Wheat Penny Oven and Bar — Restaurant in Dayton

Not sure what happened to this place as the reviews are glowing. Perhaps they are older reviews. But I can tell you that this place has gone severely down hill.

We were in town for a bowling tournament from Youngstown and this place came up as a top 10 restaurant in Dayton. So we booked it. Arrival was fine and the front sat us quickly. So far as good. Unfortunately, that was the best part of the meal.

The table was not cleaned before we sat down. The service was horrible. It took about 10 minutes to get someone to our table. The person left with our drink order and he came back about 10 minutes later. We ordered salad / pizza / parm sandwich and wife wanted the chicken spinach ravioli which he asked small (3 pieces) or large (6 pieces). She ordered the large.

My salad was dropped off about 10 minutes later and there was no silverware on the table at all so I just sat there at waited for him to come back before I could eat it.

Finally, after about 10 more minutes we asked for silverware and napkins which he apologized for not having that on the table. He brought over silverware immediately.

The food came out about 10 minutes after that. The salad was decent. My pizza was dry with very little sauce but the meatballs were good. The chicken parm sandwich was burned and hardly any sauce on the sandwich. It was very dry. The $30 ravioli had only 5 ravioli’s and they were not stuffed. They had very little or anything in them and they were flat.

The overall cost and service and food were all way below average. I am not sure how this place got such great reviews but it is NOT very good. They need to fix the kitchen and train their staff better.

We would definitely not be back.... Actually, after speaking with them we WILL go back and try them out again in hopes that it was just a bad night for them.

UPDATE 3/13/2024.

Spoke with someone there and they were very sorry and invited me back to speak with them and try some other meals at another time. Had some shortage of staff that night among other things that had gone wrong and they even said that they will be doing a much needed training to get new people up to speed. Everyone has an off night so I am upping to 3* and eventually going to get over there to try them one more time. Hopefully they are much better the second time around. I will keep...

When i first got there and saw that the parking lot was full, I thought to myself that this must be a great place. I was fooled. Went in and got a seat right away. The patio was decently busy but the inside had lots of open tables. The hostess greated us quickly. Since we had never been there before she gave us the brunch and lunch menus. Looking at 4 menus each was overkill. It seemed like they were really pushing the alcohol. There is a menu on the tables of nothing but alcohol. Then each of the menus for lunch and brunch had an alcohol list on the. The server we had was great. He was the best part of the experience. Seeming how this place was a more modern day alternative pizza place catering to vegetarians and vegans we found the menu intriguing. With an open mind we found several things that sounded good. I ordered the Mr. White and added bacon, jack fruit, red peppers and onion. The 3 extra topping ran $7 on top of a $20 pizza. Okay its mainly an organic pizza. They didn't put the bacon on it. So they gave me a side of bacon to sprinkle on it. What a joke. The other pizza at the table was a Hawaiian minus jalapenos and ham add lamb and a few other toppings. It came out with the ham not lamb. It was taken back and remade as a small. The pizzas were both very greasy or they just really love olive oil. You could see the dough had bubbles in it because for my pizza to have 3 different cheeses on it, it had several spots without cheese. For it to have the word bar in the title, charging $4 for a bud light bottle is more like being at a club then a bar. The atmosphere on the inside was dark. It was not an uplifting feeling at all. The brightest part was the burlap strips on the wall and some of the paintings. Which all of them were for sell. Oh by the way i asked for ice in my water on my second refill. I never got any. Even after the person that was refilling the water came back to bus our table after 35 more minutes. Total for a bruschetta a large pizza with 3 extra topping a small pizza with 4 extra toppings and a bottle of bud light $62. With the small pizza getting compt total dropped $20. Neither pizza had a good flavor. My favorite pizzas from Donatos and Deweys pizza puts this place to shame. I have better experiences doctoring up frozen pizzas in my...

Wheat Penny is something you read and hear about sometimes, but it took me this long to finally go try it. It’s definitely one of these trendy places and the menu is creative to match. A decent amount has an Italian base but there’s a lot of twists and several things that don’t. This does mean that your enjoyment will partly depend on how much you’re willing to try a new twist on things.

The food here is good, though quite expensive. It does make sense, as the quality of the ingredients here is higher than most places around here, but you do need to expect that going in. The focaccia is amazing here, and several main dishes went well: Duck on the mountain pizza had a great crust and the duck bacon is worth trying. I do wish there was a bit more of it though. The buckeye ice cream was quite intense with peanut flavor, and that’s a good thing.

Got a taste of the green lasagna (very good take on the dish, and this is the rare restaurant that has good meatballs), and the brick chicken was very juicy. Thought the salad with the house dressing was just okay.

Service was a bit slow, and while the parking lot was full the tables weren’t. It was better early on but they seemed to get overwhelmed near the end. Oh, and the parking lot is rather small, which is a result of the location.

Generally think it was worth trying this place out. It’s somewhere that requires being in the mood for something adventurous, and if you are and are patient it might be the place for you. For me it’s more of an occasional place, and maybe someday Google will give me my half star so I can give it the 4.5 I want it to be. Rounded down this time simply because the mood I need to go here isn’t...