Rusk Kitchen + Bar — Restaurant in Cincinnati

Came here day two expecting things to be a little slow and clunky as the staff gets used to things. But what I experienced was simply unacceptable.

For me, restaurants can be judged by these three categories: Food/Drinks, Service & Atmosphere.

Atmosphere: It's fine. Its clean & simple, touches of mid century modern design. But it's nothing special. Nothing interesting. The artwork is not cohesive and makes no sense. I didn't make it upstairs, but I was underwhelmed downstairs.

Service: Arrived at 12:45 after brunch, they were busy-ish but there were plenty of open tables. We were told it would be a 20-30 minute wait for food. We said, no problem, we'll enjoy some drinks first. We aren't in a rush.

It was 15-20 minutes before our server even got to our table. By then we decided to put all of our order in just to get it into the kitchen. Every item we wanted was 86'd. How can you be out of so many items on day two?

We had water and after another 15-20 minutes, we asked our server about the drinks we ordered. The cocktails had been made and we're clearly sitting there for probably 10 minutes. And then had to remind her of the soda we also ordered.

Food was delivered probably another 15-20 minutes after we finally received our drinks. Entrees came out first. The appetizers soon after. So make that make sense. We ordered two different types of burgers which looked the same on the tray, but the food runner didn't know which was which. Plus, one burger was supposed to be a vegetarian Beyond Burger and we received 3 meat burgers. So they had to go back and make the Beyond Burger, which came out probably another 15-20 minutes later and everyone else had finished most of their meals by then. PLUS, it was not even the burger she ordered.

It was clear that most of these people had never worked in the food service industry and/or there was absolutely zero training prior to opening. The staff didn't even know each other's names. It was so chaotic. I didn't see any managers walking around checking in with people which day 2 should be a priority. And with all of the issues we encountered, a free dessert/drink or discount and a visit from the manager would have gone a long way. But no such luck.

Food/Drinks: Espresso martinis were fine. But they sat for 10 minutes, so by the time we got them, the cream on top was looking curdled. It tasted fine, but again, nothing special.

The rest of the food was mediocre at best. The brussel sprouts were not at all crispy, it looks like they were boiled whole and served sitting in some sort of liquid, which just made them wet and bland. The hankee pankee dip might have been the best tasting thing we had. Of course it looks like diarrhea, but its hankee pankees, not much you can do about that.

The burgers were UNDERWHELMING. For something called the King, it was an awfully dinky burger. The Saratoga chips were good, but I'm sure they don't make them themselves. The fries were unseasoned Orida crinkle cut fries.

My opinion, the people who opened this bar don't have the experience and don't know what they are doing. It's like some rich white couple decided on a whim that a restaurant would be a fun side project. They spent a ton of money renovating this place doing all of the design themselves. Hired Jo Shmo line cook as their head chef; they let their friend with zero experience hire and manage the wait staff. And then rushed to open the restaurant before they had a full staff and without proper training.

Really disappointing, I was really looking forward to having another full service restaurant in the neighborhood. But I will not be coming back for at least 6 months. Hopefully they can get their shiz together by then.

My advice, get a better head chef and hire a bomb FOH manager and train your staff before setting them loose.

0/10 do...

Pros: beautifully renovated space, amazing rooftop bar, overall great atmosphere, and good bartenders.

Cons: everything else.

We had a great experience at the rooftop bar while we waited for our table (the nachos were awesome!), but everything went downhill once we were seated.

We ordered an appetizer and then didn't see our server again for 25 minutes, when she brought the appetizer out (the hanky panky dip, which was extremely salty). We had to ask for small plates, and she didn't offer to refill our waters or get us beverages.We ordered our food and, over the next 30 minutes, watched 5-6 servers just hanging out near the bar chatting with each other. After 30 minutes, our server finally came over and told us they were out of brie, and they could not make my friend's requested meal. So she ordered something else instead, and our server said our orders were getting moved "to the front of the line." No offers to refill our waters or get us beverages. 20 minutes later, my husband went to the bar to get himself another drink, and that finally prompted our server to come over with a water pitcher. She apologized for the delay, but it didn't mean much since she had just been hanging out with her coworkers for the past hour. She also didn't ask us if we wanted other drinks.

Finally, over an hour after we had initially placed our orders, we received our meals, all of which were room temperature. The pork sandwich and Cuban sandwich were both comically small, and the patty melt was mostly bread. When our server asked how everything was, we let her know these issues. She again apologized and spoke to someone at the bar, then returned and offered to take 50% off our bills, which was not necessary but very appreciated. However, when she actually brought us our checks, we were charged full price. By this point, we had been there for over 3 hours and didn't care enough to say anything, so we just paid and went on our way.

I really think this place needs an overhaul of server and kitchen management in order to thrive. Our server was perfectly nice, but very inattentive and spent most of our time there hanging out with the other servers. Even peeking into the kitchen on the way to the bathrooms, we could see a few servers in there just chilling with the kitchen staff while we waited over an hour for our food (and the restaurant was not busy at all by the time we ordered at 8:30). Overall a super disappointing experience, since it's a really beautiful restaurant with a great rooftop bar. Hope they can sort out some of their management issues and improve...

My family was so disappointed with our dining experience this weekend. I had seen some of the bad reviews. However, I was hoping the owners would have read them and used them as a guide to improve. Unfortunately the same problems happened to us on Saturday as several reviews mentioned. Luke warm food, bad service, slow service, etc. There were 12 of us and our reservation led us upstairs to a really neat looking rooftop bar. Very inviting space with so much potential. It’s gone to waste due to the terrible service. There was one bartender/server who was very welcoming to us as we sat down and assured us that he was there to make sure we were taken care of. He tried as much as he could but, the place was such a mess there was no saving it. Another server came to take our drink order and they didn’t take long to deliver those. After that, no one was asked if they wanted another. We then waited 20 minutes after the drinks came until one of the servers finally came over to take our order. Mind you, the place wasn’t very busy. And there were 3 bar tenders. After we placed our orders, it took an hour for food to start coming out. Five plates came out and then 20 min later the other plates came out. Only one plate came out hot and that was only because they accidentally dropped it and it had to be remade. The food was cold and bland. The wings that people had raved about were puny and sloppily plated. The crab dip was good but served with just a few chips and pita wedges. The portion was tiny. My sister took a couple bites of her dinner and couldn’t finish it was so bad. When our checks came, they were all wrong. The server blamed it on there being two servers for our table. With two servers, service should have been smooth. My sister, who works in the industry was so upset she had to say something. Something she said she never does. They did take her meal off of her bill but there should have been more done to try to fix the bad experience for the entire table. As visitors to the city, we had the pleasure of experiencing some amazing food and drink at numerous spots around this city. This one let us down big time. Hopefully management and the owners will find a way to turn the...