Zeller's Bar & Grill — Restaurant in Lincoln City

August 2024: It was painful I had to give this less than 5 stars because this place has some of the best food I've had in Lincoln City. Which is especially impressive because eating good food is half the reason I come to Lincoln City. In fact, when I first found this place I was so impressed by the food I had to order another serving to go immediately after taking my first few bites. The first time I've ever done that.

That being said, when I tried to bring my friends back to show this place off to them, I couldn't believe how horrible the service was. It started with us not getting any waters and needing to wait about 10 minutes before anyone took our order. Which was odd because the place was maybe at 50% capacity tops.

A couple of my friends ordered drinks, one regular coke and one coke zero. When the waitress arrived, she said she forgot which drink was which and wanted us to have to figure it out instead of bringing us new drinks. Which was extremely weird because she had no idea if we were close enough to be testing each others drinks like that. The friend that got coke zero needed to have multiple people drink out of his cup because he had to make sure there was no sugar in his drink for health reasons. So he basically had to drink a cocktail of our backwash.

Next, when she was giving us our food, she gave one of my friends a cobb salad when he ordered a Caesar salad. He immediately told her it was the wrong order only to have her go "I know, please understand it was my mistake". Insinuating that she knew it was the wrong order and that he should just be expected to eat it anyways. He said that he would like the salad he actually ordered, so she takes the salad but assures him the dressing on the side is Caesar Salad dressing and that she doesn't need to bring out a new dressing. Which doesn't make any sense at all, because how did she get the dressing right but not the salad? Why would she still bring out Caesar dressing if she was hoping he would eat the cobb salad? Not that it matters because my friend tasted it and confirmed that it was indeed ranch and not the Caesar dressing.

My friend ended up just telling her to cancel his salad order because it wasn't worth the trouble. If you get the order wrong, you remake the order. Not just hope he will tolerate you brining out an entirely different salad. The customer shouldn't need to convince you to bring him the correct salad and dressing.

After the fiasco, the waitress didn't come to our table again. She gave us weird stares from across the room and that was about as much contact we had with her again. We ended up needing to ask a completely different waitress for our check because our first one didn't seem up to giving it to us. It's crazy how pretty much all the common courtesy's you expect from a regular restaurant went out the window. No offer to comp anything was a real kicker. I thought maybe they couldn't afford to offer it, which would've been understandable but I'm seeing other people in these reviews getting comped drinks so I'd love to understand why we weren't offer any.

I feel the need to iterate that this is some of the best coast food I've ever had. In fact, this place may have the single best clam chowder I've ever had. The cooks are absolutely phenomenal despite getting extremely bad service I am still willing to give this place 3 stars. And if service improves I'm still willing to change this to a 5 star review. That being said, I am also willing to change this to a 1 star review depending on if the owner replies with the negative attitude I've seen in other reviews.

Edit November 2024: I tried to give this place a second chance. But today I spent about 30 minutes trying to get someone to take my order. The staff seemed like they couldn't be bothered to even greet us let alone take our business. If you're too busy then tell us to leave or something so potential business isnt left waiting. I'm seeing from other reviews that this is an ongoing issue and as a result I am losing my grade from a 3 star...

We went during the day on Wednesday May 7th and while it wasn’t super busy our service was great. I have tried to find the receipt for our waitress to give her full credit here but I can’t. She was fantastic. Super fast service, kept our drinks topped up, was great with our little gremlins (2 toddlers) and didn’t make it an issue they were sometimes a bit loud. Our kids aren’t bounce off the walls out of control but they are toddlers. So when they are a bit noisy we get nervous we are causing problems and it makes being out and about stressful. She made us feel like we weren’t a problem and was friendly with the kiddos.

we got the fries, garlic cheese curds, crab linguini, fried pickles and the clam chowder. All of the food was delicious and came out quick and hot. Whole family approved of the food and the boy toddler absolutely loved the chowder. Fries were crunchy, hot, and delicious. Usually places do pretty bland fries but these were not. FYI dip the fries in the chowder, you won’t regret it. Garlic cheese curds are absolutely wonderful. We even were talking afterwards about how good they were and went back the next day for these specifically. Usually places have some basic curds but these are no basic curd. Worth the special grab. Crab linguini was a bit more expensive than we usually like to spend but hearing house made and crab at the beach we had to try it. Didn’t disappoint. Well cooked noodles, solid servings of crab and it really did taste like they make it in house which was stellar confirmation. Fried pickles were the pickles sliced in quarters length wise, not the chips style. I’m a chip kinda guy so they weren’t my preferred but had great flavor and had crunch inside and out. Lastly the clam chowder was so delicious everybody but my daughter, who seems to pretty much dislike everything we like, loved this. The toddler boy couldn’t get enough. I’ve had some bad experiences with sandy chowder and there was no sandy bits at all in here which was great! It had good flavor, consistency was actually a chowder, Smokey flavor from bacon, and a good amount of clams was easy to find. Overall the food was delicious and a solid value for the money. We went back 2 days in a row it was that good. Would highly recommend this place to anybody in town even if just for...

Okay so this place has always been Maxwell's to me and I have to say I was sad to find out it was no longer but my sadness quickly disappeared the second I took a bite of my Beacon Burger but I have to rewind a little bit, so me and my husband decided we were both starving and it was really late so not much was open we hadn't been to Zeller's since it had been Maxwell's but it was open so we went but because we had showed up so late the dining room had just been completely closed down and although karaoke is very entertaining we really just wanted to enjoy a meal together and then get some much needed rest fortunately as soon as we walked in the man that had clearly just finished closing the dining room quickly informed us that although the dining room was closed we still had the entire menu available to order from and that we could still stay and eat in the lounge but I think he read my mind and added that he had no problem with making anything we wanted togo for us if that sounded better I smiled and made sure there wasn't anything that couldn't be packed togo and he reassured me that we had the full menu to choose from so I chose to get a Beacon Burger and fries and my husband decided he needed a steak and to be honest I was a little worried about just how his steak togo was going to be until we got to the car and found a nice place to eat and watch the ocean. Pulling everything out of the big bag we were both surprised at the fact that he hadn't held back or missed anything he had packed up plastic utensils, ketchup & mustard packets extra napkins my husband's meal was complete with a side salad in it's own separate container plenty of dressing and then we got to the main dishes and before this I could only name burger 101 as the only place to get a good burger but now I have 2 favorites and my husband was more than pleased with his steak and mashed potatoes which he made me taste and OMG that's what I'm getting next time there was NOTHING to complain about EVERYTHING was so perfect I'm no longer sad that Maxwell's is gone and so happy Zeller's took it's place you can tell the cook takes pride in the food they prepare and it shows in the flavor I'd give them more stars if I could! Try it for yourself and I know you won't be...