Stable Inn — Restaurant in Grand Haven Charter Township

It may be worth an anthropological study one day to see how the notion of selling onion rings by the inch on a wooden peg originated and spread, though my first encounter with the concept was at the famed Clementine’s in South Haven. Sold by either the foot or the half-foot (I opt for the latter), the onion rings make an impressive display when they arrive.

They are large, thick, and a light orangish brown, demonstrably battered by hand. The whole experience is oddly homey and reminiscent of a past age of hospitality, complete with what I would describe as an aggressive amount of plates, including one beneath the purpose-built wooden stand on which my half-foot of onion rings solidly rests.

Completing the presentation are two plastic cups of ranch, sharing the plate with a few crispy remnants of batter already starting to slough off of the proud tower of rings like the leaves starting to fall just outside.

The Stable Inn is just within the borders of Ottawa County, where a sizeable portion of Michigan’s onion rings are grown. Though I doubt these onions are from one of the many surrounding farms, the quality is nonetheless high. They are cut thickly and are just the right height, holding up well to frying and eating alike.

Strength can be a weakness in itself, and it is so here. The thickness of the onions, combined with the need to preserve a delicate batter from the rigors of cooking, makes them undercooked and somewhat lacking in flavor, though what’s present is excellent.

The batter is buttery and greasy, well salted and incredibly easy to eat in rapid succession. As the source of most of the flavor in the onion rings, they absolutely deliver. The ranch is a good accompaniment, rounding out the grease with a cooling, creamy sauce that doesn’t quite mesh with the firm onion.

I think it’s fascinating to look at onion rings that fit all of the necessary preconditions for greatness but don’t quite take it over the top, and those from the The Stable Inn check nearly every box. The onion rings are tall, thick, and coated in a fresh, flavorful batter, with a dipping sauce that neither overpowers nor underdelivers. It’s the particularities of execution that keep these onion rings hovering below perfection, mostly in texture.

The fine, flaky better sheds easily, evidenced by the flakes already on the plate before I started to eat. The onions are too hard and undercooked to really give, making the whole structure inflexible and rigid. Given the delicacy of the batter, this is inevitable. Either the onions are undercooked, or the batter burns to a charred mess.

For $5.99, these onion rings come at just under a dollar per inch, and they are worth every cent. Even with some inherent contradictions of interest between onion and batter and their potentially derivative origin, they are confident, simple, and just right for...

We have eaten many times at the Stable Inn but this was the worst experience I have ever had at a restaurant. When we got there we were told we would have a 30 minute wait and they gave us a beeper so we went out to our car to wait for there were way too many people inside waiting and our car we can be comfortable and enjoy our music. After waiting in our car for 30 minutes with the beeper not indicating for us to come inside, we came inside to check with them to see if our table was ready or not. We found out that our table was given out to some other party since we did not answer for our name in the restaurant when they called out the wrong name they had taken down for us. They found us another table in the back area and then we waited for our waitress to come. After waiting about 5 minutes watching other groups of people being seated around us getting their drinks and menu orders being taken, I went up to the cashier register and wanted to know why no waitress has come to our table yet after about 10 minutes. Remember we had just waited for over 30 minutes in our car waiting for the device they gave us to light up just to get a table and I was hungry. The waitress said she would follow me back to our table and take our order while the other people that were seated after us had their drinks at their tables and their orders taken. Then we waited over 45 minutes for our food to come to our table while the other people seated after us were enjoying their meals. I guess this is how you are treated if you complain about their service. Even my baked potato was cold from the long wait. Not just that, but when we checked on their website online for their menu in the 30 minutes we were waiting for our table, we found their prices on our bill to be about $2.00 higher than online prices for each special we had ordered that were not shown to us in our restaurant menu and when we questioned them about this they said we had just raised our prices but had not had the time to change these Friday specials online. They would not honor the prices that we showed them online. They not only gave us poor service but charged us extra money for their Friday night specials. This indicated to me that they did not want us to come back again. Rather than complain to the manager again, we paid the bill and left a very disappointed customer. I am not coming back. We had spent nearly over $500 for a graduation party for my daughter at this restaurant a few years ago and the food and service was great. This episode was a terrible experience, but I guess restaurants change so buyer beware going...

Not our first visit by any means, but possibly our last. Our server Barb was pretty much a train wreck. Things started off bad when she took 3 of our orders and started to collect menus before it was pointed out to her that there are 4 of us. Meal was supposed to be accompanied with a soup for my wife and a salad for myself, neither of which we got. I was asked twice if I would like another drink. Both times I replied that I would love one, but it never came. Everything that did arrive at our table arrived slowly, to which she blamed kitchen and bar staff, and to top it all off, our server seemed to have an over confident helping of sass that could only be tolerated if the service was on point. Overall the visit was verging on the unpleasant. We only kept our cool as we were entertaining family. There are many places to get a decent meal, and many that have a better variety, so it is unlikely that we will risk having this...