Prohibition Gastro Lounge — Restaurant in Liberty Township

I hate to write a poor review for an establishment but I had the worst experience I have had in years here on December 29th 2023. My friend and I had an evening without our kids so decided to go out for dinner and drinks. We preferred to sit at the bar instead of a table. The front bar was full but the kind hostess recommended we go back to the secondary bar they have in the back, not attached to the main building as there would be seating available there.

Up until then it was completely fine. The back area only had 2 other patrons at the bar and the hostess told us to find a seat and our waitress/bartender would help us from there. We took 2 seats at the bar and within about 30 seconds were being yelled at that those seats were "reserved." The bar was small and there was no reserved signage so my friend and I were a bit confused. The person who yelled was the bartender who had just entered the building. She then proceeded to tell us half the bar was reserved, that forced us right next to the other 2 patrons at the bar. Found that to be rude and definitely poor customer service but if that was all that had happened I would not be writing this review.

I wanted to leave, as I did not feel like staying for dinner, my friend recommended we at least get a drink then go elsewhere for dinner. We asked for a menu and the lady pointed to where we could look the menu up with a qr code. She did not speak with us and was texting the entire time we were there. She finaly took our order (begrudgingly it seems) sloshed my glass of wine over the edge in the haste of getting it to me. We asked for our check immediately, she handed it to us and left the building.

We paid and walked out. The "reserved/not reserved" seats were never taken as the party had not showed up.

We finished our drinks, the bartender never showed back up.

We left and saw the bartender standing in street parking spot along perhaps holding it for her friends or whomever she had "reserved" half the bar for.

This was at 6pm. We went and had dinner elsewhere.

I will...

I’ll start with the good: Food was delicious. Hard to believe the flatbreads are gluten free, and everything else we ate was also tasty. Live music is typically fun, especially paired with a patio on a nice night.

The bad: We were going to get drinks at the bar inside during our wait to be seated, but the inside was stifling and smelly. It would seem they don’t have any AC nor even fans for airflow, and after 5 minutes without so much as a glance from the bartender, we went elsewhere entirely for drinks. After being seated, it took over ten minutes for our server to greet us and bring us water. That water was never refilled, despite being gone within a couple minutes. They were out of the scotch of my preference, but the bartender suggested an alternative via our server that was supposedly similar. Turns out it was almost double the cost, and also nowhere remotely close in style or taste to my first choice. Deeply disappointing. I also ordered a soft drink, which was never refilled. While the live music was decent, it was also deafening. My wife and I had to shout to hear each other, and there’s a lingering ringing in my ears as a result. I checked the levels, and from our table 20’ away from the speaker, it was consistently hitting 105dB, which can cause permanent hearing damage in under 5 minutes of continuous exposure. I asked our server if it could be turned down and she asked the owners, who apparently declined to ask the musician to turn it down. The furniture is unbelievably cheap. Most of the chairs were falling apart, and the tables were poorly built with junk 2x4s and 4x4s and sloppy paint jobs. Almost everything is 20-30% more expensive than it should be for the quality. The food is good, but not mind-blowingly so, and nothing else about the “atmosphere” of it or the painfully slow and inattentive service could possibly justify the premium prices.

Suffice it to say, despite our enjoyment of the food, we will not be back. Your time and money are much better...

Went out for my husband's birthday and he wanted to try this place. We decided to sit at the bar. The bartender sat down a couple waters and asked if we knew what we wanted to drink. I said I was ready and my husband asked to see a bar menu, so she instructed us to use the QR code and walked away. I told myself she must have assumed I was going to wait in him to order my drink? The QR code took several tries since it's on a shiny metal coaster. There's a nice variety of bourbon on the shelves, beyond the menu they show online. We took a few minutes and reviewed the food and drink menu and then waited, and waited. She never came back to us for our order. After over 20 minutes with no contact, we asked the host if we could switch to a table, but there was now a wait. My husband and I are pretty patient people. We both came from the restaurant industry where we've both been servers and he was also a bartender. We understand the demand and considering there appeared to be 1 bartender on a Saturday night, and everyone is having staffing issues, we stayed there and politely waited longer. However, when 2 people, who I assume by the greeting were regulars, sat down toward the tail end of our 20 minutes of no contact and got their drinks ordered and fulfilled, and are literally sitting right next to us, it's hard to brush it off as she's just busy. I get that regulars are important and you want to take care of them, but does that mean other customers get lesser or no service? Don't get me wrong, the bartender was non-stop making drinks, which is why we excused it for so long, but that's part of the demand. You still have to engage all your customers. So we got up and left. Went to McClellan's Pub on Sawmill. There were a couple guys working a large bar about 3× the size and a pub full of tables. Had great service and thankfully redeemed date night with my husband for...