Fort Thomas Pizza and Tavern — Restaurant in Fort Thomas

EDIT - my last experience was a few months back but it soured me on this restaurant.

While I still enjoy the pretzel pizza sticks most of the time, the service and atmosphere is absolutely abysmal. Granted it’s a tavern, my standards weren’t too high but generally I make orders over the phone and have it delivered. It’s not far from the office so in lieu of paying extra for delivery, sometimes someone from our group goes and picks it up. The person who usually answers the phone may not be qualified to operate any kind of machinery, phone included. She’s often confused and put out by simple requests, like putting names on group orders. That’s fine. I’ll live. Seeing as she’s normally the only one working during lunch, I get a few extra minutes is hard to spare. I’m not unreasonable.

You enter the restaurant and there is a single person working. They are usually serving beers to a group of haggard gentlemen who leer at you with their cigarettes hanging from their slacked jaws. It’s very uncomfortable. I just want to pick up my group’s food and get out. You wait a short amount of time that feels like an eternity. Again, it’s fine. Whatever. I’m socially awkward, I’ll take the food and get gone.

The best part is, that even after the struggles with lunch time parking and the frantic solo server, they keep your food under a warmer so it’s nice and hot. Right? Know what they keep with your food? The dipping sauce cups. So I get back to work and to everyone’s disappointment, those who ordered ranch now have a melted plastic/ranch mess to deal with. (the ranch is really good with the pretzel sticks. Like it’s a sin to not have ranch with them) When a coworker called to complain, the feedback was that I “waited too long to pick it up.” To be fair, I did take awhile to get the food. Don’t have an exact time but 30-40 minutes would not be too far off. That’s on me. Again, I’m not unreasonable. However there is no place on earth that boasts serving piping hot ranch. Why? Because that sounds gross. Also, why would anyone put plastic cups under a heat lamp? Anyway. The person on the line graciously said we were more than welcome to come back and pick up our ranches, as if that was at all what I wanted to do for the remainder of my lunch break. It’s fine. I don’t want to be a burden. I’ll go somewhere else.

I love the pretzel pizza sticks!...

We experienced some of the worst service we have had in a long, long while at this establishment, and even tried to send them feedback privately but their contact us submit button didn't even work. We waited over 20 minutes after receiving menus (which we got as we sat down) to order, my husband finally went in to place an order, which prompted our server to come out. Then we waited for a long long while for our bill, I finally went inside and sat at the bar, which had 8 people inside it, and no one asked me what I needed, but they waited on the person who came in after me and sat two seats over from me. To add insult to injury when I went outside again and server finally came out to ask what we needed and I said box/check, when the check came there was a credit card fee on it!!! I hadn’t given you a credit card, how do you know how was I paying??!! I still tipped 20% on my bill, despite terrible service because I was once a waitress, but I paid the entire tab in cash. I took a photo of this invoice and the cash (there are 3 $20s plus a $10 for a total of $70) because I was so flabbergasted at a charge for a credit card I didn’t use or offer up. Ironically as we walked away she came back out, I assume to check if we paid. Fastest she had come outside all night times 100%.

The establishment was not very busy and this type of experience isn’t going to bring business in…so I am raising as an issue for you to work on. You have good food, good location but poor service trumps...

My husband and I stopped at this restaurant for some food and drink before heading over to the park for music and fireworks. They do have tables with umbrellas set up outside which was perfect for us. I walked inside the bar to see if we were able to have table service outside and was immediately struck by an extremely strong smell of cigarettes. There was a young woman, Brianna, working who said that we could receive table service and asked how many. She greeted us outside within a few minutes with menus and asked for drink orders. She appeared to be the only one working at 5:00 on a Saturday afternoon and she was very quick and efficient! She a brought our drinks quickly and we ordered a supreme 12-in size pizza. The pizza came out quickly, sizzling hot with lots of delicious toppings. Brianna buzzed around all of the other tables outside taking orders but still always managed to come back and check on us and make sure that we were doing fine. I definitely could not eat inside this restaurant, I could even smell the cigarette smoke every time the door opened and closed ,( the reason for the 4star rating) but our patio service was perfect. It was also a great spot for people watching. I would definitely recommend going back another time and enjoying their outdoor...