Famous Dave's Bar-B-Que — Restaurant in La Crosse

It pains me to write a bad review of Dave's, they've been one of my favorite places for 25 years, in four different states. But ever since the pandemic, the La Crosse restaurant has had a steady decline in food quality.

First, favorite menu items disappeared. Then, I noticed a huge difference in the quality of the ribs: no more crispy crust on their fall-off-the-bone meat. The texture is more like a boiled rib that's finished on the grill, with none of that rendered flavor. The last few times I've had wings they were sawdust dry, with barely any sauce on them, so I've had to start asking for extra bleu cheese. Well, tonight, the bleu cheese was the consistency of milk. It was so thin, it wouldn't stay on the wings or celery, and had no flavor to it. Famous Dave's bleu cheese has always been far and away better than any other bleu cheese served at any other restaurant, and now it's just chunky milk.

We've had the same server at this store for 15 years, she's wonderful! So it kills me to think about not eating there anymore, but I just can't keep spending money on mediocre food. I get that sometimes cost cutting efforts have to be made to be more profitable, but sometimes cutting the wrong corners just...

The food is always decent. The style of service they have right now is downright terrible. You walk in, and you have to order before you are seated, so you are rushed and don't feel comfortable right off the bat. After, they tell you to go pick a seat. Sure that's fine, so you can pick where you feel most comfortable, but, you don't get a waitress, you get everyone. Which is chaos. As we waited for our drinks, I noticed a light above us was flickering, so my husband and I switched seats to see if that would help. It didn't. The waiter brought our drinks, and had to ask if we were also waiting for a beer, which we were, so we waited for that as well. Meanwhile I was upset about being rushed to order, and wanted an appetizer, but by the next time someone came to check on us, they brought us our food. Then I asked that waiter if she could please do something about that light, as it was beginning to give me a headache. She said she would tell the manager, and we watched him try to dim the lights and that was as much as he ever did about it, never even came to the table.

Overall, we were just trying to celebrate valentines day, and it turned into a disaster. We won't be dining...

First time at this location this year. We had a less than enjoyable time the last time we ate there. Cold food that time, I must say, the food was hot this time. We decided to give Dave's another try. Though I was not aware that the cooks deep fat fry the hamburgers. The bottom bun of both hamburgers were soaked in grease. We have always had good burgers at Dave's, we steer away from the chicken as it is usually cold. The place was empty pretty much, only 1:20 pm? Server was nice, french fries good. Suggest the cook dry off the burger on a paper towel before serving them. This time was Dave's last chance, now on the list of not going back. Also hint, Atmosphere would of been 5 stars but took a star for every fly bussing our food as we ate...indoors. Service gets 4 stars and for the 40.00 hamburgers.. even the dog we have didn't want the burger... By the way, we noticed the buns are now half the size they used to be..... to make the burger...