Big Whiskey's — Restaurant in Madison

Your food made my wife puke, literally. I also puked, thanks. So we get there around 5 on a Saturday. We were told 20-30 minute wait, not bad for a Saturday, so we wait. While waiting, asked the greeter a couple questions about their menu. Clueless. My mistake for thinking they might know I guess. Get seated close to estimation so far so good, but that ends the good. My wife ordered water with lemon, I got sweet tea. After the first sip, she asked me if the water tastes "funny". You could smell it. It smelled like sewage water. We should have left right then, but we wanted to try to try "the new place in town". So when the waitress made her way back over, she switched to Sprite. The menu has WAY too many items to possibly be cooked fresh, prepare for microwaved or over fried food. We decided to stick with something basic, a salad and some wings. We order the wedge salad as a starter and told the waitress we were going to split it, just to bring an extra plate. Asked about switching the cheese on it. The waitress said she could not pronounce the name of it but didn't think they have that kind of cheese... its on their cobb salad, on their menu. Long wait later, she brings the salad and a saucer. why not a plate or salad bowl? good question. No steak knife either. Ever try to cut a wedge salad with a butter knife? Even then okay, maybe new waitress, doesn't know the menu either. However, when the plate the salad came on had what I only hope was a hand print from the cook of bbq sauce all over the top of the plate... Yeah, should have given up and left then. I just hope it was from the line cook grabbing the plate without removing his gloves (if he was even wearing them) and they didnt just grab a used, dirty plate. At this point, I am trying to salvage the rare night out the wife and I have together by saying over and over, "I am sure it is just where the cook touched it after some ribs". Did NOT help she then picks up the dressing container and there is a huge hunk of some kind of meat stuck to it. Again, should have walked out right then. But, before we could even try chopping the salad with a butter knife, here comes the wings. My wife got 6. 4 were completely un-sauced and burnt. At this point my wife says "I don't want to send anything back, God knows what they will do to it. I am hungry, I'll just try the two that doesn't look burnt". Yeah, no, burnt as well. The little splash of sauce on them just hid it. From the first bite I could see her face. But she had literally nothing to eat all day but a protein shake first thing that morning, so she picked at them, really more to be polite because she could tell it mattered to me to have a nice time out since it had been a long while. Meanwhile, I am sitting there trying a bite of french-fries... I have no idea what kind of spice they put on them, but the bottle obviously had a lose cap, it was dumped in one spot on them. It tasted like chili powder. I am not a fan of chili powered fries. So finally we just give up right as the waitress comes over. No question of "how is everything", and no "would you like anything else tonight" simply a "how are you paying, cash or card?" I say "card" because I don't want to make a scene and know how I get when p*ssed off. I didn't want to do that in front of my wife on our night out. Then the waitress just stands there staring at me and hovering as I click through their pay pad and "tip" request. My wife even commented on it as we got to the parking lot how uncomfortably awkward that was with her just staring. We leave 99% of the meal on the table, still no offer of to go boxes, not that we would have taken them. Drive 30 minutes home. Less than 10 into the trip my wife starts saying she is not feeling well. No sooner than we walk in, she is in the bathroom puking and proceeds to do so multiple times. Luckily we have 2 bathrooms as I also had to go throw-up. Read the other negative reviews they are very accurate. I wish I had read them before...

TLDR - not bad, but not worth the price.

