Boss Dog Brewing Co. — Restaurant in Cleveland Heights

Hoo boy, this was an experience and we should have expected such right from the start. We'd skipped this place once before because it was packed, but tonight I booked a reservation using the RESO app and we arrived around 10 minutes early. When I said we were early for a 6pm reservation we were met with confused stares and eventually our party of 2 was seated at a 4 top with one hostess telling another "it's fine." (30 minutes into dinner I received an email from RESO telling me my unfilled reservation was being cancelled). Whatever, familiarity with reservation apps weren't why we came, let's get down to business:

THE "YEAH!" The two beers we tried, Antidote IPA and Dead Man's Double IPA, were both really great. Hoppy and well-rounded with that fruity/floral nose and finish that you have to love. A+ brews. Our server, Victoria, was great! She was attentive and helpful, funny and charming.

THE "MEH," Shortly after our drink orders went in, our server circled back to let us know it would be awhile because there was only one bartender working. (At 6pm? On a FRIDAY?) My date ordered the Clyde Maye Old Fashioned and it was far too sweet. When she ordered something else instead, we were relieved to be told it would be comped. $12 is a high price for cough syrup (But a bargain for the GREAT Bloody Mary that replaced it). The paper menus we were handed were grease stained and dirty. They were thick stock, but pretty clearly printed on a standard printer... so why not toss the gross ones and print CLEAN ones? The Short Rib Torta was well composed and the goat cheese set it apart, but the dry meat kept it from really soaring.

THE "UGH..." Though he wasn't our server, we kept seeing a server pass us delivering food while either eating or chewing gum. We ordered the perogies to share before our entrees and were annoyed to have everything delivered at the same moment. It wasn't ideal, but I could see a kitchen having fired everything together wanting to get it all out hot.. except the perogies and the fries with our entrees were lukewarm at best. Our fries were served with a large ceramic crock of ketchup. It was a puzzlingly impressive presentation of what was... JUST ketchup. If it was housemade, or meant to be impressively seasoned, that didn't come across. My burger was pretty disappointing. The temp was great, the choice of gruyere was novel, but it was topped with a bitter AF white onion (reds are the same price, guys!) a paper thin leaf of green and come to think of it I think the P in "LTOP" was missing. Just incredibly stark, basic, unimpressive.

OK: tl;dr Come for the beer, it's great. Check out the cocktail list! My partner loves going to breweries with me and ordering cocktails instead, the list here was impressive and I bet with a less busy bartender there's serious potential here. This place needs time to work out a lot of front-of-house kinks. In the meantime, it's a great bar. The food is absolutely not worth the price. It's so exciting to have a great brewery/brewpub on the EAST side. Hopefully someday...

Always passed this place in my neighborhood and finally gave it a shot. With all the exposed beer tanks and kegs, it seemed like a cool place to show my brother from out of town being he wanted beer. Luckily, the beer flight we chose delivered greatness! However, the food, the service and the atmosphere needs improvement!!! As far as the atmosphere, only around five customers were there on a Friday night. As my brother said, it was “as dead as a door nail!” The smell reminds me of an old, musty diner. Two of three meal orders came out first. Our brother had to wait on his order. Our fries were cold and hard and my carne asada sandwich was not good at all. It had a thick, cold, ungrilled bun and the only thing that was warm was some of the steak pieces inside the sandwich. I took one bite and knew I couldn’t eat it. When my brothers order finally came, they didn’t bring his fries. After about 10 more minutes waiting, the waiter came to check on our table and my brother mentioned his fries. The waiter gave an apprehensive look like he’d forgot to add it. He gave an excuse that they needed to make more fries because they ran out (by that time, there were only 2 other people there). He then requested the fry order at the register. When my brothers fries were brought to the table, he orders a pumpkin flavored pint of beer he’d enjoyed from the flight choice. I let the waiter know that I was not enjoying my meal and he took it away. I hear back and forth, muffled talking with the waiter and the manager about my food. By then, we are the only customers in the restaurant and my brother still has not received his beer. It’s after 9:30 pm and they are advertising a 2am closure. The waiter is now doing tasks around the restaurant including sweeping the outdoor dining area. My brother is still eating and waiting on his beer. When the waiter arrives back at the table, he lets me know that I won’t be charged for the carne asada. We remind him about the beer. He looks at the time (now around 10) and asks my brother if he still wants it. He said yes. The waiter then orders the beer from the bar. When the bill came….to our surprise, the manager decided to itemize my meal and charge us for the cold fries I barely ate! If they were going to charge me for the fries, then why not let me keep them? I would have definitely asked for warm fries if I knew I were paying for them. I hardly ever send food back but I knew I couldn’t eat another bite of that sandwich. I ate fries from underneath the pile because again…they were cold. After explaining to the manager that I should have kept my fries if I were paying for them, he reluctantly decided to take it off the bill. I’m very curious to know if he has itemized anyone else’s meal like this? Or just ours?? Just after the bill is paid and the waiter takes the dishes away, the music is shut off which insinuated our exit. Total disrespect! Is the reputation you are building for your business the reason why it was “as dead as a door nail” on what should be a...

Honestly my most recent experience was just downright not good. I don’t like to just be mean and pick on people/places. I am writing this honest review because I root for local business and think Boss Dog could be and normally is so much better than what was experienced.

SERVICE:

To start, we were a party of 8 and seated with only 2 menus to share between the group. No attempt was made to bring more menus. Other than that the service was somewhat sporadic but it was trivia night and there was a big crowd. Bussers brought out our food and I had to get our servers attention to request extra condiments. Every time the server came by I will acknowledge she was prompt about refilling our waters. All around I think it’s fair to say the service was average at most.

FOOD:

They were unfortunately out of the short rib burger that I wanted so I ordered a standard cheeseburger cooked medium with fries. The food didn’t take super long to come out but when it did my burger was cooked more than well done and was cold. It did not have much flavor and did not taste fresh. Other members of our party who ordered the burger felt the same way. As I previously mentioned the server did not check on us to see how our meals were and I ended up having to get her attention for more condiments as my burger and fries only came with a side of ketchup in a small plastic cup. I also feel that $15 and a $2 up charge for the french fries is too pricey for the portion size and quality of food that is served even if it came out prepared and cooked to a higher standard.

TRIVIA:

I was personally not a fan of the trivia format. The host was seated in another section of the restaurant in which all the tables were reserved. Other trivia nights I have been to had the questions put up on a big screen. We were left with passing around a member of our party’s phone between all 8 of us. Instead of reading one question at a time and submitting an answer, the host would race through 7 questions at a time barely giving the contestants time to think about one question. It made it more difficult especially with no big screen to look at the questions and not being able to hear since we were situated far from the host in the noisy restaurant. I get that the format is the format in the end but on top of everything else it just added to the unsatisfactory experience.

In conclusion, it was disappointing to see this gastropub fail to live up to the “gastro” portion of the phrase. Even though I was openly critical my only intentions are to be constructive because if I owned an establishment such as this I would want to know and strive...