Hamlin Pub — Restaurant in Davison Township

We stopped in for lunch the week after Christmas to see what the hype was about. We ordered drinks, we ordered an appetizer before our entrees, we were both starving. Waitress brought our beers, took our order for steak bites. We requested them without the blue cheese. When she took our order for entrees, she didn't ask if we wanted another drink. Our appetizer came WITH the blue cheese. I informed the new associate that it was not how we ordered it. She said sorry and walked away. We still didn't have plates to share this appetizer. Our waitress came back and rather flippently asked if we wanted the dish remade, but we were starving, we could eat around the blue cheese. It's fine. It came with 2 pieces of toast. One piece was 1/2 the size of the other (not conducive to sharing). The steak was over cooked. The menu stated there was Zip Sauce in the dish, but there was no flavor of it. It was a Thursday so we ordered a pizza that was 1/2 off. The tables all have a huge tray of condiments on them. They serve pizza, but there's no red pepper flakes, no parmesan cheese. We sat and ate. It was average at best. It wasn't until we were nearly done with our food that I noticed a hostess station that had bottles of red pepper flakes & parmesan. The obvious response then is "why didn't you ask?" Well, because it didn't occur to me to ask given the wide variety of condiments readily available. Plus, our waitress never checked in. We never even got to place an order for a second drink. And as I said, it was lunch time, on a Thursday. It wasn't all that busy.

As for the atmosphere, it was loud. Sure, it's a sports bar/pub. But again, 1 pm on a Thursday. Not exactly sports time. And it was already loud. Probably not conducive to conversation at any busier time. And especially not during a game. For weeks after they opened I heard about all the tvs. We were seated in a corner. There was a TV above our table (not easily viewed), my husband was facing a blank wall, and I could only catch 1 full, 1 partial TV from the center tables. The center row completely blocked the bar too, so if we had been there to watch a game, we wouldn't have been able to see much.

Average at best, but...

We have visited Hamlin pub 3 times. The first visit knocked our socks off. The environment was cool, the service and food were great.

The 2nd visit was horrible. We sat for nearly 20 minutes before a server came to take our drink order, waited another 15 minutes for the drinks. She brought me a diet instead of a reg pepsi. She nearly tasted it as if we were lying. The nachos were the bomb, but that was the only good thing about that visit. She swore the smokehouse mac was not spicy since they could take the siracha out. My husband couldn’t even finish the dish it was so spicy. He was given some pub sliders instead of the club sandwich he asked for. She finally dropped our bill and was out of sight. The manager did come over, and while we don’t ever complain, we told her everything. She knocked $10 off the bill.

We thought it was just a fluke so we went back for a 3rd visit 15 minutes after opening. The service was much better, but the wait was insane. We waited more than 50 minutes for our food. The server was kind enough to try and push our 5 year olds meal out quickly since we had already waited so long. They ran out of milk for the 2nd time at our visits. We finally got our food a few minutes after our son, and it was mediocre at best. My fat jim sandwich was missing the pickle chips so it was literally ham, sauce, wilted lettuce, and cheese, oh with a single tomato slice. Our server was nice enough to knock off some of our drinks and was very apologetic for the slow kitchen.

We aren’t the kind of people who ever complain unless it’s warranted and I think 2/3 bad visits warrants a review. This restaurant is very new and I am sure it takes time for things to season, but we likely won’t be back...

As a Davison local I was very excited for the opening of the new Hamlin Pub and heard very good things about this place. My experince thus far has been anything but good. I will say that the atmosphere and service is really good and everyone is very friendly. The food is where my issue lies. In my two visits thus far I have ordered the wings, which are very mid and nothing special. Not thrilled about getting a full order of wings and being charged extra to have two sauces instead of 1. My daughter oreder the kids mac n cheese and was given Kraft clearly out of the box. They have two other dishes with Cavatappi pasta on the menu. How hard is it to give a kid a small portion of that with cheese sauce? I would much rather pay the price for that instead of box Kraft mac n cheese. I am going to continue trying more items on the menu, but my expectations are set very low at this point. Seems like a great spot to get a beer and watch the game, but the qualtiy of the food is where...