Barrel House — Restaurant in Marion

Barrel House - Marion

295 Tower Terrace Rd Marion, IA 52302

Not too far from where we live, we have a Barrel house that is newer. We have gone here four or so times and today is the day I am going to write about it :)!

•Location and Vibe• Barrel House in Marion has a good amount of parking and is conveniently located right off Tower Terrace Road, close to the YMCA (Stop on for some pre-or post-workout carbs ;P). I like how the location feels. It is very open, and you can see from one side to the other and have direct access to the bar upon entering the area. They did a great job with the decor; on another note, I love the noise dampeners! The location being so open would have easily drowned all conversation without these steps being taken; we love to stop in and can still have family conversations easily.

•Customer Service• On this particular visit, we went for lunch. It was a bit slower than usual, which was nice because we could speak with the staff and manager.

I want to point out the care my family and I have seen at this location several times. Once we had an order of wings come out, where a few fell off the plate, the manager on duty came over and let us know that they were taking care of that and brought another plate of boneless wings. We did not make any fuss and were content, but the server/manager went above and beyond to ensure our experience was great by providing more wings.

On today's visit, one of our cookies was missing (for the kid's meal); we didn't say anything. It was noticed on its own, and the manager brought out cookies, one for each of the kids. Again, caught and corrected by the team without anything being said (not that the kids needed more sugar :P), but it meant a lot.

On this visit, we were served by Meghan and Marwan. They were both an absolute pleasure to speak with. Both smiled the entire time and took great care to ensure they had all the details needed to provide a great experience. Both of you were awesome, and we look forward to visiting again. Great job to the management team at Barrel House; you have lovely employees.

•Food• On this visit, we got the following Items, and the Lunch menu was fantastic! Talk about a good value :)! Check out the lunch specials that run for specific hours and days of the week.

Appetizer - Spicy Cheese Curds. These are my favorite Cheese curd I have had. I love the breading and especially the spicy kick they offer. They paired very well with the raspberry sauce on the side; you can dip it in if you choose.

Appetizer - Lobster Dip. To my surprise, the kids demolished this. We loved the pita chips that came with it to dip and enjoyed it a good deal.

Sante Fe Chicken Wrap. That shredded mojo chicken is fantastic. I loved the wrap flavors and always enjoy a good Spinach wrap.

Barrel Burger. Kids meal Burger - It's huge! Both burgers were fabulous. We didn't order the burger in a certain way, but it came out medium and had great flavor. We all agreed it was far better than a Red Robins burger and would love to hear what you think of the burgers if you have one. I know I will get one next time.

Barrel Fries. Fries. Fries Fries. Fries Fries Fries! Oh, by the way, I love these fries! Super light and crispy fries. If I have an option for a side, and one of those is fries, that's gonna happen pretty much every time :).

•Conclusion• I have heard mixed feelings from many people, and all I can say is after four separate visits, I have concluded this is a great stop—works for family or just a grown-up outing. I congratulate the Barrel House team on doing a fantastic job, and we look forward to having many more great visits :).

#barrelhousemarion #burgers #wraps #fries #bonelesswings #supportlocal...

This place is a joke! We started going there about a year ago because we heard that they had a robot that brought you the food, and we thought that sounded pretty cool. We have now been there about 20 times and I would say at least half of them have left me with a bad experience. First of all, I don't believe there is a robot. I have never seen this robot and every time I ask about it I get a shady answer. Also, the atmosphere could be much better considering it is a very large dining room with dividers, but every single time we get there and there's only one other table, they have to sit us right next to the other table to make sure their jobs are as easy as possible, not caring that we may want a quiet private experience to go along with the extremely high prices. By the way, they have a new menu, and now there is a $50 burger! Whenever I go there with just my wife it costs us over $60 to have a burger and a small side of fries! I won't be going back after this last time though, because of my latest experience. We were actually going to eat somewhere else this day, but we decided to go here because it was closest to home and we were very limited on time due to other commitments. This time the restaurant was completely full almost and all they had working there was a cook and one server. Nobody even to run the bar or help seat or anything like this. I felt bad for the server and still tipped her well because it was not her fault that she was the only one that didn't call in sick that day, but they probably should have hung a sign on the door saying closed until they could get more help. It was just a restaurant full of people sitting there getting no service at all. I actually decided to try something different for the first time and got their new Spicy Chicken sandwich. That was a bad idea that I would not have tried had I known that over an hour later I would still not have a refill even though our two empty glasses we're sitting on the edge of the table for quite some time. Finally I went into the bathroom and drank water out of the sink to keep from choking to death, because like I said, they didn't even have anybody at the bar that could fill our glasses. And then to top it all off, remember we were only there because we were short on time, I had my credit card on the end of the table next to the empty glasses for 35 minutes! Finally we could not wait one minute longer so I had to find that poor woman and make her stop what she was doing, running around like crazy, and have her run my credit card. This place does not care about your experience at all, all they care about is getting as much money as possible from you. For anybody wondering if they should try this place, I highly suggest you try a different place! And for what it's worth, this happened one week ago and I waited this long to post the review so I did not take out any anger that was not due. A week later it is still eating at me so I have no choice but to expose this...

My family went Friday 3/25 at about 515pm. First the hostess seemed less than impressed my wife and I wanted In with two children 3/5. The restaurant was about 85% empty with many empty tables and booths but after looking at the Map multiple times seated us as the worlds smallest 4 top right next to the same size table that had 4 adults at it. I would understand if it were packed but this already made the experience uncomfortable as our menus Touches. Yet as more people came in booths and even a huge 10 person booth was given to a part of 3.

Our waitress was nice at first got our drinks and appetizer. That actually arrived before she returned to even take our food order. She finally came to take our food order. But then suddenly she was the bar tender.

We noticed tables around us arriving after us started to get food a manager came by and asked how it was going and if it was our first time in. She shared it was our 2nd but likely last. He asked why so we started with the hostess and that we were seeing others getting food. He went to the kitchen and came back and told us you food is next up but they had a lot of new staff and managers helping cook.

We then saw several more tables getting food and no staff or manager even making eye contact with us.

The last straw was at about the one hour point as people arriving after us finished eating paying and leaving the table next to us for about 20 minutes got it’s food I saw what appears to be the main manager in a baseball hat and polo and another manager talking I walked up and asked. If our waitress never put our order in. I started to share the disappointment of the evening and he seemed less than willing to hear me and walked away. The 2nd manager said let me check. It took about another 5 min but he brought our food and was physically shaking. I am not sure what the manager In the hat said to him but we had already witnessed him bark at other staff out in the restaurant.

Still our original waitress has not returned. She’s bartending. The 2nd bartender refilled our drinks and ended up giving us our bill. The whole time we ate not one manager came back to check on us.

We ended up getting 15% off and a hope you come back.

What’s really sad is the food is good. But the Vibe is not friendly and is uncomfortable and did not...