Valiant Bar and Grill — Restaurant in Chelsea

• UPDATE June 14, 2022 * Almost about to remove a star. Good food so I will leave it at three.

Last night my wife announced she wanted to go to the Valiant because she had a craving for their Feta dish. I discouraged her but to no avail so I relented and said that maybe this time they will redeem themselves. Didn't happen.

I had no problem with the food this time. It was FABULOUS, excellent, magnifico! :)

They still have the same problem with the wait staff. Again, it was a young girl about maybe 20 years old. She had no clue about serving customers to optimize their visit. Her frame of mind was:

What do you want?; Let me go and get it.; How's the food, need anything?; Desert?; Here's your bill.

To the average person that seems acceptable. But my problem is that the waitress ALWAYS disappears after visit #3 and it is like pulling teeth to get anything.

More but out of google room.

• May 1, 2022 *** My wife and I have loved this restaurant from back in the days when it was the Chelsea Grill. The food has been excellent and the service as well. However, they have lost one star in my opinion. This is sad.

Last night, May 1, 2022 at 9PM my wife and I dined at the Valiant. It had been a hard night at the hospital for my wife so I told her to meet me at the Valiant on her way home. Things started out fine. But my lasagna was over cooked. I figured I would wing it so as to not say anything to my wife keeping her evening as enjoyable as possible. The waitress stopped by to ask what else we might want and I asked for drink refills. We didn't see her again for a while. Our drinks extinguished, still no waitress or ANY wait staff to be seen (it was getting late in the evening).But then I saw our waitress in the distance so I tapped my fork on the table to get her attention. Expressing my dissatisfaction I reminded her refills were in order.

By the time the refills arrived we were ready to leave. My wife doesn't like to dine without a diet-cola so we boxed her dinner to take home. I left the top half of my Lazagna behind which was burned.

Waiting for the check we decided to go up front to ask for a check, cash out, and leave. The attendant at the bar cashed us out. Nobody asked us if our dining experience was okay--NOBODY! I suppose my body-english had already told the story. There was no wait staff visible anywhere.

But there is more to the story. My wife's meal was only about 25% consumed and boxed to take home. The next day (this afternoon) she heated it up but couldn't finish her ribs so she gave it to me. I love ribs! But these ribs were burnt. She had not told me!!!

On the credit card slip for a tip I wrote the word ZERO. I thought a lot about that before doing that. I don't recall EVER expressly leaving nothing for a tip, EVER, anywhere, anytime. I usually leave 20% rounding up to the nearest dollar if I am happy, 15% if not particularly happy. I don't recall having left a 10% tip in recent memory. In recent years I have stopped bothering with leaving change. I just round up or down to the nearest dollar.

Now that I think about it, since the restaurant has been taken over by Valiant from the Chelsea Grill, the wait staff has always been young girls. I have always noted that they were not experienced. I had forgotten about that until just now. Starting this google review, I was giving a 4-star rating. I just now dropped it down to a 3-star rating.

But do you know what is the worst thing... I am certain that the wait staff think I was a rude customer. Young people are really dumb, sometimes they act like children (i.e. me, me, it's all about me.). At least they will be relieved when they see this review knowing not to expect me back unless I am desperate.

I like the fact that the Valiant is open late evenings but still, I think I will only dine there in the future if desperate.

SUMMARY: Lazana overcooked Ribs overcooked Waitress dissatisfied with us Bar waitress not happy with us ZERO tip left (a first for me, ever) Wait staff has typically been young...

My visit was on a Wednesday with My Husband. We arrived at around 6:30 PM. We had considered the other restaurants in town but Valiant's menu offered us many more choices. That said we had to be out of the house and again decided on this restaurant due to its many more choices on the online menu compared to other others in town and we didn't want to drive all the way to Ann Arbor or Jackson. It was not terribly busy so we were able to sit in a booth as we wanted to. The booth was a little bit too straight on the back for me. You can't really get comfortable in them, but of course they have lots of chairs available. We looked at the drink menu and we noticed that most things are priced better than we expected them to be but we just had ice waters. My Husband ordered a meatball sandwich with french fries. Keep in mind he travels a lot including Europe so he's had a lot of food at restaurants and he said the meatball sandwich was adequate. I tasted his fries and I thought they could've done a much better job. He did eat them, but yeah, they were just mediocre. I ordered the fish tacos. It came with three; they were cod according to the menu. There was a little bit of slaw on top and a spicy sauce. I thought they were good I mean, were they the best I've ever had but they were up there. And I didn't want the tortilla chips so I ordered onion rings and they were yummy. You could tell due to the lack of uniformity that they were hand tossed. I could be wrong. There may be a bag brand out there that causes them to be more hand tossed looking, but they were good. if I could tell the restaurant to do one thing is to offer a sauce to go on the side with the onion rings. I could've asked, but I didn't bother. I did appreciate that some of the televisions did not have sports on one was a game show and so we liked the variety that we could go back-and-forth. The young waitress was nice, but she probably could've checked in on us a couple times and we would've given her a bigger tip . We gave the standard %20. I noticed there were a lot of desserts on the menu and it would've been fun to try one of those, but we're cutting back on sugar right now. I will say because I don't eat big meals that I was able to eat all of the fish tacos and most of the onion rings and I didn't feel bogged down afterwards. Oh, I also would've appreciated two pieces of lime. The one was not enough to get all over the food. The restaurant is set up nice overall you have window views the bar two separate eating areas you're not on top of everybody else. The tables are spaced nicely. If I wanted to be nitpicky, I could give the place an average three but we need to visit a couple more times before we would do that. Keep in mind I'm rating this as a place where I know there's not a chef in back. There's a cook. And for this reason, we rate...

Just awful. Don't do it. Rather, the only reason to do it is because it is a weekday, after 9pm and you are hungry. and in Chelsea. Then you might have to do it.

Deets: Servers: They flip servers so much that they have a permanent "We are hiring" sign (seriously). Not to say the servers won't eventually become good servers but they will be working somewhere else by then (there has to be very limited training going on). So, expect to be forgotten, to be reminding them of drink orders, asking where food is, etc. The food. There is a reason the bar is always busy... cuz these people have eaten at Valent and know not to do it again. Drinks only. Specific examples: Nachos: $13. There was nothing warm on these nachos...nothing. They pour the fake room temperature GFS chase sauce onto your chips, then they throw a small handful of cold tomatoes, onions, black olives and brown shredded lettuce on to it and call it done. It is like eating a bad taco salad. It is disgusting. As my hubby said, " Never again" Go to Cleary's, pay the extra buck ($14) and get oven heated, layered nachos with jalapenos. Burger: I know they say that they are given you 1/2 lb burger. I don't believe it... it ain't thick enough or smashed enough to be a 1/2 pound burger. They ask you for the temperature of the burger~ don't get excited. This is like McD's asking that question: The burger is too thin to be anything other than done or not done. Burgers are $13-$16. Go to the Chelsea Ale House and get a smash burger for $15... you will definitely have a better burger. Ambience. Michigan sports stuff.. However, you are sitting in a fluorescent room. There is no dimming of lights. I feel fairly confident a surgeon could comfortably operate anywhere in this restaurant. It is BRIGHT. Payment: Yep, they are one of those restaurants who charge you another 3.5% for using a credit or debit card. While I think it is bogus to do this on credit cards, it is their right. However, It is illegal to do this on debit cards because businesses don't pay a service fee for debit cards so by charging for Debit cards they are essentially just double-dipping on payment. Seems a bit slimy to me....

So, yay, go for drinks. Go because you are starving and it is the only restaurant open late in Chelsea. Don't go because the...