Barrel House — Restaurant in Dubuque

Update #3: They overhauled their food offerings and it's much, much better now. You could even say it's a whole new restaurant, food-wise, compared to before they overhauled. When the server came over and I saw our food, I instantly knew something had changed. I asked the server if they had someone come in to redo their food and they said they had, and the server was very proud of it. For good reason, too. When they first overhauled the menu a year or so ago, it was excellent. They've since slid some but it's still leaps and bounds better than what it was during covid and earlier.

I can't raise the stars too much because they've decreased their hours. I miss 24-hour America and don't appreciate anyone contributing to its loss. You might also be waiting a long time to be seated or served. People frequently just walk out up front instead of continuing to wait to receive a table. Every time I've been on the verge of just leaving while waiting for a hostess, they've eventually come. Or, the people in front of us have left so we become next in line which gives us enough motivation to wait longer.

I feel like this place does well enough that they could institute the processes, culture, and training of a solid sports bar restaurant, but they don't seem to be interested. They could crush it on weekend evenings as the only game in town, if people still went out anymore. No one has discretionary income during end-state capitalism here, so there really isn't a weekend night to speak of anymore, so then places like Barrel House, that should be jumpin' during that time, are relatively quiet. As all our money goes to Israel, the military industrial complex, and billionaires' coffers, there's nothing left for kids' alcohol and places like Barrel House.

Old Review: Great beer selection and great menu but terrible quality control on the food. This place could do SO much better in the food preparation department for their awesome menu. Barrel House! For Pete's sake you have everything in place to be a great place to eat! Why oh why do you not ensure your food is prepared well!? Your burgers are nowhere even close to Red Robin. Your burrito thing is lame and minimal. It's obvious your appetizers are from mass bags. You put minimal toppings on your nacho fries every time and they look disgusting and cheap and like you all don't care at all. I could go on. Do the owners ever inspect this place?! How could you put your name on the food quality here?!? I really want to like Barrel House and do appreciate the fantastic beer selection, but please start respecting your customers and ensure the degree of food prep quality one would expect from the menu and exteriors of this place.

Update #1: Decreased a star. Both online and printed and posted sign on the door says kitchen open until 11. Arrived before 10pm and they said their kitchen was closed. Drove across town to be lied to twice. Don't appreciate it.

Update #2: I would decrease another star but can't bring myself to go all the way to 1 star, which I reserve for the most egregious offenders. THEY DON'T LET YOU CHOOSE TWO OR MORE SAUCES FOR YOUR "HEAPING" PLATE OF WINGS. You have a sign up that says, "We CARE." How can you claim that if you don't allow the customer to choose two sauces for a "heaping" size of wings? How hard is it to toss wings in two sauces? Either take down your "We CARE" bs or offer a modicum of customer service that literally 100% of all other places with wing offerings provide. The next bs this place puts me thru we're losing our last Michelin, er, Google Star.

The beer selection is great EXCEPT ALL THE BEER IS WEAK (LOW ABV). How do you have dozens of beers and none of them over 7%?? It's as if they intentionally aim away from the very reason we drink beer in the first place. If you love weak beer, then this place is for you because the selection is great and all they have is weak beer.

-yours...

TL;DR Too many negatives to the experience for the good food to make up for. I'd recommend delivery or carryout!

First con: The parking situation isn't great. There's lots of metered parking. Not sure if there's a free lot we missed though. Whatever, not that big of a deal. We were able to find a spot on the street and it was after 5 pm, when you don't have to pay the meter.

So, keep in mind this is a Monday evening and the restaurant and bar aren't crowded at all. We walked in and no one greeted us. The sign said, "Please Wait to Be Seated", so we waited. And we waited some more. After 10 minutes there were finally staff available that greeted us. The hostess seemed a little flustered (I think she was training a new hostess) and mumbled something about grabbing a kids menu later- we had our 4-year-old with us.

We were seated and then waited for quite some time for the server to greet us. She forgot the beer menu, but promised she would bring it right over. Again, not a big deal! So, we ordered a drink for our kiddo and then proceeded to review the menu. There were just enough choices and variety in the menu. It seems as though they specialize in burgers and drinks, but I did see quite a few people with pizza's that were dining-in. There were some VERY tasty-looking shakes in the menu, but I didn't get the chance to try any.

