Hillside Public House @ Doneckers — Restaurant in Ephrata

Very interesting. My partner & I came here for drinks & dinner on a Saturday evening. When we showed up, the door appeared to be locked. We probably would have left except the pub was clearly open, and some people were on their way out so we were able to get in. Once we got inside, it was very unclear where to go or what to do. There's no hostess, wait staff, or signage, so we ended up asking the guy at the food stand what to do. Felt weird to be asking a contracted food service worker where to sit.

As other reviews mention, you order your food & drinks at each stand. Since we planned to go dutch, we needed to take turns ordering food. Again, weird for a date. However, the sushi and drinks were delicious. The wings were interesting - it was hard to get service at that stand, but they had a variety of flavors and it tasted good.

As far as atmosphere goes, architecture and decor wasn't horrible. The bar was laid out beautifully. However, the music was fascinating. I know we're in Pennsyltucky, but country? Not what I expected from a Dave & Busters-meets-speakeasy pub. The shuffleboard thing was placed in the middle of a hallway, so you had to navigate around the adult birthday party who used it all evening. A grandma was showing her preschool-aged grandchild how to play the slots. There were also some other patrons who clearly had too much to drink to control their volume, or stop rude thoughts from exiting their mouth. Thankfully, they left shortly after we arrived.

Since Ephrata has made improvements in the last 10 years and Doneckers was historically a nice location, I was hoping that this would be a nice, classy, fun night out with my person. We'll probably go back because the sushi and drinks were really good and reasonably priced, but we plan to sit elsewhere and ignore the other patrons as much as possible. Hopefully we can open the door without any...

Took a large group of 10 on 2/28 trivia night. It's an unusual set up and NO ONE is there to explain how to receive service. Kel Lee the Trivia host saw that we were not being taken care of. So he voluntarily explained it and was very nice. The Sushi bar person was great and the food was good. Mark the bartender was also great and accomodating. So why the bad rating. The service from the young man at the Wild Wings station was atrocious. Surly, unaccomodating and pulling teeth to get an information. He was rather short, dark hair and I think a mustache. The wings were the only thing they got right. Burgers were cold and hard...you know like hockey pucks. Fries were cold and Pizza was blah! It should be noted that the first person I talked to was a young girl who was as and willing to help us and was very informative and told us how we could handle our large group. But by the time we were ready to order the boy had taken over and started with his attitude and changed everything the girl had said she would do. Because of this, I will not be recomending your place in fact will be doing just...

Not much going on here. The attempt at the speakeasy concept shows but isn’t overly impressive. Sushi & Wild Wings (local pizza place) as food options is odd. Would love to see “period” type Food & a better libations menu. Laid back & uber casual, shuffle board is available (my wife destroyed me 😆) was a fun option. Dart board & PA skill games we out of place, not positioned well… It appears at 1 time they had ring on a string which absolutely fits in with the vision at some point. A few advisements & I think this place shines up: Move the PA Skill Games away from the dart board, heck move the dart board too. Have a collection of peg games available, they would make great centerpieces. A cheap deck of cards at tables. Gangster style foods. Rotate the menu to cover different cities, Chicago, New York, Vegas & AC. Lastly, get some old slot machines with tokens good for merch & to use at the slots. Then market it!!! This place has tons of potential. For under 2k this could be a destination that separates itself from the ehhh breweries, bars...