Lock & Dam Eatery — Restaurant in Hastings

Menu of Confusion

I must have dreamed a thousand dreams about food over my years and been haunted by some of the things we've come across. Okay, maybe not haunted, but we've definitely seen the good, the bad and the ugly throughout our dining experiences. We've also come across some of the most "unique" menu's that have been created for patrons to browse through and we've come across another with our most recent visit to a place that hasn't been open too long.

That new place that had me rockin' out to Genesis is called Lock and Dam Eatery and yes, the menu is very unique. They have a really great location in the heart of historic downtown Hastings right on the river, with an outdoor patio to boost. The inside is very sleek, modern and just the right size for this small community. From our understanding and talking to some locals, it's the same ownership as some of the previous tenants, but with some re-branding taking place.

That re-branding however, may not be the best? After sitting down and grabbing some cold beverages, my wife and started to look over the menu, a very unique menu. Hungry for a burger or wrap? Maybe you're in the mood for some Mexican? How about some Italian? Well, the Lock and Dam offers all of that and not just a plate or two, but a full page of options for each area of interest. And, for our first visit, what do we try? Well, we decided to test the Mexican menu...

We started with some chips and salsa and placed our order. My wife went with the Super Burrito, I went for the Street Tacos and our little guy wanted the Chicken Tenders. As we thoroughly enjoyed the house made chips and salsa (which we would recommend if you decide to stop in), we enjoyed the half decent scenery out on the patio and waited for our meals to arrive.

As are meals arrived, my eyes got large when this enormous burrito shows up. They have a burrito challenge and I would hate to see how big it is compared to what arrived at our table! Any who... The Super Burrito is a 14" tortilla filled with your choice of meat (beef, chicken or carnitas), rice, beans, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes sour cream and topped with your choice of sauce and melted cheese. My wife went with the carnitas and I think she got through about a quarter of it... maybe. My Street Tacos were 4, mini corn tortillas, filled with either carnitas or carne asada, onions and cilantro.

Not quite sure what the meat is marinated in, but it wasn't the best combination of flavors. It was a little sweet, something more in line with the start of a BBQ sandwich and was rather dry as well. I would have rather had an Americanized burrito from Chipotle and the tacos wouldn't be added to my list of places to grab some authentic tacos.

I've heard from locals that we should go back for the Italian and could pass on the burgers as well. I personally wouldn't return for the Mexican and we have some favorite locations for Italian already and I'm going to guess the Lock and Dam Italian cuisine isn't even close to our favorites. With that said, it looks as though we won't be returning anytime soon. Definitely some room for improvement and hopefully some are made so this small community continues to have options to pick...

This was a review that I never expected to make. We’ve come here for years and always been happy. Aside from it being a little slow at times, it was always great. Tonight, I was dining with my parents on the patio. We had our favorite server. Things were obviously badly managed tonight because everything was disorganized and every server would disappear at the same time for a long while. My mom had asked if she could order just two tacos with no sides and was told that was no problem. My dad ordered the chips and salsa. I ordered one of the specials. My meal came with no issue, aside from the side being cold, but I didn’t care. My mom’s two tacos came on two separate plates and she moved them both to one and had the girl who brought the food take away the extra plate. My dad’s chips and salsa didn’t come out at the same time, but we expected it to come soon. It did not. We waited and waited and waited. All of the staff had disappeared. My dad finally went to try and find someone and asked a teen who was bringing food out if he could tell someone that his food hadn’t been delivered. The girl who delivered our food appeared and asked if we still wanted it. We said yes and pointed out that it was my dad’s meal. She said she was sorry and that she had thought that one of the tacos was his, despite her seeing my mom move them both to one plate and comment that she expected them to come together on one. As she walked off to get it, my dad commented that he expected it to be taken off the bill because of the very long wait. When she came back, she said they would take off only half of the item. It turned out that she’s the daughter of the owners. She then proceeded to talk to us in an extremely rude manner and tried to blame the whole mistake on the teen who was bringing out food and implied that we were mean by criticizing the service. We never criticized him. She delivered our food and tried to throw him under the bus.

I hadn’t finished writing my review, but I already have an update. We talked to our server, Michael. He’s great, btw. He said she’s really young and inexperienced and got really flustered. I can appreciate that she wanted to defend her parents’ business, but we weren’t criticizing the business, just the mistake and how badly she handled it. It was a cheap menu item and it was a very long wait. My dad is almost 83 and he’s diabetic. He can’t wait a long time to eat. He made a small and reasonable request for such a big mistake. It didn’t warrant such an emotional and rude response. Because of her young age, the fact that everything was slow and disorganized only because the cook is getting a lot of orders wrong and making life hard for the servers, plus the fact that we’ve always had great experiences before has me adding back a star to the rating I originally intended to give. This visit seemed to be an anomaly. Michael is the only reason I’m not rating this a...

We were excited to try this place out. We’d heard they were on triple D and were amped to try some great Mexican food. We got there about 6:45 or so and it says they close at 8. We ordered some apps to start some chips and cheese and a steak quesadilla. For our entrees the Mexican lasagna and steak fajitas. After we ordered apps a different server came up to us and said they don’t have any steak left for the night.

So we opted on having the quesadilla with chicken. And he ordered the chicken chimichanga instead.

A server came by again and thanked us for our patience and dropped off apps. I asked for a side of guacamole and he said for sure!

Then he came back five minutes later and said they are out of guacamole. He said he knew they were out earlier but assumed they would have made more by now. Still we were patient but starting to get a little frustrated. And the quesadilla really needed that guac for some freshness.

Then our main server came over again and told us they are out of the salsa chicken that is needed for both our entrees.

So after some figuring out we decided to change his entree to a chimichanga with ground beef, and she said they can grill a chicken breast for my Mexican lasagna and it’ll be the same. We were good with this but a little confused why this keeps happening after we order.

So finally we get our entrees and the Mexican lasagna was made with ground beef and the chimichanga was made with chicken.

The Mexican lasagna was also very cold inside and the chimichanga had very little chicken inside.

So at that point we did ask for a manager it was too much. No steak, no salsa chicken, No gauc, entrees had mixed up proteins and were cold and lackluster.

That’s where things went very wrong. We just wanted to address our concerns, get our money back and go eat somewhere else. We wanted to maybe come back on a less busy weekend and give them a second chance.

But the manager who later who found out was the owner, was very rude, very argumentative and just made us feel in the wrong for being unhappy. When she walked away my husband looked at me and said “we’re never coming back here” and she over heard him and came back to the table and said “that’s fine never come back.”

It was honestly the worst experience I’ve ever had. Just awful...