Walldorff Brew Pub & Bistro — Restaurant in Hastings

I keep wanting to love this place. I'd much rather eat in the local stops than at a chain restaurant... and their beers are consistently awesome, but their service is sub-par and the chefs just can't seem to get it right. Out last four trips to Waldorff have each had their share of problems (from poor service to bad food).

Tonight pushed me over the edge. The restaurant was extremely busy due to the Hastings Jazz festival, yet we agreed to the 35 minute wait for a table. On any other weekend we would have left. But I digress. After about 25 minutes we got seated at a table... but that was where our positive experience ended.

Being that my wife and I had our five year old with us and we saw how busy they were we decided for a simple appetizer to help quell her hunger. Almost a full hour after we sat down we received our chips and salsa! And within another 10 minutes our meal arrived. Obviously the waitress forgot to place the appetizer order for us. When the meal arrived everything looked decent, but halfway through my hamburger I saw raw meat in the center of the patty. I even ordered medium as I like medium rare (a little pink) and I have learned over the years that they always under-cook their burgers - except for bison, that's always way overcooked (so much so that I won't order it any longer), but that's also another story.

I immediately stopped eating, warned my wife about my undercooked food and began checking my daughter's chicken for any signs of pink meat. Thankfully her chicken fingers were fine.

After a few minutes, I was able to flag our waitress down and raise my concern. She said "someone would come around to talk to us" about the problem and then she immediately left. No offer to go cook the burger to completion, no offer to replace it with a new one, nothing. Just the advice that "someone" would come talk to us. Turns out that that someone was her. Obviously her boss said we'll take care of them when the bill arrives and sent her back to our table. Now I will admit that she did ask at this point if I wanted another burger. But after waiting a hour and a half for this first one to be delivered raw, I politely declined.

As compensation for our two hour dining experience? I got a free beer (full price on that raw hamburger BTW)... and the possibility of food poisoning. Seems like a fair trade, right?

As much as it pains me, we'll head to...

Visited Walldorff for the fourth time tonight and each time I’ve had a great experience. The food has always been good and the beers are usually pretty impressive. Tonight, our waiter mentioned that their Pub Burger was on special for $5 so two of us ordered that, and the third person ordered another burger off the menu. We played Uno at the table in clothes that we were wearing in order to hike in the snow with our dogs, and we felt perfectly comfortable and acceptable for the atmosphere even though I could also see coming down here slightly dressed up for a date night too. The burgers arrived in just the right amount of time, all three of us commented on how perfectly cooked they were, and on top of that, their take on a beer cheese soup was also great to share. The only complaint was that we thought the burgers could have come standard with tomato and onion, but when one of us requested a slice of tomato, it was absolutely no problem to get one. Our waiter also mentioned that they do a couple of other specials that sound awesome during the week, like a prime rib special on Wednesday’s (I think), and a $10 pizza special on Sundays that we will definitely be back for. Being from Grand Rapids, we don’t make it down to Walldorff all that often, but any time we are in the Hastings area we will go out of our way to come here. Great food, great beer, awesome atmosphere in a really cool old building, great service, and all of that in one of the cutest little towns...

Used to be good but not now. It's been a couple of years since we've been there because it's a 45 minute drive away. Stopped in recently and ordered the Reuben sandwich with garlic fries. In the past the Reuben was great. This time it had cubes of corned beef not sliced, which wasn't enjoyable because some bites had a lot beef in it and some bites were just bread and sauerkraut. Why can't you slice the meat? The garlic fries were a disgrace! For a $2 upgrade fee they simply sprinkled garlic powder on their regular frozen fries. When our server put down my plate, I thought these don't look like garlic fries and after tasting them, I thought they were regular fries so I mentioned it to our server. She said she would bring me more garlic, I said no, but she came back anyway with a small plastic cup of garlic powder. Are you kidding me?? If I am paying an upcharge, I expect more than garlic powder that cost you 2 cents. I've had amazing garlic fries elsewhere that were hand cut fries tossed with garlic oil, minced garlic and freshly grated parmesan cheese. These were very disappointing and I can make better fries at home! They also now add a 3% fee if you pay with a credit card but it's not mentioned until you...