartender for a scotch and soda, and she asked me, “what kind of soda do you want? We have coke, sprite…” Ummmm, club soda… miss bartender. She told another customer that they had “cab er NET” instead of “cab er NAY”. Let me be clear here, I understand she is probably like 22 years old, and I’m not expecting a 4 star experience, but come on!! Last, but not least… the food is bland and boring. Looking at the menu, everything is either fried or cook top grilled. I’m not sure if they even have an over or a sauté pan. Hey cooks, you don’t impart flavor to food by drowning it in salad dressings!! That thing you call the Pile is disgusting! The menu says it’s “our delicious seasoned fries…” (from a bag), “smothered in juicy stickless chicken” (how do you smother something with chicken? And what the heck is a stickless chicken? Is stickless even a word?). Then come the flavors (alone the chicken tasted like a sock) when they pour on buffalo sauce and ranch dressing. Finally, the thing is obviously microwaved for like two minutes. BTW, there were 5 “Dirty Favorites” on the menu and 4 of them had ranch dressing and 3 had buffalo sauce AND ranch dressing. We also tried the mushrooms, which, surprise, are served with ranch dressing. The mushrooms were completely without seasoning, absolutely none, not even salt. The restaurant seems to feature a “chicken stick”. It’s a breaded, deep fried, half a breast that has a skewer inserted AFTER it’s already cooked. WHAT??? Why? The stick doesn’t impart any flavor, it’s not edible, and adds nothing visual (it’s not like it has an umbrella or anything on the end, thank god). Why not steak stick, hamburger stick, fries stick? This place really appears to suffer from a lack of management. The staff looks to be almost all 20-something college kids and there isn’t anyone overseeing, training, or guiding. And, judging by the other reviews nobody’s utilizing any critical...

Whenever I am in Charleston for work, I do spend some of my lunches and once and a while, dinners, at Dirty's Bar and Grill. The staff here are welcoming, and I have always had bartenders make good suggestions for both beverages and food. This place isn't a fancy restaurant but a familiar place for decent bar food and nice sports bar with each season. My two go to entrees is the yum yum bowl where they have strips of steak over a bed of rice and vegetables and it is glazed over with some in house yum yum sauce, a must try. My second go to is the fish tacos, which are offered fried or grilled. There's a good variety of food here and a lot of options that I haven't tried yet, and they do change up their menu every now and again, so if you are a local you will be able to try something new. They have several desserts but what sticks out to me the most are these rolls of cookie dough which are wrapped in wonton wrappers, fried, and placed in a martini glass with a scoop of ice cream. And I am...

We were passing through town and this place was recommended by friends. We waited about 10 mins to be seated. People kept walking by and it was like we were invisible. Once seated Google alerted me to view the menu, this is how I know how long we waited to be helped. After 13 mins we asked the manager who was walking by if we could get helped. She was super rude and said your waiter is right there, he will be over in a minute. As if we had only waited a short time and were out of line for asking. Once the waiter came, he was very nice and apologetic. We both ordered the fish tacos and they were good. I’ve had better and I’m sure they could have been worse. The girl that brought our food out was super nice, apologetic and offered us a free dessert. I know that everyone has bad days, so I will try again sometime. Just disappointed with the...