Our 1st & probably last visit. If a friend wants to meet there I won't refuse, but I will never choose it. Sorry for the length, but I think it's all relevant to understand the overall experience. Nothing was horrible, but neither was anything particularly good = an overall disappointment. To start, the host was great. He offered us immediate seating outside, or 10-20 minute wait for inside seating. Since it was breezy & cool outside we chose to wait and took a seat at the bar. The bar top & ledge were wet. The bartender made a quick rag swipe across the center & placed a couple of cocktail napkins down. The swipe completely missed the edge closest to us & the ledge we'd have rested our arms on. I grabbed the cocktail napkins to dry it myself, the napkins stuck to the bar & tore. The bar was busy & we let it go, but things didn't get better. My cocktail selected from the 'celebrated original' menu was served promptly, but it had very little & an indistinct flavor. The tall skinny glass (akin to a champagne flute) overloaded with ice meant it was only a few sips. Which destroyed my initial pleasure that it seemed like a good price ($10.) for a specialty cocktail. Sooner than we expected our table was ready. The floor was slick, I had to walk as if on ice to keep from falling. We were seated at a high top in the bar area next to the large open door to the patio. We might as well have just sat outside to begin with. I had to go to the car to get my coat. I know restaurants do their best to keep the flow by per server seating, so I never ask to change tables. The bench side was at the corner wall which meant a lot of awkward scooting across the bench to get to the end seat, also the bench was too low for the table height. I'm not short, I've never had a problem at bars or high tops, but here the table hit at my chest, that along with wearing a coat it made it almost claustrophobic. Our server showed up promptly & was friendly. I made the mistake of ordering a different 'celebrated original' cocktail. It tasted nearly the same as the 1st one - like sweetened water. Neither of them were even the color you'd expect for the listed ingredients. Usually, one good cocktail will give me a slight buzz, after 2 and 1/2, I couldn't tell I had any alcohol, I suspect I didn't. My friend ordered the Strawberry Moonshine Lemonade - that was tasty. He felt sorry for me & let me have his drink, but I doubt there was any alcohol in it either. That would be fine if we were charged for lemonade instead of cocktail prices. Pot sticker & egg roll appetizers were ok, the sauces they came with were fabulous! We didn't care for the crispy edges on the pot stickers, just a personal preference. The "Top Shelf" side salads were generous sized & very fresh. They were the best part of our entire meal, but nearly needed a magnifying glass to see all 3 tiny bits of tomato. They should have just omitted tomato, we'd have assumed their salads don't come with tomato, or possibly not even noticed. The tiny bits just made it laughably cheap looking. The loaded baked potato was cooked to a good softness, but dry & not very loaded. It needed butter & more of everything else. The Rickhouse Ribeye had good flavor & the perfect pink for the temp we ordered, but it was thin & gristly, not a pleasant chew. For the 1st time that I can remember we both cleaned our plates, so it wasn't bad per se, but also not generous servings. I almost never completely finish a restaurant meal. We didn't leave hungry, but we weren't stuffed either. Which is probably a good thing health wise, but for the prices we paid my wallet expects me to bring home the next day's lunch or a...

Showed up with a small group. Our server (Marco) did not know what whiskeys they had, what beers they had, and seemed annoyed when we asked for a beer list. He told us he wasn’t sure and that we could walk up to the bar and look. Not a great first impression…

We ordered a drink and food - the food came before the drinks. Mediocre burger that seemed like it was sitting under a heat lamp too long - which makes sense considering that our server went MIA shortly after ringing in the order. (It wasn’t even him who brought us the drinks)

The on shift manager (Tiger) stopped by the table to see how things were going. We informed him that we hadn’t seen our waiter in around 45 minutes and that we were wanting to order drinks and food .(we had another college show up who had missed the first round if orders). Tiger assured us he would put in our order and quickly disappeared. Around half an hour later - he shows up to our table with the first (of 4 or 5 drinks) to finish the smoked old fashioned. He was unfamiliar with how to smoke the drink and ended up dumping the wood chips on someone at our table. He then displayed his incompetence by not knowing which type of lighter to use (he pulled a BiC from his pocket instead of using a torch). Ultimately, one of my colleagues had to smoke the drink for him to show him how it worked. After what seemed like 15-20 more minutes, the rest of the drinks showed up. The food never showed and Tiger admitted that he forgot to put the order in. Seeing and how their service was misstep after misstep - Tiger offered to comp our meals and only have us pay for the old fashioneds. This was a kind gesture and we did appreciate (and tip well for that). He asked that we simply leave an honest review and give them another shot. At this point we left, thinking that they simply just needed more time to get their processes established. Had that been the end, I would rate this a 3/5.

However, the story does not end there. I, along with other in my group, noticed that our cards were closed out and the food and drinks that were “Comped” had been charged to our cards. At first the charges were just pending so we gave it time to fall off our statements, but what happened is that the charges did post to our accounts AND they had added a 20% tip at close out without our consent. I thought this may just be a misunderstanding, so I called the restaurant and spoke with Tiger. He acknowledged that he remembered the situation and did mean to comp the food. He took my information and assured me that I would receive a call back to correct the matter. It has been a week since that point, and I have called twice - leaving a message for Tiger and have yet to get a response.

It is one thing to provide poor service - it’s entirely different to lie to and trick your customers to avoid a hard conversation about the management and...