Capital Ale House — Restaurant in Harrisonburg

This place is located in downtown in Harrisonburg. There is not much parking right near the restaurant so we parked in a lot and walked a block or so to this place.

The service to get seated was very quick. We went around 4pm on a Friday after July 4th so there was hardly anyone in the restaurant when we went in. Drinks did not take long to be delivered. No one ordered alcohol. I did notice on the big drink menu that certain alcohol is served upstairs and certain alcohols is served downstairs. We sat downstairs. I do like that they do growlers here. That is very cool. The service to get our food was a bit slow considering the restaurant was not that busy. It took a while to get our check. We think our waitress also had tables upstairs but we weren’t sure.

The soup for Friday was a lobster bisque. We ordered that and it came with a small loaf. It was soft and tastes kind of like a garlic bread to me but he said it was kind of plain bread taste to him but it was definitely seasoned with something. The bisque was a little thicker than most bisque's but still good flavor. A 7 out of 10 for the bisque.

I ordered the beef ribs and they were tender and fall off the bone. Half a rack was huge. Definitely not pork ribs though and those are my favorite but I wanted to try something different. I got the sweet and tangy sauce on the side because sometimes sauces are a bit too peppery to me. I did like it but getting too much on the ribs was too peppery tasting to me. The ribs were good for beef ribs but since I prefer pork ribs any day of the week over beef you may not want to take my advice if you love beef over pork. I got fries with my ribs and they were just typical fries. Not steak fries but they were shoestring fries. I asked for bacon and cheese to be added to them and they cheese was melted and the bacon was tasty but the fries/bacon/cheese combo was nothing special or to have again.

One of us ordered the wings. The hot wings were more of a hot rub than a hot sauce. Good flavor on them though. Blue cheese dressing to go with them was about average from all the places we have been to that had blue cheese.

Margarita flat bread was ordered by our table and it was not very good. The crust did not have much of a flavor and the tomatoes were too big. The toppings kind of slid around so it was hard to get an even distribution.

3 TV's downstairs sports on each one. ESPN sports center was on one of them and two were on golf.

The atmosphere in the restaurant was good. The music is upbeat. Not really sure what kind of music was playing. Maybe light jazz. The air felt good but not too cold during the summertime. Just right.

We wouldn’t order any of this food anymore. We wouldn’t go back to this place. We would try another local...

Local, who's always enjoyed the brunch and would've recommended it to anyone previously based on my last experiences around 2019/20.

It's unlikely I'll return after my brunch this morning. Food quality has diminished significantly as has portion size and wait service (our server may not be representative of the rest of the staff).

My memories of delicious hashbrowns were replaced with something pitiful in size and display. One of our three hashbrown servings was literally half the plate and all smooshed flat in attempt to cover surface area. Soggy and disappointing.

The memory of thick cut, respectable servings of French toast are now three laughable slices of baguette. My 8 year old son finished his in less than 60seconds and will be having something at home to fill him up.

The bloody mary's are now just spicy tomato juice, the mimosas leave something to be desired and somehow I left the restaurant with less of a buzz than I arrived with. If you do happen to end up here for breakfast or brunch (which I no longer recommend) and do the all inclusive, I'd recommend a drink on tap.

To top it off our waiter somehow forgot pretty much every request we made (basically only the drink refills) every time he rarely appeared at our table. It then took another 10minutes for drinks to appear. Menu's we're never taken, empty drinks never removed, no offers or suggestions of sauces or condiments from him either. We quickly got to the point of just finishing out our meal and drinks we'd paid for and leaving as quickly as we were able.

To give credit where credit is due; the wings my other son ordered were large, meaty and very good in his opinion, although the sauce requested on the side was completely forgotten.

I'm disappointed to announce that the Capital Ale House brunch, which had been a staple of quality, value and service is no longer that. Brunch elsewhere unless you're willing to spend to be underwhelmed.

It's highly unlikely I'll return for brunch or breakfast again, but perhaps Capital Ale House will take note and work to return to their previous standard.

Two stars because I believe other areas of their menu MAY still be reputable, I cannot however provide...

We had the same experience as someone from 7 years ago! It seems to the company culture has the problem. We went in on a Sunday afternoon between lunch and dinner, plenty of tables empty, yet a line was formed with 5-7 groups waiting. It looked like almost every worker was huddled around a seating diagram taking gobs of time figuring out where to put us. Then a guy in the back of the group just kept repeating to put them on the waiting list - it was very chaotic and frustrating, especially with so many empty tables right in front of us.

So rather than getting put on the waiting list we chose to sit in the bar. Big mistake! No greeting from bartender, only to have menus tossed at us while he went whizzing by. Ans it really wasn't THAT busy and that time. Took the order finally, but not in a friendly way, no eye contact, but very quiet, as if we were bothering him. Food arrives, again not friendly. I found the food Meh, I've had better. The bartender never checked back for anything despite constantly walking by us - never even looked at us. We had to call out to him while whizzing by that we needed a drink refill. His reply? Get this...he barked at my wife 'I'll get to it when I have a chance!'. Not what we expected, no nice customer friendly response, and certainly no apology. We beaconed him again for the check - again no friendly 'thanks for coming', just tossed it down while dashing by. Oh, and the QR Code on the paper isn't to pay online, it's to Review online, hahaha. I declined and decided Google would speak louder about our terrible experience.

We're new to the area, looking for good places to give our money to and support, but only for good service and a quality experience. Scratch this one from the list.

We were wondering who is training these people to be so rude? Do they even get training? Doesn't seem so. We'll keep looking and move on. Very frustrating and did not feel...