Sweet Lou's Restaurant & Tap House — Restaurant in Coeur d'Alene

OK. I gave a previous review a couple years ago, giving 5 stars. I'm sad to report that the service and food have gone complete opposite. The hostess that seated us was either drunk or high, or appeared to be. That's not our issue, our server, Eric, was extremely unprofessional. I ordered ice tea, my wife ordered water, in not exaggerating when I say it had 3 small ice cubes in it and tasted old. I asked him to take it back and change it to sprite, stating it doesn't taste right, he says nothing, grabs the glass and walks away. Comes back to take our order, and forgets the sprite, it wasn't busy or I'd cut him slack on that, we order, I remind him of the drink, again no response, walks away comes back sets it down, walks away. No words. My wife ordered the filet steak I ordered the pork ribs, never asked me which sauce I preferred. I wanted the bourbon. We had salads with our meal. My wife asked for extra dressing. No words again, comes back sets it down as he's walking by. Food arrives, ribs are a little over cooked but edible my wife's steak is a rib eye, we question Eric and say, she ordered a filet, he argues and says no you ordered the ribeye. Obviously, we were taken back, my wife says OK, I'll just eat this, it wasn't cook med rare as she'd ordered a well. She eats maybe 3 or 4 bites and is done, visibly upset. He never checked on us for any needs, didn't offer dessert, etc. We stop him as he's walking by and ask for the check, he looks at us and I kid you not, gives us 2 thumbs up and walks away. No words again. So as we're waiting we see who appears to be the manager/ supervisor,Gail, I believe was her name, going to the tables along the windows, checking on them, 3 tables , as she approaches our table she looks away and continues towards the bar area. OK we're done, at one point we saw 7 or 8 employees standing near the bar and hostess station laughing and talking, one of which was our server. Eric. As we're leaving we asked the 2 hostess girls, who's the manager on duty, they said which one, so. You had 2 managers on at this time, and servers are making mistakes, blaming the customers and the food was marginal at best. I obviously won't be back and you may or may not care about this review, but if this continues and isn't addressed, I forsee many more...

My partner and I came here shortly after the Labor Day weekend because the menu looked fantastic and the ratings were phenomenal. Because it was busy and an outside table wasn’t available yet, we sat at the bar and had a few well-made cocktails. Before we were seated, we closed out with the bartender who was friendly and attentive. After being seated, our assigned server first expressed surprise that we were there and then confusion that we already had our drinks. We ordered an appetizer, but were brought the wrong dish. After waiting for our server to revisit for 15 minutes, we politely brought the mistake to her attention. She offered no apology or explanation but said she would switch them out for “no extra charge”. Another server brought the correct dish, and we spent another 20 minutes without any attention from our original server, who spent a conspicuous amount of time chatting with other tables. At that point, we decided we did not want to continue our evening there. After flagging down our server, we asked her for two final shots and for the check. Another 20 minutes passed until we saw her again, where she approached out table, said “Oh, your shots” and turned around. She came back shortly afterwards with our shots but without the check. Another 10 minute passed before we could flag her down again and re-request the check.

Overall the food and cocktails were fantastic, but our assigned server gave us the downright worst service I have ever received...

Sadly, I can't share the same stellar review of Sweet Lou's that many others seem to have experienced. My medium-rare sirloin burger took thirty three minutes to arrive (I had texted a friend moments after ordering, and double-checked my phone when it finally showed up out of sheer frustration at now being very hungry. I'm not exaggerating here.), and when it arrived it was overcooked to the point of being bone-dry in the middle and was served alongside house-made potato chips oversalted to the point that I couldn't eat them and left all but two untouched on the plate. While paying the bill, when I alerted my waitress to the fact that I was displeased with my dining experience, instead of offering a remedy option she simply stated "Well, I hope the rest of your day goes better". If it had been 7pm on a Friday night I'd have written it up to an off night in a bustling restaurant and never bothered to write a review, but my experience at Sweet Lou's began at 3:15 on a lazy Tuesday afternoon in a very-nearly empty dining room. I was drawn to this place by the abundance of good reviews on Google. ...Regrettably I must report back that my experience was not in concordance with those who left this restaurant satisfied. The reason for my two star review instead of a solid one-star one is that the beer selection was quite diverse and the beer I received was properly poured and in a cold glass. That's worthy of note, even to a...