The Dugout Grill & Bar — Restaurant in Erie

I am updating this review to say we came back, two months later, to order to go food and I am still underwhelmed with the way the business is run - the food is still really good. This time, I went online to order. The menu on their website was different than what was available on their "order online" option. For example, there is an entire "South of the Border" section on the online ordering section but not on the main website. My husband wanted a burrito under that section, so he decided he would just go in to the restaurant and order directly - because he wanted to see what all the burrito had in it (online ordering section has no descriptions). I wanted the seared ahi salad (which was listed on BOTH the main menu on the website and on the online ordering section). When my husband got to the restaurant, he was presented with a menu that had 11 items taped over as "no longer available" and the Seared Ahi Salad was nowhere to be found on the menu at all. It's all just very sloppy. After texting back and forth about what they actually had (because apparently no online menus are accurate) I settled for a chicken Caesar salad and my husband got chicken nachos. Both were good, but now that both my dining in and take out experience have been pretty unimpressive, I think I am going to scratch this one off of my local places to go.

Food is good, but pricey. Especially when the atmosphere is very much sports bar like. I had a Cobb salad which was large and filling. My husband had a burrito which he liked a lot. The food and drinks took a long time to come out. First round of drinks came in a decent time, but the food probably took 30-40 minutes to come out. We were a table of 4 with 3 salads and a burrito. One person ordered a second beer (in a bottle)and it didn't come for another 15 minutes or so. We were all done eating by the time it got there. The waitress said "I'm sorry" a lot and I know it wasn't all her fault, but I do put the blame on her for a 15 minute wait on a bottles beer. It wasn't busy. Bar was fairly full. There were about 6 tables in the restaurant and one of them were already finishing up food when we sat down.

I like their breakfast burritos and so I will probably still order to go on those from time to time, but not sure I will dine in again for a while unless I hear that service and timing has...

So a co-worker and I stopped by here for lunch on my suggestion as a previous experience was decent. However, this was not to be the case this time. We were seated and while the place was somewhat crowded, we received no indication from our server that there would be a wait. We got our drinks and ordered our food and waited. After about thirty minutes we were finally informed that their fryers were down and it might take longer for our food to come out. Normally, this would not have been a big deal but we were on our lunch break and honestly, they should have mentioned this at the door BEFORE seating us. On top of that, our server was very inattentive-- not filling drinks and not giving us an update on how long it would take for our food to come out. After another thirty minutes (at which point our lunch break was over) our food finally arrived and the servers inattentiveness continued. He failed to bring any condiments or silverware to the table, and my colleague had to go up to the bar to ask for those things. To make matters worse, the serve expressed no remorse whatsoever for our food taking over an hour to arrive at the table. The food itself was mediocre at best. My colleague ordered a burger that he looked like he had to force down and I ordered the chicken parm sandwich, and granted the chicken was cooked well, the cheese looked like it had been tossed on as an afterthought with the mindset of "we will let the heat of the chicken patty melt the cheese." Unsurprisingly, the server inattentiveness continued to the point where my colleague once again had to go ask for our check at the bar despite the fact that the restaurant had practically cleared out by that point. Really, all of this could have been avoided had the staff here been upfront with us about what was going on with the kitchen.This is clearly a management and training issue, and to be completely honest, if this was my establishment I would fire the entire FOH staff and replace them with people who actually know how to do the job properly. Needless to say, neither me or my work colleagues will ever visit this place again and the owner should be ashamed for running such an unprofessional...

Unfortunately, our visit today was disappointing and we don’t plan to return. We arrived around 12:30pm and weren’t greeted for nearly 10 minutes, even though the restaurant was virtually empty (only 2 other couples seated at booths)

The soda machine was out of syrup for multiple drinks (dr. Pepper and Pepsi), so we just had water.

The food we ate felt very overpriced. We ordered the $14 nachos appetizer with chicken for an extra $4. Our request to have the sour cream, salsa, and guacamole on the side was not followed, and the chicken portion was minimal—maybe ¼ cup at most—hardly worth the upcharge. The nachos also had only a handful of beans, making the $18 dish feel small and underwhelming.

While the menu listed gluten-free and vegan options, our server seemed unfamiliar with gluten and admitted that “everything is probably heavily cross-contaminated,” which isn’t reassuring for anyone with dietary needs.

Service was lacking overall. Despite only ordering nachos and being one of three tables in the restaurant, we saw our server just a few times and waited nearly 15 minutes for the check after asking for it. Meanwhile, the chef walked back and forth from a back room several times with dirty hands and power tools, which wasn’t encouraging from a cleanliness standpoint.

The men’s restroom had no soap, and the sanitizer station outside the bathrooms and near the kitchen was both empty and broken. Refer above to how this made the place feel a bit dirty and unsanitary.

Some other reviews suggested the burgers might be worth trying, but based on our experience, we won’t...