Burgers & Beer of Corning — Restaurant in City of Corning

So this was a tough one. My first sort of bad review. My daughter had a volleyball game at the highschool in Corning and naturally everyone was hungry afterward. We tried for Mooney's next door because it's a place we're familiar with but the wait was too long. We didn't know the area and decided to give this place a shot. The good points were that it's roomy, nice big tables, good alcohol selection, staff was extremely nice, and it was clean. Not crowded either but you may figure out why shortly. We enjoyed the atmosphere as well in terms of decor and music. Very standard tavern style vibe which is what we expected. So all and all I'd say like 8/10 there. Now on to the not-so-good talking points.... the service and food. What we didn't realize is this is one of those "you do most of the work places". You seat yourself, you grab your own menu, you come to the bar counter to order your own food. Total nightmare if you have kids or a large group because you don't want to drag everyone up to the bar and God knows you won't remember everyone's order correctly. THAT'S WHAT WAITERS ARE FOR PEOPLE! 😂 Then you get a buzzer and have to get your own food too! Thumbs down. And at the end we assumed we were supposed to dump our own trash in the large garbage can and leave our trays nearby because we weren't directed otherwise and it didn't seem like they had any wait-staff other than at the bar. As for the food, some of it was alright but most of it was a small notch above highschool cafeteria grub. Like I mean I'm pretty positive I had the exact same french fries in 10th grade. They definitely weren't crispy enough. Almost as if they were baked instead of deep fried. Maybe not left in long enough or oil wasn't hot enough. The chicken tenders are not whole breast meat, they're those really cheap ground and formed chicken nuggets shaped like tenders. The kids hated them. My wife ate about 1/3 of her burger and opted not to finish it. She said it was bland and the bun was cheap like they got it at a gas station. Not like a good kaiser roll or even brioche. She did comment she liked the mozzerella moons. My Buffalo chicken sandwich was decent but nothing to write home about. Others in our party liked the Mac and Cheese and one said the grilled cheese was very good but they all agreed the service style and much of the food wasn't to their liking. And here was the worst part: the price. I can understand paying good money for a Texas BBQ place like Terry Black's where it's basically cafeteria style and you do most of the work as a customer. You're talking exceptional food though. But for this place? I'm sorry but no. The whole bill for just the 4 of us in our family came to around $88 and then of course when you pay, the register prompts you for a tip. FOR WHAT? HAHAHA. My mother waitressed for years when I was a kid to put food on the table so I'm generous with my tips at real food establishments when the wait-staff does a good job. There wasn't a chance they were getting a tip out of me for overpriced food that wasn't that good and then to add insult to injury they basically forced me to be my own waiter. Listen, I know all of that sounded harsh and maybe it was but the fact is this place could turn it around quickly and be a top notch joint with a small change in service and a new menu. Jazz it up guys, try harder. Get some new cooks or get them better ingredients. And for the love of Christ get some servers if your prices are going to remain where they are. If the owner reads this and says to themselves "well making these changes will cost me".... sorry but that's the industry you're in and it's not the customer's problem. I could've went to Mooney's next door and gotten a better meal at a reasonable price and been waited on. Now I'm sitting here wondering if maybe that's why they had a 45 minute wait and you guys were...

A memorable experience… just not for the right reasons. I’ll start by saying the food was really good jalapeños cheddar burger and chicken salad with sweet and spicy chili sauce. That being said, the service was nonexistent. After we sat ourselves a sign on the table pointed us to the cash register to order. Ok we get up there and nobody paid any attention until we commented on the girl sitting at the bar taking selfies… then she got up and got behind the bar apparently she was supposed to be working. There was barely any interaction at all. Both people behind the bar were too busy on their phones. Placed our order and as we are checking out (before we got our food or any service at all) we were asked for a tip! For what? As a rule, we are both very generous tippers, but come on. We got our own food, soda, utensils (which were plastic) and the food came in paper containers, which we cleaned up ourselves. We could have stayed home and served dinner and cleaned up for a lot less money. For us the point to going out is to NOT have to do the work. We should have been tipped. We did however, try to tip the cook because the food was good and honesty he’s the only one that did anything, but we were told they share tips and he put it in the container by the register. Even as we were leaving they were too busy on their phones to acknowledge that we were leaving, but at that point we didn’t really expect anything else. So if you don’t mind no service then by all means dine here, like I said the...

Previously, I would have given this a 5/5 for service and food quality, but there has been a sharp decline in both in the three months since I last visited. The Buffalo chicken sandwich was sub-par, soggy, and just overall pretty gross to the point where neither I nor my partner would eat more than half of the single one that we ordered (we spent time taking bites trying to figure out just what was going on with it and why it tasted so off). The macaroni went from the best quality I've ever had at a restaurant to a glorified cream sauce with little-to-no cheese, which was also really disappointing. Additionally, they removed the crabcake sandwich-- my partner's favorite. The staff also made us pay up-front as opposed to waiting until after our meal, and I felt so awkward standing there trying to figure out why that had changed since February. The most saddening part of the whole thing was that these three items cost us $65, which brought this down from a 3/5 to a 2/5. I'll give them one more try in a year or so, but it was awful to see their quality veer off so sharply from what I had come to appreciate in such a short...