Granite City Food & Brewery — Restaurant in Fort Wayne

My family and I went here for lunch yesterday with friends, and the only thing saving this review slightly is that we love their Sunday brunch buffet. That is great and everyone is nice, no complaints. The rest of this review however is about our lunch experience. We did get right in, but we were asked table or booth which we replied table and then were promptly taken to a booth. There was another large group there when we went so we started the experience expecting longer waits as that’s what happens, which is fine. We put in our drink order and told her we needed just a minute to finish looking at the menu after the drinks came. We could see her just standing in the back doing nothing for 15 minutes before she decided she could come back out to take our order. We put in our food order, again waiting for a good while because of the other group we thought. But when our food was brought out, it was straight cold. How do you have freezing cold green beans underneath meatloaf and (also cold) mashed potatoes? There’s just no way it was properly cooked. This was not a situation where it was just warm vs hot, no these were frigid to the touch. The same for my friend’s potatoes under her pot roast that was warm. Our husbands’ and kids’ meals were also barely lukewarm. I alerted the server to have mine heated back up when she came back around which they did, but again this just got us to lukewarm territory. Better than freezing cold I guess. My husband’s food was also very meh, though the service not the food is what mainly prompted this review. Our waitress was not the one who was serving the other big group, she had us and maybe 2 other tables. She forgot our friend’s beer refill, and when we finally could catch her again, we asked for boxes. In the following 15 minutes while we waited for our boxes, we saw her take another table’s drink orders and bring those out, as well as just walking around in the back again. My husband finally got up and asked the server that just finished with the big group if she could either get our server or our boxes because we were just being ignored at that point since then she got our server to come out immediately with stuff. Overall, a super disappointing experience for subpar food, and I would never recommend anyone come here for anything besides the Sunday brunch. Maybe we will have our minds changed sometime in the future, but for how much money we spent on an all around terrible experience, it’s not likely that we will want to do so again...

Just wanted to start by complimenting our server, Ariel (sp?). Her level of hospitality was off the chart. Quite a charming and conscientious wait staff member. She is a true asset to this establishment. However the redeeming qualities of this place stop there. The food was not all that great. My group shared the Idaho Nachos which was ok (especially with the addition of the house dip) but NOTHING to 'write home about'. The AYCE Fish Fry left much to be desired. It paled in comparison to the Fish and Chips of Arthur Treacher's. The Clam Chowder didn't contain any salt pork or potatoes, had very few clams and included bell peppers and other veggies not usually found in traditional clam chowder. I think it's time to revamp that 20 year old recipe. The Blue Cheese Chop salad was another OK menu item. And although the Flying Monkey is said to contain Sobieski cytron vodka, peach and strawberry schnapps, and lemonade, all we could taste was the lemonade. And if the disappointing food wasn't enough of a reason NOT to return to this place we had to continually shoo away a group of gnats who insisted on intruding on our dining experience. When we informed the manager about the gnats his resolve was "yeah the gnats have been an ongoing problem for years". No apology for the imposition, no offer to comp any menu item or drink nor did he make any offer for a free dessert. Needless to say we left without ordering any desserts (a $40 loss of revenue). I know others may find this place appealing but we found it appalling. There are much better places to go here in Fort Wayne for soups, salads and sandwiches. First...

On our last visit (3/18/23), everyone must have been sleeping off their St. Patty’s hangover. My wife ordered the spicy chicken sandwich. Turns out, it’s no longer a breaded chicken fillet dipped in hot sauce. Nope - it was 3 tiny chicken tenders (1.5” x 3”) from the kids menu that they had repurposed into sandwich filler. Additionally, they were just over room temperature when it got to the table. We waited for the server to come check on us so we could let her know; it was more than 15 minutes before we saw her again. And then we weren’t offered a replacement - she just said she’d let the kitchen know. 🤷‍♂️

I had the meatloaf. It was a decent portion of under-salted meat that was slathered in a bottled sweet-n-sour sauce they called “bourbon onion gravy.” Maybe it’s because I lived in KY for more than a decade, but I couldn’t make out any bourbon or onion…just diced canned peppers & high fructose corn syrup. Of the 12 green beans served with my meal, one had the stalk still attached! Because of the odd construction (bread, gravy, beans, meatloaf, mashed potatoes, & topped with onion straws) I couldn’t see it so I had the delightful experience of biting into a twig. Thankfully, the undercooked lumps of red potato in the “mash” were there to distract me from the disaster which lay underneath.

I was there for my birthday meal (BOGO up to $15) - that money-saving coupon is the only thing keeping this from being a 1-star review. Disappointing. This place used to be good, but quality has certainly slipped in the last 18 months. (For reference, we go there 3-5...