Hofbräuhaus Cleveland — Restaurant in Cleveland

We went on a Saturday around 5pm. Overall, the service was a bit slow, but it was busy, my food wasn't great for how expensive it was, the atmosphere was definitely on the loud side. We parked at the West Garage Cleveland State University parking garage. Full review: If you remember eating in a middle school cafeteria, that's what this reminded me of, except there was a live band playing as well. Lots of tables and people jammed into one large room and very loud talking. There were also a couple guys on the stage playing live accordions and singing. The music wasn't bad, but really loud. Now some people may like the extremely loud/party atmosphere and having to pretty much yell across the table to talk to whomever you came with, and also to the server who is trying to hear your order, but unfortunately, I do not. So the atmosphere definitely wasn't my cup of tea, but I was hoping the food would be. Unfortunately it was not. I'm not very versed in that type of food so I was going to try something I wasn't sure about but I didn't want to try asking anything to the server since it was so loud, so I played it safe and went with the all American burger. It had everything I liked and seemed like a good choice. When it came out, it only had one small piece of tomato and a little leaf of lettuce on it. Okay, the toppings aren't great but whatever. I put some ketchup on it and ate it. I needed a good amount of ketchup because it was pretty dry and very salty tasting. I was a bit surprised that I had found a cheeseburger that I didn't like. But, at least the fries were good. They were crispy, but not burnt and not smothered in salt and seasoning. Other people said their food was good, so maybe they just don't have great burgers, but I doubt I'll be back to find out. The service was also a bit lacking. Now it was pretty full, so maybe they're just like every other place struggling to keep staff available, but we were seated around 5:30pm and left around 7pm, and we aren't known to be slow eaters. It took a while to get the food and then took a while to get the checks. Thankfully though, the server just had the credit card scanner and we just paid at the table so she didn't have to leave and come back. That sped things up a little. So, unless you like a loud atmosphere, have plenty of time to kill, enjoy talking loudly to people, not being able to hear all your groups talking, and/or expensive food that may or may not be too great, I wouldn't recommend this place. If you do like all that, then this is definitely the place for you. But not me. Oh, also the waitresses do tend to be dressed in German/Bavarian style dresses with their top parts squeezing out and the live band will sing happy birthday to EVERYONE that asks. So be prepared to hear 'happy...

Upon entering the restaurant during a weekday early dinner, there was no one there to greet us. Finally, a really sweet lady who is a fixture/ German Grandmother was friendly and said that we could sit in the bar. There was no one at the bar waiting on customers at that time. It took 15 minutes for a young man with tattooed arms ( no name was visible) and no name badge to show up and I might add that he was very inattentive and rude. I had to ask another server passing by if they could get us some utensils. He didn't ask if he could get you something to drink and we had to ask for our own menus after waiting for another 6 minutes for a total of 21 minutes with no one waiting on us. As we were traveling and visiting Cleveland, we wanted to have a fun experience and thought was try some German food or some pseudo German food. Now if the food was very good I would at least say go try it but and I do mean a big BUT, My pierogies came out cold and unappetizing. Heck, I have made Mrs. T's doctored up at home that tastes better than this. The schnitzel special that we got which had a Bavarian ham and beer cheese was god-awful. It was like s* on a plate. There was a chemical taste and a lot of what I would say was canned water flavor coming from the ham and for all the beer cheese that I've ever had. It was the most pathetic excuse for something called beer cheese. Because of the taste, we scraped everything off of the schnitzel and tried to eat some of it only to see that large parts of the schnitzel were undercooked. The little tiny part that we could eat about 10% of the dish was lackluster at best. Having gone to authentic German restaurant previously, I can say that for half the price we had a wonderful meal but hofbräuhaus gets a one star. The only reason you get a one star instead of zero stars is because the lovely German grandmother. Otherwise it would have been a total zero. We left our plate nearly full and upon asking if we could try dessert the rude bartender said "do you want a dessert menu or something??!" That might be nice but come to find out the actual dessert we tried to order. Apple strudel was also not available that evening along with many other dishes that people tried to order. Don't waste your time or money going to this place! There are far better places that cost less money in Cleveland to satisfy a...

My wife and I went in for an early dinner after a show at Playhouse Square. ++ points for seating us without a reservation, but that's one of the few good things about the experience.

After we were seated, it was just a few minutes before the waitress (Alyssa) arrived to take our drink orders. She was the "only other good thing" about the experience -- she was friendly, sociable, and seemed to be sincerely unhappy that our food experience was less-than-wonderful.

My wife ordered the cod and pierogies and I ordered the Cleveland-style beef stroganoff. The meals were served relatively quickly (within about ten minutes), but both of them were already cold when they arrived at the table. With my stroganoff, the spaetzle underneath was actually cold and the meat was barely lukewarm. My wife's cod was also just "warm," and one section of it was not done properly -- a quarter of the breading was still mushy and uncooked.

I got Alyssa's attention as she passed through the dining area and explained that my dinner was cold. She apologized profusely and said she would have it re-made. My wife has a phobia about sending food back to the kitchen, so she just ate the part of her cod which was cooked completely.

After about five minutes, a chef returned with another (?) plate of stroganoff. The spaetzle was hot and steamy this time, but the only warmth from the meat seemed to be from the steam coming off the spaetzle. My wife noted that it appeared to be the same plate of food, but I admit that one plate of stroganoff probably looks very similar to any other plate of stroganoff...

Alyssa arranged for my meal to be half-price, which was nice. We ended up taking both meals home and re-heating them for lunch the next day.

I know we got seated in the back room because we didn't have a reservation, but it was mildly annoying when a wedding party's guests wandered back and forth past us at our table. I was also a bit miffed when Alyssa was talking with us about something and an older, "battle-axe" woman walked past and said something in another language. Her tone, however, said, "Get back to work." Alyssa abruptly ended the conversation and went on her way. So much for trying to be pleasant with the customers....

Overall, meh. I don't think we'll be going back to the Hofbräuhaus...