Bard's Burgers & Chili — Restaurant in Covington

This was my second time here I wasn't thrilled the first time but I thought I'd give it another chance with friends. Overall I would say I had a very upsetting experience. I came with a party of 5 at roughly 5:30pm and were told to expect a 15 to 20 minute wait. Granted they were busy but we ended up waiting 2 hours to be sat. We asked multiple times when we would be sat and were told it would be very soon. The lady we were talking to was very polite however I don't appreciate feeling misled. When we were sat we were told our ticket would be expedited due to our long wait. While ordering one of my friends asked if fries were included with the burgers and we were told that they had removed the fries and reduced the prices due to customers usually not finishing their fries. This suprised me since the Bard-b-q burger I was ordering costed $10.99 for a single pattie with 2 slices of bacon, grilled onions, and barbecue sauce. I decided to get an order of poutine since it didn't come with fries which was $6.50 ($3.50 more than a order of fries). We then sat for roughly 25 minutes before some appetizers my friends had ordered came out. They had upgraded one of my friend's orders to a larger size due to the wait which I appreciated. However this would turn out to be the only thing they would do for the entire table despite us all being on separate checks. We then had to wait roughly an additional 35 minutes for the rest of our food. During this period we had seen our server a total of 2 times including when she took our order (the food had been brought to us by other servers). When I finally got my food after close to an hour wait I immediately noticed that the poutine had almost no gravy on it. I would have brought this up but everytime someone came to our table they would drop our food or take our drinks and immediately leave before I could say anything. Our server brought our check and asked if everything came out alright. I mentioned the lack of gravy to our server and she said they had ran out an hour ago and she had only been told 30 minutes ago. I told her that would have been great to know before I had gotten my check or my food in general. Overall the incredibly long wait combined with the lack of communication and the extremely high prices led to me leaving a very...

Ok. I never review places (restaurants or hotels). Well, only if they are really bad and sometimes if they are exceptional. Another review rated Bards a hole in the wall with great food/service. Well, the charm is that it is kind of a hole in the wall, but a hole in the wall with a lot of effort (old pin ball machine the owner has to keep fixing, funky paint job, cute bar built by the owner and probably half of his family). Place appears to be in the state of improvement (probably ongoing as the husband/wife owner sell burgers). Very charming.

But the burger …… hand made smash burger patties and homemade fries. All the great toppings you’d expect with interesting combinations. Next time Im going to just get cheese to enjoy the quality juicy burger more. Have I said enough.

Let’s go back to me. Im an old dude. Been around the World and eaten high and low and now expect too much. But this burger joint was one of my best experiences. Ok, it’s not Jeff Ruby Steakhouse but they don’t sell steaks and you don’t go broke eating.

Other note: As she smiled her way through the dining experience, our server readily admitted she is not really an employee (fills in when her friends-owners need help). When I asked her name, she told me 2 names (her real name if we liked the service and her co- workers name if we didn’t). The co-worker was the owner’s wife. The owner’s wife came by to help out and then her husband (who cooks) also came by and cleared the table. It was clear they work extremely hard to provide the best experience and best burger … and...

Went here on a Friday with co workers. There was little to no parking available. We were seated next the window and it smelled like mold and mildew very bad, enough to ruin your appetite. We placed our order at 12:35 and did not even get an update until 1:15 and the food still wasn't ready so we had them make it to go instead. The burger was nothing spectacular, the fries were soaked in oil, and you can get a way better experience and burger at Mad Mikes. The waitresses could not handle a mear 20 people in the restaurant to wait on and they were going to each other's tables, which caused confusion. When you go to check out, the "business" phone is someone's cell phone, and the best part is that it is used for all card transactions as well with a square card reader attachment so everyone and their mom has their hands all over it. They add the order up using a point of sale system on an iPad but write all the orders on paper to go the so called "kitchen" which was poorly lit and I'm surprised anyone in there could see what they were doing. The grill wasn't big enough to handle orders and the area didn't look very clean. They were out of soda fountain coke so they were pouring bottled coke into cups. This place is not ready to be on the Food Network , let alone a brick and mortar restaurant. I've seen better restaurateur skills from kids selling lemonade in my neighborhood, they should come film them instead and Bard's can come get...