TailGate Brewery Chattanooga — Restaurant in Chattanooga

First, I want to start by saying, my husband and I enjoy eating Tailgate’s pizza. The honey whipped ricotta pizza gives me cravings in my sleep.

Second, the staff is always helpful and friendly.

This time our experience was a disappointment. After driving 3 hours, our first stop into town was Tailgate and we came hungry. The Tie-Dye pizza is no longer on the menu board, this much we knew already. But there are other pizzas that are on a “secret menu”, because they still carry specific ingredients for other popular pizzas. We don’t believe this to be a crazy request. The Tie-Dye Pizza has not been gone long. We imagine the Chefs in the kitchen can whipped one up by memory without problem. Again, we are hungry, enjoy Tailgate a lot, and are willing to pay for the product we want. The team members, or managers(I’m not sure who was who everyone is dressed the same and I can’t tell who’s in charge) taking care of us were struggling to ringing up. We were charged for marinara. Not sure why, because that comes standard on most every pizza anywhere in the world.

We get the pizza to our back to the place we are staying and start to eat. I plowed through the first slice…Heaven! I take a bite of my second slice and something filmy comes out with it! Upon further inspection, it turns out it was a piece of plastic, like plastic that seals the product in a container. That is our only guess about where the plastic could have come from. I lost my appetite and threw the rest of the pizza in the dumpster. It’s sad that so many good visits has led to this being the end of the road for us. We are forgiving people, but there were too many errors to correct here.

But this review has a happy ending! Since we were still craving pizza, we made the short walk down the road to Community Pizza, had their Tie-Dye pizza(conveniently located on their menu) and it saved the day! Needless to say, we don’t want anything further from Tailgate. Today has opened our eyes to the simple fact that there are better options out there and we hope this review sheds light on that...

Both stars are for the beer. It's pretty good, if expensive and served in small glasses. That's the best I can say about this place.

Took the family there for dinner on Fourth of July. We paid $12(!!) for two hours of parking of which there was plenty. The fact the parking lot and restaurant were mostly empty on a Friday night at dinnertime should have been big clues of what to expect.

We had to try four different doors before finding one that wasn't lock. After getting in, we were greeted by a giant menu board of all their beers. Sadly, that's the only place where their beer selection is listed. Not on the menu, not on the second floor, not on the patios. ONLY at the front counter.

After paying $27 for two small beers and two soft drinks ($6 each for soft drinks, and only Pepsi products, ugh) we found seats outside on the upper patio to look over the menu.

The menu. Wow. We had serious trouble understanding the pricing tiers. There was pricing on pizzas by size, three different tiers of toppings, and no clarity on whether the topping prices were each or by group or what. If I understood correctly, the small pizza I might have ordered would have been close to $20.

We expected a server to explain those myriad options to us, but one never showed up. We waited a good bit while we sipped our overpriced drinks but no employee ever spoke to us after we sat down.

If you're just going for beer, Tailgate might be the best choice in that very small area. There are several other small breweries in town that will go out of their way to make you feel welcome, and their beer is as good or better.

As for the food? I can't say. Tailgate's pizzas might be the best ever made, I just didn't get a chance to order one. Many other reviewers seemed to like theirs.

But there is good food with better service all around Tailgate. We know this because we walked just down the block and found some. I wasn't giving up that...

I will start with the good first. Great location in the middle of downtown, close to a lot of attractions. Apparently they pay their servers a living wage (advertise this in quite a few places around the restaurant) and cool space overall. If you are trying just to sit and relax downtown with a patio space this could be a nice spot.

For the bad, I got the loaded Buffalo Chicken Fries which was advertised on the menu as a dish "for two (people)." Priced at $15.99 I thought I was going to get a tray of fries and chicken for my wife and me to share. This tiny bowl came out, with soggy chicken and perhaps 10-15 waffle fries. I was quite disappointed with it overall in terms of quality, quantity, and value of the meal. My friends got the large Hawaiian pizza, which was ok. I just think that at $30 you can get much better pizza at Pizza Bros for slightly cheaper or better yet just order Dominos for curbside pickup downtown.

The really bad is that I asked our server if this was the correct size for the buffalo chicken fries and if this chicken was made right, and he said yes but if I didn't like it he would make it right. He asked for my name to refund the credit card that I used for the fries. My name is different than most people's name so he came back again since I assume he wrote my name down incorrectly the first time. Couldn't find me again, so a different server or possibly manager came to ask for my name to refund my credit card and fast forward 30+ days since this interaction and still no refund on my cc.

I would have given them a 3 star, but for false promises of delivering fries for two, and not being able to write my name down properly for a refund really soured me on this place. 3 stars is reserved for bad service or bad food, 2 stars for achieving both in my opinion.

I will not be going back, and wouldn't recommend this to my friends as a...