Druthers Brewing Company — Restaurant in City of Saratoga Springs

One of my favorite restaurants, quickly became my least favorite last night. The disrespect, my family and friends experienced from the host staff was ridiculous!! We had family friends in from West Palm Beach, FL due to their son being in the New York City Ballet, when that show at SPAC was cancelled due to the heat, we called Druthers for reservations. They were able to accommodate our large party, or so they said. We arrive at Druthers, to find that we had two booths away from each other reserved, the purpose of us making reservations together was so that we can visit. We see them once, maybe twice a year. So then, we gave up those tables because there was no point. Then due to the “circumstances,” they gave us the really long table by the bar. It could not have been more perfect. When we ordered, we knew we’d be ordering a lot of food so we actually wrote it all down for the bartender, so there would be no confusion & make it easy on them, since it’s so busy there! He was really grateful.. and a great bartender, so nothing bad to say about him at all. But we are good customers and recommended Druthers for our out of town guest.. so then when 3 of our party left and there was 6 of us left, we shifted down so we’d only be taking up one table instead of two. THEN, this completely drunk guy comes over and tells us that this was their table and we needed to leave. We are like excuse me? After we’ve been there for well over an hour and hadn’t even gotten our check yet. He tells us that he reserved this table and it’s for them. So after some words were exchanged.. he would not leave us alone. So we go to talk to the hostess and my God, we have never met a more rude person. COME TO FIND OUT, the hostess told him to tell us to leave. Yep, you read that right.. a hostess, told a drunk patron to tell us to leave.

Are you actually kidding me???? If you have a reservation for a certain table, for a certain party.. even though we had already been at that table, for quite a while, then it should be YOUR responsibility, as an employee of Druthers, to kindly ask us to get up because that table had been reserved. AND WE HADN’T even gotten our check yet. Like hello? It was embarrassing, the fact that we had highly recommended you guys to our out of town guest, and we all left after that...

Could be a five star experience, but wouldn’t say they can deliver consistently throughout the year. I’ve been several times and while typically, I’d say they are great, but in typical Saratoga fashion they take advantage of the additional traffic in the summer.

This most recent visit was disappointing, I can get over the wait time and menu prices that the rest of the locals claim are raised for track season. What I can’t seem to understand is why the quality of the food should shift.

We ordered beer, burgers, pizza, and buffalo Mac. The beer was fine, I got a flight and it was delivered to the table organized with great presentation. There was one item on the draft list that they wouldn’t put in the flight, because they didn’t brew it themselves according to the waiter. This isn’t clearly communicated on the menu so from a service standpoint it just didn’t sit well, I’d understand if it were in bottles but draft is draft and flights typically have anything on draft.

When we ordered the burger our waitress asked us if we wanted it pink or no pink. I shared medium well would work and she said they recently started cooking the burgers on a flat top and haven’t figured out how to cook them at the right temperature. Seems concerning and should have been a red flag that the overall burger would be lackluster compared to what I’ve previously expected. The got rid of the awesome brioche buns and I’d honestly say a burger some of the fast casual burger places would now be considered better than here.

The pizza was fine, nothing to rant or rave about. The most disappointing part of the meal though was the buffalo Mac. The sauce was sweet, as if it was bbq sauce with a little buffalo sauce mixed in. I’m a huge fan of the two Mac’s here with bbq sauce but this is everything a buffalo Mac shouldn’t be.

Not sure if these concerns will be ever standing, but I won’t be trying this location again until the fall. I hope it takes a turn for the better, because they have a...

We raved about Druthers to friends and family so much that they had to try tonight while in town from Maryland and Virginia. Specifically, the Druthers Manhatten made with special muddled cherries and Albany Distillery rye whiskey... typically going for $11 per drink. We were disappointed right from the start when we were informed they were out of their cherries and had been for awhile. We asked if the Druthers Manhatten would then be discounted and she said it would be. 5 out of 6 in our party ordered one. The 6th ordered a cider. We then ordered 2 orders of the beer cheese and pretzels and an order of calamari. We have had the calamari at least 1/2 dozen times before tonight and each time the entire plate was mounded and overflowing... tonight only a third of the plate was barely covered. Aside from these two things the rest of our food was satisfactory. The bill came and Manhattans were charged as $12!! We brought it to servers attention and she said she'd fix it and it was because she had to put them in the computer differently. She returned with the bill and had taken $1 off making them the regular price of $11... mind you they didn't have the cherries that ordinarily MAKE the Druthers Manhatten so good! The bill was then paid by 1 person in our party. A couple of us stopped at the front desk on the way out for some merchandise to take home and the waitress very rudely rushed over and asked, "was everything ok with your dinners tonight!?" They were like, "yes, everything was great" The waitress then went on scolding us because, "only a 10% tip was left!" The person that had paid had already walked ahead of us off into the patio area so we apologized and said it must have been a misunderstanding and handed her an additional $20. Come to find out she had left an 18% (pretax) tip!! Keep in mind that's 18% on the total bill even though 1/2 the bill was drinks!!! So incredibly unprofessional and rude. ...