Strangebird — Restaurant in City of Rochester

Edit: after leaving this review I was notified that I was banned for life from Strangebird. I have lowered my review from 3 stars to 1 star in response.

I love the pizza oven and the pizza but they absolutely flat out refuse to stop sprinkling diluted food grade sanitizer onto the pizza at the end when it comes out of the oven and it’s brazenly insane and not to mention disgusting. I’ve talked to them all about this bizarre practice and they say it’s industry standard. I consulted with a number of people including a pizza group on Facebook and also a nationally-renowned food sanitation expert and they all stated that the pizza wheel should be given time to air dry before being applied to food at the very least. The guys at Strangebird act like it’s a personal insult to them when I asked them numerous times to please stop. Tonight they told me I can leave if I don’t like eating sanitizer since I’m thre only one complaining. I still ate the pizza but I threw up afterward just to be safe because sanitizer is just diluted bleach as far as I’m aware. They’re being unnecessarily arrogant with this issue and it’s really beyond my comprehension where this practice of soaking the pizza wheel in a filthy sanitizer first began or how it is allowed to continue. I think our food safety inspector for this county is genuinely incompetent. They need to fix this and possibly even apologize for their astounding arrogance. I can’t fathom what universe they live in where it’s okay to splash sanitizer solution onto pizza after it comes out of the oven. It is definitely not standard practice, in fact, the pizza is perfectly sanitary when it comes out of the pizza oven seeing as nothing can survive the intense heat. It continues to baffle me and their response makes matters worse. I still recommend the pizza but make sure to ask for it...

The physical space is amazing, great atmosphere and design (minus the speaker coverage and aiming, sounds so bizarre when you are sitting/standing in certain spots). The beer is sub-par, I got the Petit Colasse, it was fine, nothing special. My wife got the Rainbow Slippah, which I tried, and that was really good! Then we got the Pillowhead Grains of Paradise and that was just fine as well. For a pizza we got the Greens, which my wife loved, but I thought was very undercooked in the middle with perfectly cooked crust. Then there was the Fried Chicken Sandwich. I apologize, but I have nothing good to say about it. Weird flavor combo, chicken was soggy, and bread was mushy. Also, it’s super expensive and I am not entirely sure why. I just don’t think this place is as good as it thinks it is, you can’t just look amazing on the inside, you have to have the goods...

Literally just had to walk out after sitting in a practically empty bar where both bartenders didn’t even acknowledge me, make eye contact, or even say “I will be right with you”. Horrible service. Absolutely no excuse when the entire place is empty. I watched both bartenders wander around casually, take care of other people before me, glance around staring into space and none of them would even look at me as I sat at the bar holding my cash out like a hand of playing cards. Unbelievably bad service from the girls running the bar at 3:30 on a Saturday afternoon. If you work the bar and can’t even glance around while beer is pouring to pay attention to who you should serve next, you should quit bartending this is clearly not the job for you. Three stars because I’ve sat at a table before and had good service and good food. While the place was...