I ordered the Carolina Burger with barrel cucumbers, my husband ordered the Barrel Burger with French cut fries (they were out of the sweet potato waffle fries), and the kiddo ordered a kid's cheeseburger with side mac and cheese. We had to look up the kid's menu on Google for our location since that kid's menu never did come and our server visited us so infrequently that we never got to ask. When we ordered the server was constantly looking at her little electronic waitress book and didn't seem familiar with the menu at all. I'm worried that my son may have been served the blueberry redbull lemonade... I'm not 100% on that though. When we asked what juices they had (for our 4-year-old), she didn't seem to know and kept offering the flavored lemonade, so we just went with that option, but when I looked at the drink menu later, I saw the Redbull lemonade advertised on the back cover.

We did eventually get that beer menu when she came to take our food order. We then had to wait until the hostess brought out our meals to finally be able to order our beers. We were halfway finished with our meals by the time we finally got them.

Now the food.... the food was brought out quickly, it was presented pleasantly, and it tasted really great! I thought the BBQ sauce was good. I was pleasantly surprised to find out the Carolina Burger wasn't just a pulled pork sandwich, but pulled pork ON TOP OF a burger patty. My husband said his food was great. My 4-year-old ate half his burger and half of his mac and cheese. Oh! Also, the "Nashville hot" that's sprinkled on top of the side mac and cheese is paprika according to the server. I did taste the mac and cheese and it didn't have a lick of heat in it. It also wasn't that great tasting. Whatever, my kid ate it. The barrel cucumbers, however, did have some heat! They were good, but I could only eat a few. They're basically a vinegar and sugar-based cucumber salad with some hot spices sprinkled on top.

All in all, I'd say it was a negative experience. My husband joked that the waitress had forgotten about us on more than one occasion. The amount of napkins she gave us tells me the woman didn't have young kids or had never had to clean up after a young child dined in a restaurant. I really liked the food, but I wouldn't...

My first time I gave them 5 stars

Food is fine waitress and staff seem to be friendly. Parking is ok. Nice layout inside. Kind of gave me a cabin like feel. If you like these types of restaurants, try it out.

This is a second time the stars came down

OK, this is an update to a visit 2/14/24. Me and my wife wanted to come here again, with us having a good experience the first time we said what the heck. Well, not this time!!! When we walked in, the first thing we were greeted with was your host coughing up a storm. Coughing in her hands while seating us with the menus in hand. That was the first strike. Waiter finally came to greet us after about 15 minutes of waiting for some drinks. She seemed to have had an attitude as well, so we just ordered a few drinks from the bar just to get her going with something. Took a while but finally got our drinks.

We proceeded to order our food but wanted our appetizers to come out first. We order their lobster dip and fried mushrooms. The lobster dip came out first, followed by the fried mushrooms. When the waiter put the mushrooms down, there was long blond hair in our mushrooms. Second strike The waiter looked at it and said, "What oh boi wht is that? Like you didn't know what it was. She said!!! I'll get you a fresh set. We told her that was fine just to get us another lobster dip for the mushrooms instead. She said that was fine. The second lobster dip came out super cold this time with the cheese not being melted. We said to just forget about it that we would just give it to our dogs in their dog food.

Our main dishes had come out by this time. The shrimp spinach raps were good, but the dang fries were luke warm and hard, third strike. By that time, we were like, let's just get some to go boxes so we could just leave and enjoy the rest of our date night. The waiter never came back to ask us anything. We always had to flag her down. So we told her we were ready for our tab, which took all day. We finally got it. Just you find out we were charged for the fried mushrooms that we didn't even eat due to the hair in them. Fourth strike. One thing I don't like is bad customer service and bad food. I really wanted to like this restaurant that why I left my first experience with them. Owner, you have to do better with who you hire at your place of establishment. You can't do good one time, then mess it all up the second, not a good look at it for the nice place of an establishment you have. For this I have to bring those stars down. I know this won't matter, but you should get this under control before it gets out...