Old Chicago Pizza + Taproom — Restaurant in Columbia

When dining out specifically when traveling we are always up for new places to try and we like try go where the locals go and recommend. So, we tried Old Chicago as a recommendation based on the Mellow Mushroom up the street closing early that evening in July. We called Old Chicago to see if they could accommodate a table for 6 and they said absolutely, come on down. So, we did. We were immediately seated and our server was fairly new but friendly and she promptly took drink orders, but then it was like she fell off the radar. She was gone for 20ish minutes and our drinks sat at the bar, beers sat there getting warm, so others in our party had to go to the bar to retrieve our drinks and place the order for my glass of wine that had been missed in the order. Finally, our waitress came back and she proceeded to take food orders, that was a bit questionable as well as we placed appetizer orders prior and we were still waiting for those to come out. In the meantime, we had asked for place settings and napkins as the appetizers had finally arrived, we were told there were no napkins or clean silverware in the restaurant, but she would double check again. In the meantime, one of our friends asked, as he had ordered a salad, was he expected to eat the salad with his fingers, she said she didn't know. She came back to our table several minutes later (this was after my Husband had gone to our vehicle to get napkins that we just happen to have in our car!!) She confirmed "Yes, I have plastic forks, but we are out of napkins, we have been looking but there are none in the restaurant." We asked for the Manager, at that point the Manager was bringing our food...luckily it was hot and tasty which was the only saving grace for this debacle of what was to be an enjoyable evening at what they said they could accommodate us. The Manager explained, that Corporate only allocates so much in terms of what they are permitted to supply to the restaurant and they had met their allocated amount and they ran out. They had been short staffed and the kitchen staff was short as well and they were not able to keep the dished cleaned so they gave us plastic forks. She went on to say they were not permitted to put anything on a corporate card to accommodate the customers. She asked if there was anything else she could do for us and we placed another round of drinks, which round 2 sat at the bar yet again and was delivered by the Bartender...lack of attention to detail or maybe training! If this is how you run a restaurant, then I don't imagine you will have a business to keep the doors open or if this is common practice for Old Chicago? I honestly don't know that we will give them another try as we usually do...chalk it up to a bad night, but once bitten,...

Ok, so we moved here 9 months ago and have been on the hunt for decent pizza ever since. We had high hopes for this place. The wait was not bad which we appriciated, but the food...oh man. We started off with Magners cider for me because it is not often that I find it on a menu. It was barely cold. My husband wanted the "hand crafted soda" and we were excited because we have had this before at BJ's and it is fabulous. We asked the server what flavors they offer and the girl looked at us as if we spoke a different language. She had us point it out on the menu and said she didn't know because she had never served one before. Instead of offering to find out she just stood there as if we were to pick something else. We had to ask her if she could find out for us. She asked the bartender and came back and said they had rootbeer and cream soda. We went with cream soda. When she brought our drinks, it was not hand crafted, but bottled IBC!! Seriously? That is machine crafted!! We laughed it off and ordered some nachos for an appetizer and individual sized pizzas for dinner. The nachos were good, except the cheese was not on the chips but melted in blobs all over the bottom of the plate. We easily picked it up and ate it, which was fine, but messy. And we had no napkins or silverware so that was a problem. I ordered Chicago style pizza w mushrooms and he had thin crust w pepperoni. The photo showed canned type mushrooms which is what I like but they came out the dry kind you put on salads, which I can't stand. So i picked them off and tried to eat the cheese pizza. It tastes exactly like pizza hut pizza. Not the good early 90's kind, but todays type that is up there in quality with little ceasars. And if you look at the photo, tge cheese looks a bit processed as it did not loose it's shape when it was melted. You can't use fake cheese on pizza wgen the name of tge restaurant is "Old Chicago"!! My husbands thin crust pizza tasted like it had lots of sugar on it. Very strange. I think that for the first time that I can remember, we actually left 75% of each pizza on the table when we left and refused to go boxes. That blows my mind! We spent 50$ before tip on this stuff. We could have had a nice steak for that! On a side note, a weird thing happened when the waitress comes over with a sample glass of Son of A Peach beer and says "I just wanted to give you this, it is Son of a peach" and then walked away. Not really sure why she gave me that, but it too was very very warm. All in all I say this is a never going back restaurant on our list. And if anyone out there knows of any decent pizza, please please...

Okay let me just start out by saying I work in the service industry and have been a server for quite some time now, and have never been one to ever criticize a restaurant for their lack of service or food quality. But this has been one of the worst experiences Ive ever had eating out. So we come in and are brought to the side of the restaurant where no one else is but what made it weird is we’re sat at the only table without lighting and are having to use our phone lights to read the menus. Then we decide to move up a booth where they actually had lighting and end up sitting there for about 20 minutes until our server comes to greet us. But then immediately leaves after putting silverware down when we’re clearly ready to order. Then when she finally decides to come back we order, I order a keg of boneless wings (which is 20 wings for 28 dollars…) and we end up waiting another 30 minutes before we even see our server again, until she turns right around with our food and goes back into the kitchen. Then she comes back out after 10 minutes to let us know that the kitchen messed up and made bone in wings and our boneless wings will take another 7 minutes. Ok.. getting frustrating at this point. 10 minutes later our food comes out and what do you know, boneless wings. The server states and I quote “apparently our kitchen doesn’t know how to read right” but informed me that it will be taken off the bill by her manager. The bone in wings were so small and literally unappetizing at all and honestly couldn’t finish eating them because they were nothing more then unappealing. We ask for our checks after our horrible experience and what do you know, the keg was not taken off, and I told her and she said “no my manager only took half off” she didn’t seem to care at all how unacceptable her service or the kitchens service was, and instead of a manager coming over to apologize and fix the mistake, we get a 10 dollar discount and not even told have a good night. Worst place ever to eat, don’t...