The Holiday Bar — Restaurant in Grand Rapids

Plain brown paper rests between a hearty mound of onion rings and a metal tin. My eyes are immediately drawn to the green and white specks dusted delicately atop the batter. Experience has taught me that seasoning onion rings past the fry, and in such a visible manner, was something of an oddity, and it immediately piqued my interest.

While most of the rings are decently plump, a handful of shrunken and malformed rings lurk in the shadowy recesses of the tin, desperately seeking to avoid my gaze. Much as I imagine the humble roadside onion seller tries to hide the desiccated and rotten onions from their more photogenic siblings, the Holiday Bar clearly didn't want me to find these reject rings. It does not work.

A paper cup of ketchup (which I find to be a vile concoction) rests precariously near my precious rings, daring to pollute them. All in all, the appearance is refreshingly classic and homey, though the precarious ketchup placement and malformed rings are to their detriment.

Even before I get a hint of the tantalizing seasonings resting atop the batter, my first bite reveals a greasy world of onion juice. With the grease comes a decent and solid onion flavor, which is just present enough to deliver a good taste without being overwhelming. The weak onion rings in the back, however, lacked the same flavor profile.

While the batter itself isn't tremendously flavorful, the seasoning added after the cooking, certainly including some ground salt and a dash of a number of savory herbs, adds a wonderful dimension to these onion rings that many others lack. This is a splendid example of how the appearance of an onion ring (the mottled specks of green and white on top of the batter) can build anticipation for the flavors yet to be unearthed, as a great apocalypse.

I cannot vouch for how the ketchup may or may not have affected the taste, as I refused to touch it. The thought of ketchup touching the glory of an onion ring makes me shudder, and weep for the poor souls this horror has been delivered to prior to my arrival.

When you've been in the hard game of onion ring reviews as long as I have, you start to recognize patterns. An onion ring that tastes mightily of onion juices is typically accompanied by a mushy onion, with the juicy flavors coming at the expense of structural integrity of the onion itself. This was the case here, as the onions were soft and squishy, and mildly overdone.

The beer batter managed to provide a reasonable and soft bite, while my mastication delivered the sound and sensation of a slight crunch. It makes up somewhat for the onion, as providing a good texture with soft battered rings can be a tricky beast. The gnarled rings in the back are far too overdone to say the same of, though.

The slippage scourge returns, as soft batter and mushy onions make are a potent recipe for separation of the constituent components of the rings. While they has a number of good textural elements, these onion rings failed to meaningfully combine them into a positive whole.

For $6, I got a tin packed with reasonably thick cut rings.While $6 is a little steep for the amount of onion rings I received, they were certainly made in-house and with a reasonable degree of precision. All in all, these onion rings provided reasonable taste at a reasonable price, with an almost-stellar appearance, barring the reject rings...

I went for the first time April 1st 2017, it was a friend of mines birthday, ive never been to this bar, but theres a first time for everything. So when going in everything was good the waitress asked me did i need anything, and i ordered me a drink, Let me remind you i was the only "Black Girl" at the table, but i didnt notice the descrimination until i was sitting next to one of my colleagues which is a "white girl" and she was not asked to see her ID, but I was, hmmmm, seem kind of strange, but i didnt think anything of it, until the last and only time , I was literally called out ,abruptly by the manager, because i chose to not leave a "TIP" on my receipt for the waitress,. "Is there a Kyrstin Coleman" the manager said Loudly i thought i was in trouble by the way he called my name. Thats Me, i said , and he proceeds to ask me why i did not leave a tip, "my waiter works for $3.00 and hour" why does this reciept have a zero on it. So my thought was : why are you forcing me to pay your waitress , when the first question shouldve been "were you done ordering tonight" not weres her tip on the reciept. So i grabbed the reciept and pen from him, and wrote $2.00 on it. Gave it back to the manager and he walked away not Even saying "Thank You" at the end of it all. My colleagues realized the rudeness, but remind you it was my friends birthday so i tried to stay cordial, Being a Black Women, does not mean i have to do what they probably thought i wanted to do and thats go off on the manager forcing me without asking to leave a tip, (and remind you, all the other girls at the table didnt even leave there Tip yet, and was not asked why by the manager). But i was, so after talking to the owner after the manager couldn't be civil enough to hold an adult conversation, when asked by a friend of mine why he approached me like that, he made an effort to put his fingers in my face while trying to explain to me why i was asked to tip his watress , on top of shutting another friend of mind up by puting his hand in her face, That was the last straw for not only my friends but for me, " I need to speak with your owner, he went to go get his owner, and my friend explained what happened, he obviously didnt give a care because it was about me a "black girl" why care about that. And you can tell on his face the conversation was irrelevant to him. So i proceed to get up and Thought to myself, let me leave something for him to think about, because honestly as you can see i can speak for myself, as i let him know how i felt about the situation, i knew it was time for me to go, and i did just that, Me amd my Friends, because even though i didnt know everyone at the table, they all stuck up for me, and made sure i did not feel alone in that situation, of PURE DESCRIMINATION, so for anybody that goes there make sure your not of color and you keep money noticed or leave a TIP cause they will hound you until you do so. And they will never have to worry about me walking in there again, so whoever reads this understand why i wrote about Them , because they are rude, ive never expierenced such HATE and now we see whats going on right in front of us. You cant be nice to nobody now a days. It clearly showed me what...

This place has a ton of great reviews and a good friend of mine recommended it, saying she has been there a few times. I went with my friend around 4pm on a Saturday.

The whole place was empty except for about 6 people at the bar, with 2 bartenders. Got a couple draft beers and ordered the loaded fries.

The bartender we had was really strange. She seemed intoxicated, or at the very least extremely sleep deprived. She was really sloppy and unprofessional. We told her the minute we sat down that we wanted a food menu and we sat for quite a while until she asked what we wanted.

Service was terrible. It took a good 35 minutes to get our fries, which might seem petty, but the place was DEAD and I'm talking about FRIES.

Credit where credit is due, the food was PHENOMENAL. I would absolutely order their food again. That's the only reason I'm giving a second star.

I decided to try what I guess you'd call one of their "house cocktails". Bartender had to ask the other bartender how to make it and what I got was a club soda with cucumbers in it. There was not even a HINT of alcohol in it. For $7.50 at least humor me and throw a splash of cheap well gin in it.

Then we sat, clearly done with our food and drinks, for another decent wait until the other bartender that wasn't even serving us was nice enough to cash us out.

I'm disappointed because the food was soooo good and the music and atmosphere are nice. The service just...