618 Tap House — Restaurant in Marion

Had heard great things about the place, so we decided to give it a try during this Sunday's brunch around noon. Didn’t seem to take very long for the food to come out. I ordered the Nashville Hot Chicken Sandwich and potatoes O’Brien. But I was immediately surprised by the small ramekin of potatoes that were both oddly somehow below room temperature and under-seasoned. Then the “Nashville Hot Chicken Sandwich” that was overwhelmingly soaked and dripping in a sauce that resembled BBQ in both color and texture. It was overly bitter and ultimately very unpleasant, I was only able to eat maybe half of it. Our waitress could only be spotted occasionally in our outside section and then it even took a few attempts before she looked our way and noticed us starring at her as a sign to check on us. I just wanted some hot sauce to try and make the sandwich palatable enough to finish, she eventually brought some but its addition was to no avail.

We ultimately had three different waitresses come to our table as our primary was often out of sight, which seems to be a consistent theme among other reviews. I assume she had tables both inside and outside in numerous sections, which often isn’t the best way to assign servers to tables, which is where having someone seat guests is very helpful. We also noticed there weren’t any condiments or salt and pepper immediately available on any of the tables, which after reading other reviews seems to be a consistent complaint. Restaurants should always provide non-chilled condiments and salt and pepper on each table, I don’t understand why so many restaurants in this area fail to provide basic things related to eating the food without requiring the customers to have to ask the server and wait for them to bring them. Overall, the prices are higher than the quality of food and service personally experienced during this visit.

Now to provide a little more context about the Nashville Hot Chicken Sandwich, the menu said the sandwich had a “house made Nashville hot sauce”. Now believe me when I say they took extreme liberties calling it “Nashville hot sauce”. Restaurants really should not offer/serve something in the style of a well-known dish only to either get it completely wrong or not even make it a tasteful play on the original. Nashville hot chicken “hot sauce” is simply a combination of the frying oil, various powdered peppers, other spices, and sugar, with cayenne being the most abundant in the mix. The chicken is then dipped or brushed with this mixture before being placed between the sandwich buns. If anything, this is a fried chicken sandwich smothered in an overly bitter BBQ sauce. I’m sure their other dishes are far better, but this sandwich was very much worth discussing.

After spending time reading other reviews, some of the responses from the owner to sub-optimal reviews are unnecessarily sarcastic, hostile, and or patronizing. They responded to a reviewer who said they were ignored for 30 minutes before deciding to leave by stating according to the camera footage, it was actually 19 minutes that the reviewer waited before leaving. But then for some reason, they immediately conceded that was entirely too long wait and that it was the servers fault. Another response to a rightfully annoyed and insulted customer’s review included this absurdly unnecessary quip, “The server did not know you were watching the Texas vs Kansas blowout game” but finished it out with, “but immediately turned it on for you.” These people are YOUR customers, not the other way around. Why feel the need to tell them they were wrong about the actual amount of time they were ignored for or that the game they were watching that was switched off basically sucked anyways? Overall, this behavior is indicative of both complacency in their restaurant’s performance and a general lack of empathy. No wonder many of the reviews often cite rude and inappropriate behavior exhibited by the wait staff, it clearly seems to be systemic. But I will say the water was very...

Okay, it's been a long time since I've gotten this frustrated with a place. I've heard from several people that this place was actually pretty good. So, I had high hopes for it. Me and 3 others went here for work, and it turned into one of those fun coincidences where we all ordered burgers. 3 got the Cajun burger with Cajun fries, and one got the 618 burger 86/bun, and sweet potatoes waffle fries. We placed our order, and proceeded to wait. And wait. And wait some more. One of us had to leave to head back to the office, so she asked us to bring it to her, and we said okay. We waited a bit longer, and as we are sitting there, we see quite a few people who came after us get served their food and have our server check on them, so we know something is up. Finally, the other server there brought us our food. We thanked her, but explained what was bothering us, and she actually felt bad about it and was sincere in apologizing to us. However, our original server (let's use her initials "C.H.") heard that we were unhappy, and proceeded to give me attitude about it. I'm pretty chill for the most part, but if I'm paying $16 for a burger, then the least you can do is not be rude to me, especially when I've been polite in kind. Now, for the food, I was very disappointed by that as well. Food was a bit cold, which was odd, and there was no flavor. Bear in mind, this was a Cajun burger, and despite having fried onions, pickles, jalapenos, and pepper jack cheese, let alone what they supposedly call Cajun seasoning, there was no flavor, and no evidence of even salt or pepper. All of us shared this sentiment, as well as agreeing that for $16/burger, the portions and quality were very disappointing. The first server we had just flat out sucked, but the second one was trying to do a good job. If only the other one actually helped, moved beyond the speed of slow, wasn't rude to everyone but guys buying drinks at the bar, and overall actually just did her job, then the service would have been better. Unfortunately, after looking at some previous reviews, the owners seem to not care that much since they make remarks such as "sounds legit." I just hope that other server gets some help soon, or at least a better opportunity, because she doesn't deserve the trouble and at this point is owed quite a bit.

EDIT: After seeing the response from the owner, and thinking it over, there are several points that I don't agree with, but they are speaking with one of the other individuals that also left a 1-star review, so I will leave that between them in private. Regardless, what I will say is this: I have been in culinary and business management for 15 years, attended college for culinary arts, have received trainings from state, regional, national, and international levels, and that's just to list a little bit for context. I have been to this place several times prior, but never got served outside of on the second time getting one drink for 2 hours of waiting. I would like to say that these two prior times, it was during a busy time, so that's why I kept trying to go back and give them a chance. Also, once more, the manager that was also serving was good, and yes, she gave us a discount because of the wait, which I was...

So at about 1:25 in the afternoon today me and my friend arrived here to eat. I had the southwest patty melt and he had the Cajun burger. Mind you it wasn’t busy at all only had a few tables filled up and it seemed like they already got their food. We ordered our food around 1:30 and didn’t receive it till 2:02. That’s a half an hour wait which is ridiculous for just those two items and the place wasn’t busy at all. You would think since we waited that long it would be fresh, NOPE! My patty melt was cold and the Mac n cheese was lukewarm at best. My friend said his burger was also cold and I had some of his fries and they were so cold they seemed like they have been sitting out for a while which they had. The funny part is we sat in the booth right across from the kitchen and we can see what’s happening. We saw our food ready but none of the servers ever grabbed it and they both went in and out of the kitchen numerous times and still didn’t grab it. No wonder the food was cold. The only reason I ate it was because I had nothing to eat all day and it took so long to get the food so I was hungry at that point. There was also cooks running in and out the kitchen for whatever reason. The servers working that day were that girl with dark hair and the guy with shorts. I’m not trying to call them out but I never got a refill on my drink and one of them should’ve grabbed the food way quicker. Our server took our order, and gave us our drinks and that was the only time I saw both of them besides getting the food. All in all it’s pretty disappointing getting cold food and bad service especially when it’s almost $20 for a sandwich and some little cup of Mac n Cheese. The owner keeps raising the prices which yeah inflation is going on but there are plenty of places with way better burgers for way cheaper. There’s no reason why a sandwhich and a little side is $20 that’s insane some places in Chicago aren’t even that expensive. I remember when the patty melt was like $12 and they raised the price twice in one year. I seen the owner there and he never tries to help check on people and ask how his customers are doing he should probably start doing that, that’s atleast what I would do if I owned a business. Overall don’t go to this place unless you want a drink because the servers won’t care about you if you...