Top Dawg Tavern - Jacksonville (Bartram Park) — Restaurant in Jacksonville

I’ve been here over a dozen times and have tried many items on the menu and will give a high level summary. Bartenders are extremely friendly. Sam and Michelle are always chipper, and all the rest of the bartenders (GiGi, Cheyenne, I think his name is Dave) are top notch. The servers are shy and young, and could use some training on being more situationally aware of their tables. On my most recent visit I sat at the bar and my food was delivered by a server with no silverware and the bartender was solo and jammed at the other end. One of the young hostesses, I believe her name was Ashlyn, could sense I was waiting on something and came over asked me if I needed anything and she brought me silverware.

The food: What’s great Burgers and wings are absolutely fantastic and better than any burger or wing joint around. The burgers are tasty, perfect in size and texture and the wings are large and crispy -cooked perfectly! Fries and onion rings are both perfect cooked and not too greasy. The salads are surprisingly fresh and delicious, I’ve tried them all and have been pleasantly surprised with how crisp and green the lettuce is (even on the Caesar salad. The filet bites are delicious, served over mashed potatoes they are a crowd pleaser as everyone whom I’ve seen order it is pleased.

What needs work The big pretzel is great, but every time I’ve order it the dipping cheese is cold and beginning to harden. And it’s served with sweet mustard with no choice of spicy ground mustard. You can’t serve a big pretzel without spicy ground mustard. I wanted to love the shaved ribeye sandwich, but it was simply lacking meat. It was a very skimpy serving, and I tasted more bread than meat. The Coney Island hot dogs - improve your bun game. I’d also look into serving Italian hot dogs.

What’s bad All the seafood. The fish and chips, the flounder and shrimp, the lemon pepper shrimp, all of it was disappointing. It tasted like the frozen Gordon’s fish sticks you buy in the freezer section of Publix. My high school cafeteria made better fish and chips, and I hated their fish and chips. Jacksonville is a seafood town, we know and love our seafood. I’m not expecting the fish and chips to compete with the fish camps, but I do expect it to be on the same level as the other bars in the immediate area (Fionn MacCools, The King’s Head Pub, Ford’s Garage, just to name a few). If you want to serve fish and chips, you need to step up your seafood game. The same applies for the shrimp. Frozen breaded shrimp, small in size compared to our local Mayport Shrimp. And the Lemon Pepper seasoning tasted like it was 90% salt; it completely ruined the meal. Finally, the flounder filets. I’m pretty sure these did come from my HS cafeteria. I’ve written on sheets of paper that are thicker. I would strongly encourage whoever is in charge of food to try the fish and chips at Fionn MacCools one day, and then be honest with yourself about what you’re serving.

Beer selection: The overall selection is good, but the draft choices are predominantly pale ales. I’d like to see more variety, maybe a red ale and an orange amber from Ancient City or one of the other local breweries. I’d also like to see the craft draft pitchers be more affordable.

TVs: Do something about that trivia tv - you can’t play on your phone because TDT isn’t recognized when you log in, so just scrap it and offer more sports in its place.

Dogs I love the fact that this place is dog friendly!

Overall I’m giving this place 5/5. It’s a sports bar, afterall, and as such it excels at bar food. Where my service has been slightly off and should’ve hurt the score, the hostess and her situational awareness more than made up for it. Best burgers around, best wings around, and a decent beer selection make this place the perfect family (there’s an incredible interactive VR type play area for kids)...

I had really high hopes for this place when I saw it going in, but after 2 visits I’m afraid it was a massive disappointment. Not everything was bad, so I’ll start with what I thought were the positives.

The staff in our experience is very friendly. Although the seating is a little weird, it does provide a decent ambiance. The big divider wall is a little off-putting though. The outdoor seating is a great little spot and the addition of live music was such a necessity in this little area.

Now to what I deem the negatives. The first visit was shortly after opening, so we chalked up everything to that, but it was not good. We walked in and the lady at the table next to us was pointing out everything that was wrong with her meal. Our meal had the same problems. My fiancé ordered the salad and it was obvious it had been pre-made WELL before it came out (limp soggy lettuce and no flavor from any of the ingredients). My burger was fine, but again, it was clearly pre-packaged and not fresh. Also, the drink service was so slow, that as soon as I would receive one drink, I would order the next drink, and it would arrive as I was almost finished with the last one. After a month and a half, we went back, hoping that things would have improved, but they hadn’t. At all. As before the drink service was extremely slow. There seemed to be a lot of employees just standing around, so it didn’t make sense for service to be so slow. My fiancé and I had the wings. She ordered mild and I ordered hot, but they tasted completely identical (like someone assumed we wouldn’t notice). They were also simply swimming in a literal pool of sauce. Now, prior to ordering the wings, my fiancé asked if the fried flounder sandwich could be grilled (there are no healthy menu items) and the server said no, because they are “pre-breaded”. That was off-putting to say the least. Lastly, our friend ordered the steak bites and they were tough and over cooked. It does not appear as though anything in the kitchen is made fresh.

Long story short, this place is a worse Applebees with much...

The food and atmosphere were fine. The server was attentive. Unfortunately the hostess was horrific. I have never encountered a bad hostess in my life until tonight. She asked us how many and was going to sit us inside, I requested to sit outside. She was clearly bothered. She stared at the seating chart for a long minute before begrudgingly taking us outside. The table had the prior patrons plates on it which she threw on another table. She flung the chairs back and loudly dragged another dirty table over to accommodate our party of 5. Dropped the menus on the dirty table and rushed off with the extra chairs sitting haphazardly in the walkways. Clearly she hates her job. When the pleasant server came around I asked her if someone could please clean the table as the hostess sat us at a dirty table. Unfortunately the rude hostess shows back up to our table… with an empty squirt bottle and a dirty rag. She sprays what little is left in the bottle directly at us sitting at the table… we stood up to get out of the way. She barely gets a corner of the table wet and wipes about 1/3 of the tables off and walks away without saying a word. The neighboring tables even notice what an awful job she did… from sitting us to “cleaning” the table. Honestly it took more effort to do such an awful job than to just do it the proper way the first time. I was appalled. but didn’t want to ruin our evening so I bit my tongue. I was hoping to see a manager to inform them of their awful employee but didn’t. I continued to watch her move the dirty plates from table, to bar, just leaving them stacked up instead of taking them to the kitchen. She didn’t clean a single table after clearing dishes before sitting people. She needs to quit or be fired, wrong profession. She couldn’t look me in the eye when we left, I hope she learns to control her emotions and gets a...