Pub 55 — Restaurant in Kaukauna

DO NOT GO HERE!!!! Despite seeing the terrible reviews online, my friends and I decided to go here tonight due to it being about halfway between our houses. We went to dinner about 6pm on a Saturday and there were barely any cars in the parking lot (should have been a warning sign). Inside, there were barely any people and the waitresses were not very friendly. I had decided what I wanted to eat already by looking at the menu online prior to coming; however, when I looked at the menu inside of the restaurant, there were numerous things blacked out with a marker. My friends and I all decided to order the loaded potato skins, and after ordering it, about 10 minutes later, the waitress came back and said they didn’t have any. My friends ordered something else and I ordered a buffalo chicken wrap with fries. I asked multiple times for no tortilla and no onions (so just put on the plate like a salad). Before our food came, I had asked for a water which tasted horrible. After a while, my friends’ meals finally came, but mine didn’t. After about 20 minutes, and reminding the waitress my food hadn’t come, my friends had finished their food and were done eating. Finally my wrap came: however, there was no ranch or buffalo sauce with it, it was covered in little chopped up onions (which I cannot eat) and I received no side of fries. I also had a large cup of a random sauce on the side which the waitress didn’t know what it was for but said the cook added it to it. I asked where the actual sauces were and she said they were at the bottom of the salad (however they were not). There were a few pieces of chicken on it but not much. When I explained that I couldn’t eat onions, the waitress did ask me if I wanted a new one; however, I had waited so long, my friends had already finished eating their food and I still hadn’t eaten. I said I would just pick around the onions and asked for my fries. The waitress brought out my fries pretty quickly however they were disgusting. They were so bland, fulllll of oil, soggy, and not warm at all. The waitress said she would take the wrap off my check because it was brought out after everyone else finished eating (not to mention the order being wrong). I started to eat a few pieces of the wrap/salad and did confirm there was no sauces except the chicken pieces being randomly dipped it some sort of sauce? It was so weird. Thankfully I was picking at the food to get around the onions because after only a few bites, I discovered a huge!!!!! moth inside of my salad with its thorax and abdomen violently shaking. It was absolutely disgusting and I wanted to puke. I flagged down the waitress who rudely told me she’d get to me. I waited about 5 minutes and she finally came to our table and I told her about the huge moth. She asked me if I wanted it remade and I told her no as I was absolutely disgusted and all she replied was “well I already removed it from your check” and she walked away. No apology. A while later she came over to our table and gave my friend, not me, 3 tokens for a free drink. My friend gave me one which I then gave back to her as I had only ordered water. Nothing else was done for me. This place is absolutely awful and I would NEVER recommend this place to anyone. Based on the reviews and my experience there confirming what a terrible place it was, I cannot believe this place continues to remain open. The only!!! reason has to be because it’s one of the few restaurants in the area. Please save your money and the risk of eating bugs and drive a few minutes more to go...

I'm not sure what happened to the quality of the food here since we last ordered it in January, but unfortunately this might be the last time we order from them unless something changes.

Let me caveat that this was a delivery order, so I'm adding one extra star to account for the general loss of quality from a far away delivery vs eating in the restaurant and getting the same quality food. And I should back up a bit. Back in January, 2023 and earlier, formerly Calmes' Pub was one of our favorite places in town. The broccoli chicken alfredo was a hit in our household (in fact, we ordered 3 meals of it once for leftovers for ourselves and our kids. We all loved it!) And the other stuff we had gotten in previous orders was really good, too. Excellent appetizers and whatnot.

Fast forward to today, and it was either a bad experience for us or, according to other reviews we have read after our experience, possibly par for the course lately. To be fair, the food wasn't "bad", it was just kind of ok. We got the broasted chicken, and it looked really good! It was still warm when it got to us, and I was excited to dig in. But, the coleslaw and the dinner roll were both missing. Also (and this is not a slight on the restaurant), we were only able to select a single side through Doordash when it was supposed to be 2 sides. So, we only got the garlic mashed potatoes with it instead of that plus maybe some mixed vegetables, which would have been nice.

Taking that first bite of the chicken, though, felt like I was eating Christmas dinner at the Griswald's. (For those that don't get that reference, the chicken was crispy and looked really tasty, but it had no flavor as if it wasn't well seasoned, and it was so very dry.) I had to eat the chicken with scoops of garlic mashed potatoes to have it be palletable.

Thankfully, the garlic mashed potatoes were pretty good. They weren't fantastic, because it felt like they were instant potatoes, but I am not certain of that, so I'm not taking points off there. It was one of the best parts of the meal, though.

We also got some garlic and dill cheese curds. These were well seasoned and tasty. We had to warm them back up, of course, but that's ok. I can tell these would be even better if they were fresh.

To finish things off, my wife and I split a lava cake. This was a fine experience. The cake was good, the ice cream that came with it was good. It was odd that the cake came cold and the ice cream was packaged with the cake, but again it's delivery and what are you gonna do. At the restaurant I'm sure it'd be tastier, at least.

Our kids got the broccoli chicken alfredo and it was pretty tasty! Though, instead of cavatapi pasta, it was fettacini noodles, and the portions were far less than it used to be. The garlic bread that it came with was really good, though. It just wasn't the same as it used to be.

So, compared to what the restaurant used to be, this was a disappointing experience. Definitely not worth the cost, at least to get it delivered. I would be willing to try the food in person, however, to see if tonight was just a fluke. And, remember, I would have given it 2 stars had this been the food experience while at the restaurant. So, I'll have to stick with 3 stars until I get a chance to try it in person. I just hope tonight was weird because it was Saturday dinner time and someone was having...

We went on Father’s Day and it was an extremely disappointing experience. I’ll start this by saying, for as big as the place is, it was almost dead. We were a party of 8 which included 3 little kids. When we ordered our drinks, we ordered a pretzel as an appetizer to hold the kids over. Half an hour later we didn’t have it yet, so we asked. The waitress “went to check”, came back and said it would be a few more minutes, and then a couple minutes later said she was just informed they had run out. Sounded more like she forgot to ever put the order in and then when she finally did, that’s when she was informed they didn’t have any. We also noticed that a lot of menu items were crossed off. My husband tried to order a 12” pizza and was told they were out of that size crust, so they could only do a 10” or a 16”. My sons ordered a 2 piece broasted chicken plate and a hot dog platter and both wanted the garlic mashed potatoes. Turns out, they were out of those too, and rather than asking what they would want instead, just automatically gave them fries, which my husband said tasted like they were fried in old oil. We also realized when the bill came that the 2 piece chicken with two sides and a slice of bread cost less than a hotdog with one side, which seems completely backwards. It also took us forever to get our food. All of this to say, we will not be returning or recommending this...