The Jolly Scholar — Restaurant in Cleveland

They make good beers and I have wanted to visit the brewery for a few years. Saturday I had the misfortune of finally visiting the brewery. When we arrived there were 12-15 people sitting around the bar and people sitting at two tables. While waiting to be seated two kids, who I assume are students, were wandering around the room looking lost. No one acknowledged that we were standing their for a full 10 minutes. The bartender would not even make eye contact with us. Once we were finally seated the girl mumbled something to us, pointed at a QR code on the plexiglass, then walked away. We figured out she was attempting to explain that we had to order through an app. The app was clunky and it didn't make sense that I had to type my name in evey time I added an item to my order. It was mind boggling that wording something simple like a glass of water had to be accomplished through the app. Apparently the Jolly Scholar doesn't trust the abilities of their student workers. Then we sat there, and sat there and sat there. 40 minutes later our food arrives. No drinks, just our food. After a brief conversation with one of the "servers" another 5 minutes pass. Then the bartender comes over and checks my ID. Still no beverages. Three minutes later a brain trust shows up with our waters and gives them both to me even though there were two of us sitting there. Finally after almost an hour I received my beer. We had 1 beer, 1 Milkshake, a burger, sweet potato fries, onion rings and a cheese quesadilla. The food was highschool cafeteria quality at best. It was in no way worth the $47 we paid for it. All in all it was THE WORST experience I have ever had at a brewery. The beer was at least good even though the experience was a disaster. This brewery is located on the campus of Case Western Reserve University, which is supposed to be a great university. If the students working at the brewery are any indication of the competence of students in general, the world is in trouble. I don't think the geniuses working there have the intelligence to unlock a door and definitely could not function in a real work environment. If you made it this far, absolutely never go to this brewery. You will be very very disappointed. There was nothing jolly or scholarly about the brewery.

Edit; they lie...

My son and I came here on a busy, late Sat afternoon. Alumni and Parent's Weekend. We sat at one end of a long high top table in the bar area to watch the NLDS game. Although there was a party of 6 at the other end of our table which received service and another large party at the long table next to us, nobody even glanced in our direction. Servers flitted around to both parties, bringing drinks, food, checking in, and nobody asked us a thing or even looked at us. After 20-25 mins, two seats opened at the bar so we moved there. One of the guys who kept coming back to the party at our table was now behind the bar and finally asked us if we wanted something.

I had a few beers, and they were solid. Nothing exceptional but very good. I brew, and I know my beers, and I was happy on that front. That is the only reason for the two stars.

The food, on the other hand, left a lot to be desired. I ordered wings. The menu did not indicate a side of fries, though other items in the section explicitly did. I ordered Buffalo with blue cheese. I got cold fries to my surprise and ranch dressing. One of the wings looked like it had dropped out of the basket yesterday and they fished it out for me today; it was inedible. I asked the clueless bartender for blue cheese, and he went back to the kitchen. He came back and proceeded to give me another plastic ramekin of ranch dressing. The wings themselves, all six of them including the dead one, were barely coated in sauce, but they were passable, except the dead one.

My son said his burger was merely "okay" and looked it.

Maybe another night, with another team working the joint and our experience would have been different. I very much wanted to like this place but left quite...

When I first looked up this place I didn't realize it was an on campus restaurant/ bar. Unfortunately, everything from the service to the quality of the food was what you'd expect from an on-campus college restaurant.

Service: The waitress was bad. I'm talking real bad, Michael Jackson. She wasn't rude in fact she was quite nice but she was running around like it was her first week on the job (we later confirmedshe had been there a few months), messing up orders not bringing food out forgetting about drinks. One of the people at my table literally had to wait about 45 mins for her food (pizza) and drink. The drinks were taking so long some of us went directly to the bar and got drinks right away. When I asked the bartender why he said it was because he serves his bar customers first since they tip him directly we tip the servers.

Food: It was bad. Wings were fried hard, my wife's food came out ice cold.

Finally when it came time to leave the waitress wouldn't show up to bring the checks. She brought one check but there were about 8 of us. So we waited about 30 mins to get checks but then they were all wrong. Had to literally write out what we ordered and wait around another 30 mins for her to correct the check. Finally they had a nerve to put an automatic 18% gratuity on our checks for that terrible service.

The only good thing about my experience was that my drink was good. If the sever was able to get drinks out in a timely fashion, I would have ordered another.

*5/11 - Review edited/updated. I visited again and sat at the bar this time. The service was much better and the two items I ordered pretzels and burger tasted decent. The drinks were good ad they were the first time and for...