Old Black Bear Brewing Company — Restaurant in Madison

Disclaimers up front....

1. I know the owner, but this was unsolicited
2. We don't drink alcohol, so I can't speak too much to that aspect of the enterprise

So this is a review of the Taproom restaurant side of things. I had been there for a private event with a sampling of some of the food before it opened and I thought their selections were pretty tasty. I noted that they had high chairs and a kids menu, so I thought we could try it out as a family.

We went on a Thursday afternoon. It did not take long to get seated. It did take a bit longer than one might expect to get drink orders. The thing at this point we were missing were crayons and color sheets for the kids. They are so used to being presented these things at restaurants that they sort of expect them. They did have some flower pens on the table and we happened to have some paper, so not a big deal. Drinks arrived and were refilled in a timely fashion. They have soft drinks of the Pepsi variety--Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, Mt. Dew, Diet Mt. Dew.

The food order was taken but the server did not know they had fruit cups for the kids (on the menu), much less what type of fruit was in them. The kids got a grilled cheese with fries and a PB&J with fries. They loved the fries (and one of my kids is very picky about fries). They PB&J was something they both liked well, but the grilled cheese got a thumbs down. It's made on sourdough bread (not obviously buttered) and with cheddar cheese. My kids prefer to see a little yellow from the butter on the outside and really like American cheese better. I'm mentioning it in case your kids are picky about theirs, too.

My wife and I each got a burger that we split. We each had a half of the Pimento Burger and the Tavern Burger. Both are very tasty. I would suggest that the Pimento Burger has more of a unique flavor, while the Tavern Burger might be a bit more filling. We also really liked the fries.

As to atmosphere, there was enough distance between tables that you weren't sitting on top of other people. The crowd on a Thursday was not too rowdy. One thing I noticed was the lack of alcohol odor. That smell that's so sickeningly sweet at a lot of sports events was not present here. Maybe it's a difference in the type of beverages or because people didn't want to spill it all over the place. I'm saying that to say that the alcohol around did not really detract from the food at all.

Overall good food, good location, and service that was acceptable which I'm sure will get better as they get more into the...

This is a hard one to rate, because there were things I liked a lot, and others, not so much. So let's start with the positive shall we - this is a delightful little place in Old Town Madison that you really shouldn't miss! Awesome decor, wonderful atmosphere, the employees that I dealt with were friendly, efficient and knowledgeable. Based on that alone I would give them 5 stars - unfortunately the food and drink didn't live up to my expectations. Admittedly I should have stuck with their specialty, beer, but as an ex-bartender, I feel if you are going to have cocktails on the menu you should at least know how to make them. So I went for the Blood Orange Moonshine Margarita, the first one I had was good, although I don't understand why it took so long to make considering there wasn't more than 30 people in the place. I was also surprised that I wasn't asked if I wanted salt on the rim as it's standard practice with a margarita, but it came with salt on the rim which was fine because that's how I order them. The second one I ordered didn't taste the same as the first, was the exact same color as the strawberry and pomegranate margaritas that my friends had ordered, took even longer to make than the first one, and had SUGAR on the rim. Then there was the food issue - my friend and I ordered the Classic Breakfast, 2 eggs, 2 strips of bacon, sourdough toast and skillet potatoes. I ordered my eggs over easy, and one of them had a watery yoke, that probably can't be avoided so no lost points there. One of the bacon strips was perfectly crisp, the second was practically raw, the toast was good. And then we have the skillet potatoes - I don't really know how to describe these things, over cooked is an understatement. These things were so hard that you couldn't even get a fork through them! My friends and I are a ladies Jeep Club, and we had a great time joking that if we took them out to the parking lot we could go rock crawling. I will say the one I managed to eat without breaking my jaw was very tasty. But seriously, I have worked in many restaurants, from diners to fine dining, and no self respecting cook in their right mind would have sent those pellets out to a customer. So in summary, location, atmosphere, staff, all winners - food and drink for me were fails. I would definitely recommend this place, but stick to the beer and avoid the skillet pellets and you...

I don't typically write reviews, but I feel compelled after reading the rest of the reviews for OBB. First, I've eaten here on three separate occasions over the summer. All three times the food was good but the wait time was ridiculous, especially for all of the open tables (and I understand you don't have servers to cover all of your tables, perhaps you should hire more staff). Some of the beers are very good and some of the beers are average. I think the patio is a really great place for kids to play and adults to hang out when the weather permits. I absolutely think that the owner's juvenile responses on Yelp and Google Review are completely uncalled for. These are forums for opinions of customers and for you to use as a tool to improve your establishment, not a place for you to belittle patrons for their report of a bad experience. Responses to reviewers like "you are bad at life" to a comment about the beer being sub par is just childish. The owner responds to every negative customer comment with accusatory statements and excuses. It's ridiculous. If you have this many people commenting on the unfriendly staff and extremely long wait times, then maybe you should look into hiring more wait staff to shorten wait times for seating and more kitchen staff to cover ticket times. If there are complaints about staff attitudes, maybe apologize for the patron's experience and have staff meetings work on customer service and hire FRIENDLY people instead of insinuating the reviewer is exaggerating and wrong. I am so put off by all of the owner responses with the sarcastic "Cheers!" at the end, as well as other cutting remarks, that MY FAMILY WILL NEVER RETURN TO OLD BLACK BEAR. There are PLENTY of other choices in this area that are totally awesome and also willing to accept responsibility for a bad experience and use it as a tool to improve and attempt to make things right with...