Beer Barrel Pizza & Grill — Restaurant in Fort Wayne

(If you’re a customer looking for a food quality review, scroll to the bottom paragraph)

I think I should preface that I’ve been a restaurant operator for almost 13 years, so I understand business fluctuations- I understand that dinner on Black Friday at a restaurant in a mall is going to be busy. But this restaurant was obviously understaffed without any sort of team mentality or structure.

When my husband and I arrived, the hostess didn’t say “how are you” or “hello” or any type of greeting at all- only “how many” without a smile. We said “two” and there was a solid 2.5 minute awkward silence while she was mapping out where to seat us. Trying to make it easier, I offered to sit at the bar rail (which was half empty) and she said “it’s open seating.” Which is normal, okay.

I went to the restroom while my husband got us seats, and the stall I went into was disgusting but the other two were occupied. When I finished, one of the wait staff was on her phone and fixing her hair. All of those things are normal (from actually running a restaurant standpoint). People working need a break- and there isn’t “paid lunch” etc, let alone when you’re busy you sometimes need to just be alone for a second. Also, a customer could have made a mess immediately before I went in. I brushed all of that off.

When I sat down, we were handed menus roughly (give or take) 15 min after sitting. Mind you, at this point there was one bartender with half of the bar rail full of customers. We got our first drink only a few minutes after the menus, and were looking for food options. We waited about 20-30 minutes to be asked what we wanted to order. So we ordered our food, and the bar started filling up, but I understand(!!) busy nights being understaffed, so I wasn’t stressing about the wait. We flagged down the bartender for refills, and our food arrived almost 45 minutes after ordering. So at this point we’ve waited almost 1.5 hours.. Just for our food.. But honestly with the environment and atmosphere, I didn’t notice it had been that long. A busser/BOH employee brought the food to us, not our bartender. Bartender never asked how it was, if it was accurate etc. My tacos were very clearly sitting under a heat lamp (or something similar) for way too long. The presentation of the tacos was wonderful, but I had a lemon wedge on top to be able to squeeze onto them for flavor that was totally dry. Literally one drop of lemon juice came out. The meat was way too dry, they weren’t warm (not completely cold either though), and just overall disappointing. I started to get frustrated after that so I started noticing servers wandering without any sense of urgency, and our bartender was catering to specific people and ignoring others (like us, for example).

When we were finally handed our check, the bartender said “sorry about the wait on your food- the kitchen is a disaster right now.”…. Which honestly hearing her say that made me extremely frustrated. Whether you’re serving, bussing, cooking, dishes, or managing- you’re a TEAM. When one station suffers, everyone does. It’s not fair to blame something going wrong on someone that isn’t able to defend themselves, let alone that the kitchen crew is doing (literally) all of the work and most likely not getting any tip payout.

My biggest issue overall regardless is that I didn’t see a FOH manager or BOH manager (although, the boh manager is understandable to not be seen by customers) anywhere

This restaurant & my experience would have had a completely different outcome if someone was diligently overseeing every aspect operationally, and rolled up their sleeves to help their crew when they needed it.

That was a very long winded description that I hope some of the staff of the restaurant will read and hopefully take note of for the future, but for regular google review ‘readers’ I will say: food was fine, it probably would have been better on a slow night. Atmosphere was comfortable. The drink selection was great. Service was below...

WOW! We visited Beer Barrel awhile back and I'm already craving a return trip. The food, atmosphere, and service were all excellent. We dined on a slow Sunday evening 4/23 which very well may have helped our excellent experience.

Our server recommended the carolina gold wings for our appetizer. THESE WINGS WERE AMAZING! The wings were piping hot, crunchy, juicy and tossed in the perfect amount of delicious carolina gold sauce. I very easily could've made these wings into an entire meal.

In addition to the wings, we also ordered the hummus and guacamole plate. This came with hummus two ways and a house made chips and quacamole that was better than any Mexican chain. This was a perfectly light accompaniment to offset the heaviness of our fried chicken wings. It also gave us something else to snack on while we waited for our pizzas.

I asked our server what the favorite pizza was and she recommended the thin crust Italian Hot Honey. This pizza was absolutely amazing! It had the perfect blend of sweet honey, spicy peppers and salty pork. The thin crust still had NO FLOP and held the toppings well.

I tasted all three pizzas in order to compare the crust. I liked the thin crust the best. The hand tossed had a familiar taste and texture. It was crispy on the outside but soft and pillowy in the middle. This was my second favorite followed closely by the cauliflower crust in third.

The only food item we consumed that I did not manage to get a picture of was the chicken and noodles dinner with mashed potatoes. This was primarily because they were so delicious that they were consumed within minutes of when the bowl hit the table. The potatoes were creamy. The chicken was tender and juicy. The noodles were cooked to perfection. The broth/gravy helped to marry everything together in one delicious spoonful.

I wished we had saved room for dessert. I would 100% order everything we had again. I can not wait to come back. Thanks for an awesome...

We've been to the Jefferson Pointe location 4 times now. The food has been good so that's why we've returned. Visits have been two times on a busy weekend evening, Sunday after church, and a weekday between lunch and dinner hours. Our waitress has been the same at least two of the four visits and very good. She, however, was extremely busy last night due to how they seated her tables at our latest visit. She was seated four tables at the same time and left to get all the orders, drink deliveries, etc at the same time. We ordered deep dish pizza, regular crust pizza, appetizer, french onion soup. There were four of us. (2 couples). She informed us that our deep dish took longer to make and we were fine with that. However, our friends appetizer took forever to come out. When it did, it was brought out by a runner. We asked about our soup. She said she'd check. No one came back. Our waitress was running constantly to keep up with her tables. Our food finally came about an hour after ordering. The soup came out with the pizzas. It looked like it had been sitting for quite some time. Runners brought all our food. When we asked for two more plates they never brought them. Our waitress made it to the table to check on us. We asked for more plates as the others never brought them. She immediately got them. Made sure drinks were filled, etc. While she was running for boxes, checks, drinks for her tables set at the same time, management, several greeters, runners or whatever they're called were standing at the check in booth laughing goofing around and apparently having fun doing so. This is inappropriate behavior. Especially from management. We will be back, but this place won't last long when customers start to be affected by careless service. Our waitress was great! But there needs to be better...