Black Shirt Brewing Co and Craft Pizza Kitchen — Restaurant in Denver

Driving through the US right now, stopped in Denver for 48 hours. This was our find as a local small brewery, yet we were not thrilled with the experience, especially after a long day at Rocky Mountains.

Arrived, sat down, looked over the menu. About 10+ minutes (It could have been less or more, we were hungry.)

After watching the one waitress handling orders walk up to a table, open the wrong seltzer, realize it, and walk away from the table, she approached us and asked “Have you been helped yet?” as if someone else would have taken our order. We gave her our order, wings, the garlic cheesy bread (yummy) and a flight of beer.

Quite a while later, the food arrived. They forgot the beer. The brewery forgot to serve the beer. I had to walk up to the bar after our food arrived, and re-ask for our flight. The original waitress could be seen in the back on a phone call for the bulk of this experience. The man at the bar was very quick to help out.

While I was grabbing the beer, she came up with more garlic cheesy bread, realized we had ours (for at least 5 minutes at this point) and turned around.

Beer was overall pretty good. Enjoyed the flight, Our favorites were the Rapture and the Paint it Black. Very good. Wings were definitely fresh, which is good. The sauce, buffalo and honey sriracha (if i recall correctly) were good, as well as the ranch served with it. Only complaint is that they could have been slightly crispier, but the wings were big and good. Cheesy garlic bread is a must. Lots of cheese on top of bread knots, fun to eat. We did not get pizza, as prices for pizza are quite high at 24ish for a small pizza (although not sure how big the small pizza is). Price was definitely a deterring factor regardless.

After hanging around for a while, we finally walked up to the waitress who was behind the bar now, and asked to check out. She still took some time to come over, and finally checked us out. Turning the little keypad, the options to tip were 20%, 25%, and 30%. I do not like to tip poorly, even if service is bad, but was highly disappointed that lowest I could do was still higher than I felt service was worth, especially after having to re-ask and grab the beer, again, from a place specializing in beer.

Could have been an off-day, but if she had mentioned or said anything about having messed up a few times, all would have been forgiven. Stuff happens, we all have off days, but it felt a lot like we were being avoided by the waitress for the bulk of the experience, which was...

Update: Because I received an apologetic call from the owner within 24 hrs of my review, he honored my request for a refund, and followed up with an email. I'm amending my 1 star to 3 stars. I've ordered pizza from here on multiple occasions and their pizza is on the better end of the spectrum for Denver. Being from NJ, it's hard to find platable pizza out here so coming across BSB was nice. It wouldn't be fair to judge the entire establishment by the actions of 1 employee. Although, seriously get your managers better training. Not saying customers are always right but jeez, I've never experienced anything like that before.

Original: Ordered food for delivery. There was miscommunication and the delivery didn't happen. They don't redeliver but I can come pick it up. It's 9 pm, 4 degrees outside, and I just finished working a 12-hour shift, I'm not walking anywhere. Just refund me my money. The guy on the phone was super nice and assured us we'd get a refund. End of story right? Nope. I called 1 week later because I didn't see a refund and was told by a female manager on a callback that my refund request would not be processed because they made the food, even though I never received it. So Black Shirt expects me to pay for food, I never received and one of the staff most likely took home that night. Ok sure. The worst part is that I've ordered from there a few times and even dined in a few times prior to the pandemic. I can guarantee I'll never eat there again or recommend it. The lack of customer service and basic consideration was ridiculous. Pro tip: only order with a credit card, if you choose to order online...

Been curious to try this place. An employee of this place brought it to my attention of existence, after a chance crossing of paths awhile back. As a rideshare driver, I often pass by and see just how busy the place can be. I love pizza, with that much business and good reviews online it must be pretty good. Now to be fair, I know this is a brewhouse and did not try the beer, but was told the pizza is good as well. The pizza was quite bland and overpriced for the quality of pie received. When you're paying for premium toppings such as cream cheese and prosciutto, I'd expect to get our money's worth. A few slivers of the meat, and our cream cheese was replaced with ricotta due to being out of cream cheese. The one pizza took about 40 minutes to get out to us, and we were here midday on a Sunday, so not really more than just a couple of us in the restaurant. In that time, we were rarely checked on by our server, as he was gossiping with those behind the kitchen window. We sat awaiting water for awhile until one of the other servers brought us a bottle of cold water. Place is a nice little place, but we probably won't venture back for anything more than the shows/performances, if we do make it back at any point. Pizza isn't good, and the customer service could use improvement as well. I did not try any, but a few of the house brews looked intriguing, hopefully the brews are as good...