Elimar's Bar & Grill — Restaurant in East Hempfield Township

Well, we gave them a try. We enjoyed ourselves, but it was despite the restaurants best efforts. They seem to have an overall problem with caring about the customer's experience.

We arrived (party of 3 to celebrate a birthday) to be given a table that wobbled. No, not 'wobbled'.... WOBBLED. I'd hazard to guess at least 4" up and down at the edge of the table. A restaurant manager who left that table on the floor might seek a different career. It was ludicrous, and the other folks in the room joined us in laughter under the harsh cold blue of the LED lighting.

We arbitrarily chose a booth as our new table. Plastic table 'cloth', which should be easy to clean. Maybe not, because they hadn't cleaned it. Oh, I'm sure someone took a damp towel to the plastic oasis, but they failed to scrape up the dried and sticky patches. Seriously sticky. As in gluing the paper napkin to the table.

I used one of the extra setups to scrape the table of the worst offenders.

'Rolls' were delivered to the table. I think they were rolls. They might have been what they used to stabilize the wobbly table. Crusty is cool, crunchy is not. Tough, as in being a significant challenge to tear in two. I bounced a couple off the table just for fun. Thwack!

Appetizer, fried calamari. Tasty. Fresh guac was excellent as well.

Two out of three of us ordered salads with dinner. We were saved from critiquing the greens by the simple expedient of their failing to bring them to the table. No salads for us!

I ordered a steak, done medium rare. The steak was attractively grilled, tasted really nice, and was done to an easy medium. Overcooked, but hey... that's about a 60-second difference in cooking. I can let that slide for an inexperienced cook.

I also ordered a sweet potato, seeing attractive images of baked sweet potatoes on the menu. HA! What came on my plate was a deeply overbaked thing about the size of a flattened tennis ball. The crusted dark skin hid a few tablespoons of sweet potato inside.

Our waitress..... bless her heart.

Overall, well, we gave them a try. My opinion is they better rethink their trajectory, as right now it ends in another failed restaurant.

With tip I spent just shy of $200 on...

Check that square - will not return. We were seated quickly, but then ignored for about 15 minutes without so much as someone coming to get a drink order. When our waitress appeared, it became obvious quickly that while she was nice, she spoke broken English at best. As it was our first time there and one of the party had food allergies, we had questions, but none of them were answered. She had no idea what we were talking about. We basically had to point at menu items. When the order came out, the items were correct, but we both ordered steaks done medium. These were well done bordering on shoe leather and badly over seasoned The broccoli on my plate was nasty - it appeared to have come out of the freezer. The shrimp were barely warm and overpriced. Four tiny, barely cooked shrimp for $8 is crazy. The chairs were not comfortable. There were several employees who were occupying the only nicely padded booths and they sat there and played annoying loud videos on their phones the whole time we were eating. The place looked dingy. Paint was peeling on some of the walls. Not sure where all the 5 star reviews are coming from -- maybe we were just there at the wrong time on the wrong day, but I no longer give bad restaurant experiences second chances. Eating out costs too much anymore. Cannot recommend this...

I just finished eating here, for the first time, and was greeted upon arrival by being told that there was no alcohol service this evening. This was never mentioned to us when the reservation was made two hours prior. I overheard something like "the liquor license may have expired (on 2/29)" and witnessed many customers leave immediately after being informed of this.

We decided to stay and try out the food anyway, but 2 of our 3 selected entrees were unavailable and the 3rd entree was only available during lunch. EVERY entree (burger, lasagna and chicken & shrimp carbonara) was mediocre in taste.

On the positive side ....the bread was warmed, the butter soft and the server was so polite as to appear be over-compensating for the lack of alcohol service and many menu selections.

Rated two stars as there was no bar service at all and the restaurant food was just "ok". I hope the owner is able to turn these issues around. There are soo many other good bar/restaurants in the vicinity, they will surely suffer if they can't nail it on the key items of the business.

We won't be returning until we read a few positive reviews written over the...