Bowstring Bar & Grill — Restaurant in Claridon Township

I'm a little sad to write a review for this place with lower stars. We were in town for a family event and came to the Bowstring for a birthday party. We had a reservation. We stood at the door for a long time along with many other people coming in and no one came over to let us know if we were to seat ourselves or in our case, if there was a table held for us. We finally flagged down a server who took us to a folding table that was overly crowded for our sized group. The waitress audibly sighed when we said the table wasn't a single check. While ordering, she stood at one end of the table and literally had us hollar down the table to give our orders. Multiple times throughout the night she would come over and squat down by us saying she was over hot, over sweaty, "hiding", etc. This was just too much. Our family had told us that the Friday night special was amazing. Now, my steak was fantastic. However, most of the other steaks at the table were not cooked to how they were ordered. Two of our steaks were delivered to the table and literally "thrown" onto the table because the plate was too hot for the waitress' hands. They were also delivered before anyone at the table had been served the salads. Then she came back with everyone's salads. So, two members of our party had no where to put their salads to eat them because their steaks were delivered before the salads. When we said something about it seeming like they were overly busy, she said there were only four servers and nobody to bus tables. That is a mangement issue. The timing of the meal and the unprofessionalism of the waitress probably falls on her, but also the management if they are not meeting the employee needs of a busy house. Finally, one person at our table ordered the cod dish. This was (according to the menu) a three piece, fried cod dish with one side. He asked to substitute a baked potato for the fries. His basket came out with two pices of fish sandwiched on top of french fries and under a huge baked potato. There was no butter, no sourcream, nothing else for the potato. Plus, it was in a basket. No way to cut and mash the potato in a basket. This was just a ridiculously comedy of errors for our meal. If I lived in the area, I would give them another try because our family told us how great it usually is. However, if they are not going to staff properly, I would not go back with a large party, ever. Furthermore, the servers need to be trained on how to time the service and be a little more professional. For the money spent, not really the experience it...

I’m giving them the best review I can because they were just finishing up holding a charity event and were severely short staffed. My sister and I popped in here while in Cardington after a cross country race. We had a hard time finding parking, had to get our own menus and seat ourselves. All the empty tables hadn’t been bussed so we just slid the dirty glasses to one side so he had room. The overall atmosphere of the place was laid back and very relaxing, I’m sure a favorite with the locals. We sat in our booth for probably 20 minutes before we eventually flagged down the only waitress they had, and she was super overwhelmed. The bar was full with what appeared to be two bartenders when we placed our drink orders along with our meal. We got our food fairly quick and had we not ordered waters we wouldn’t have had drinks in time for our meal. I ordered a beer and my sister an Amaretto sour which didn’t show up till after our meals were gone. They were good enough to not charge us for our drinks but by time they got there we were ready to go. The food was good, but nothing we couldn’t have gotten at any other bar and grill. I hope next time they make sure they have more staff on hand if they are gonna try to do regular business while run a charity event, we were really looking forward to this stop and we’re...

I have heard good things about this place and I was very eager to try the food. Sadly, like many places out there, the experience was very lackluster.

The bartender? Was pretty clueless and I had to explain a very simple pizza order 3 times to be understood. 40 minutes later, despite being the only food order on the entire restaurant. No food. Even with 4 employees standing 15 feet away looking over the sea of maybe 7 total customers, none of them bothered to even pick up on the 1 order that was turned in.

The lack of awareness and care is from top down. Too many times staff are lazy or just clueless to basic customer service and accountability. This is a systemic problem that current restaurant owners/managers are not dealing with or are too lazy to train against.

Do better Bowstring. Its not enough to say there was a mix up with the order 30 minutes in and proceed to tell me a large pizza made from strach will be 10 more minutes and after 5 minutes I see it still being made...

Nevermind. You literally had 1 job and massively failed. You were not busy. You were staffed. You were standing around, unaware of the few customers you actually had. Way too many other places to go...