Columbia Tavern — Restaurant in Leominster

I'm giving a 3 star, but I could easily rate 1 or 2 stars, but the food and ambiance are the saving grace. After numerous recommendations and always driving by and seeing a packed place , I've always wanted to try this place. Now dining on Mother's Day, I thought it was crazy of me, but the special menu looked tempting, and even if the place is loud and packed , I'm ok with that. Packed and buzzing it was , the noise level I found ok - it's a pub/ tavern, so very much expected. For Mother's Day, they had 3 seatings, and I did 12:30, along with many others, obviously because thats a common brunch hour. All seats inside were taken plus outside already had a buzz , check in and getting to seats for all 12:30 reservations went smoothly, patrons looking happy,nice music , etc until 30 minutes we realize no food service for anyone. Literally no food on anyone's table until an hour after placing orders. Ours took 1 hour & 10 mins. We were of the 2 tops there, and the other tables were 4 and more. To makes matters worse, food coming out to all tables , and tables weren't set up with silverware, this is when I confirmed there was at least 2 more staff needed on the floor, plus the floor manager, and kitchen is ridiculously slammed. I questioned how this could be. This is a reservation system for the most part. During my painful wait like everyone else's - seeing everyone looking annoyed , impatient, to say the least - babies crying , this place was now deemed greedy, in my opinion. I felt safe saying this because during my wait I decided to look up reviews and as far back as 2 years ago to more recent 2 months ago, this seems to be there problem- long wait time for food. The response from the restaurant was so dumb and confirmed that the operation is a result of greed" they have a small kitchen." For crying out loud, don't over book your restaurant because your kitchen size won't change. This is a recipe for disaster and horrible service, which I see they are used to, so apologies didn't happen, though servers seemed very calm and pleasant. They are obviously trained for this mess. Fix it, Columbia Tavern. Yes, your food is great, excellent menu choices, very broad menu , nice ambiance, great staff too but operating like this isn't cool. No matter how busy a restaurant gets, waiting an hour and more for food is unacceptable!!! Would I go back? Won't say no, but definitely not a holiday or any day that it looks busy..hmmmm The chefs will make a huge mistake one day, when it's super busy like this. Don't let greed ruin your business - it can happen. Want...

I’d like to preface this review with the fact that this was my second time visiting Columbia Tavern, and the first time was outstanding. Tonight 8/14/2018 my boyfriend and I visited Columbia tavern for dinner and trivia at 6:30pm. Our waitress greated us by apologizing saying that she couldn’t find any menus (WHAT?) and shortly later a different employee brought us some from the back. I ordered the Mini Captains Platter (a mixture of fried seafood, onion rings and fries) and when the food arrived, the portion was generous. Unfortunately the food came without tartar sauce (who serves fried seafood without tartar sauce??). I flagged down our waitress which took easily 5 minutes and asked for some to which she replied “sorry but it’s going to take a while. It’s downstairs”. I complied, because what other option did I have? My meal was stone cold by the time she returned over 10 minutes later. What really irritated me is that in this time I watched her taking her time to get and give the trivia DJ a free beer (he can wait! I’m a paying customer!) I then asked for a to-go box, determined to microwave my food at home and make the best of it. She walked by my table several times (once to give another table to-go boxes!) ultimately my boyfriend had to flag her down and remind her, another 10 minutes. My boyfriend had completely finished eating his food by the time I started on my cold, sad seafood (now with tartar sauce!) We then made the second mistake of ordering chicken wings as a snack while we finished the 2 hour trivia round. The chicken wings took again, 30 minutes and came out as boneless when they were ordered as traditional bone-in wings. We didn’t have the heart to send them back because our poor waitress was venting that they were understaffed and she was overwhelmed, but literally everything that could have gone wrong with this meal went wrong. Ultimately the waitress was very apologetic so we didn’t complain, but I am VERY disappointed by this date...

I had heard good things about this place, so I decided to give it a go. This place has a good atmosphere, but its loud, customers included. This place has those tall barstool tables which is not good for this guy with short legs, so decided to move to a regular table.

The waitress who brought our drinks was really nice, she seemed glad to see us and to serve us, very friendly and made us feel welcome. We did have to wait a bit though, which was understandable, the place was crowded when we got in, around 1pm on Sunday.

When our second waitress showed up, she took our order, and was very efficient, and understood what we wanted, and she was doing okay. Then the appetizers came, and I had hoped to get my chowder with the appetizers, but that didn't happen. Not a huge deal, but you tend to want it before your main course, not during. The appetizers were fine, but not especially outstanding. We got some poutines, some hot cheese dip with tortillas.

My main course was the haddock filet sandwich on a bulky, and the filet was good, but the bulky kind of fell apart when I started to eat it, so I had to kind of eat it with a fork, that's a bit disappointing. Some fresher bulky rolls would help here. I finally got into my clam chowder, and thankfully it was still warm even though it had to wait until after my main course, which was strange. However, the chowder was extremely flavorful, like overly so. It was super salty, and the clams were very tough to chew.

For me, it was not a good experience, so hence why I only gave this place three stars. It has its good points, it is a tavern after all, but not good for someone who just wants to dine and is not interested in alcohol or sports on the television screens. I'm sure the added salt helps sell more drinks, but it's not what I would consider a pleasant thing. Perhaps next time they will improve, whenever that day comes. I don't imagine it will be too soon. There are...