The Shebeen — Restaurant in Media

I'll start by saying that I typically don't write negative reviews unless the experience was especially bad and, unfortunately, I feel it's necessary in this case, if only to warn others.

I'll start off with the good things.

First, the cocktails are excellent. They have one hell of a bartending staff, and I was legitimately impressed. My negroni was well-balanced, and my partner's spritz was beautifully done. If you're just going for drinks, you could do a lot worse in Media.

Second, the atmosphere is pretty good. It's a typical Irish pub vibe. Good lighting, nice decor, and the dining room was clean and tidy.

Finally, our server (Harry, if I recall correctly) was kind, attentive, and professional throughout.

Sadly, most of the food was disappointing at best, and inedible at worst; and before I get into the details, I want to emphasize that I am not a picky person by any stretch -- I'll eat damn near anything -- but man, this was... rough.

I think our order was something that should be in the wheelhouse for a "high end" Irish pub: my partner ordered fish and chips, and I ordered a medium rare steak and potatoes. Simple fare.

We waited about 45 minutes for these two entrees. I never blame the cooks for wait times (lots of places are understaffed) but I mention it because you'd think that they would've had time to do just a little bit of quality control at the pass before sending things out to the dining room.

I'll start with the steak: I ordered medium rare, but I'm honestly not picky. I'll take rare, medium, medium-well even. Just give me an edible steak; I'll eat it and not say a word. But this steak was blue. A good veterinarian could've brought it back to life with a little patience. But truly, I still would've eaten it if it had even the tiniest bit of seasoning on it -- but unfortunately it was just a gray, chewy, unsalted $40 slab of beef.

After overcoming my anxiety of sending food back to the kitchen, I apologized to our server for the hassle and he took it back for me.

In the meantime, I thought I'd have one of my partner's fries while I waited for the refire.

This is when things started to go off the rails. I bit into this steak fry, and it was like... powdery styrofoam? I'm not sure how to describe it exactly, but it was downright nasty. Texture aside, it tasted like a musty freezer. "Okay," I thought, "it's just a freezer burned fry, it happens. Probably just a straggler that made it into the fryer." So I grabbed another one, and it just kinda crumbled when I broke it in half. They were nearly all like that. We couldn't find a good one.

So Harry comes back with my steak, and we let him know about the fries. He's obviously concerned and goes back to the kitchen to let them know.

In the meantime, I cut into my steak. It's still gray and unsalted, and it's medium now, but at least it's edible. I'm not gonna send my man Harry back there again; they'll kill the poor guy.

Beneath my steak is some asparagus. It's a little overdone, but it's got some butter on it. I bite into it, and, well, I guess the prep team missed some of the woody stems. Oof.

Beneath the asparagus is roasted potatoes. I'm a little traumatized from the fries, so I cut into them. Thankfully, they're fine. A little underdone, but fine.

Harry comes back, and I'm fully expecting him to be like "oh yeah, they checked the fries and it looks like some of them had gotten freezer burned, thanks for letting us know." But, instead, the kitchen decided to go with the story that "this is how the fries are traditionally done", which... what? Were we freeze-drying potatoes in the mid-1800s?

At this point, I realized that the kitchen just doesn't care. And if the kitchen doesn't care, it's probably because management doesn't care, and the owners don't care -- and then I started thinking about how terrifying their walk-in must be, and I couldn't eat another bite.

Harry offered us a free dessert, but honestly I just couldn't trust it. We paid and left as fast as we could, and we absolutely won't be going back. Big yikes,...

Nice atmosphere with the candlelight. Got a World flight which was a nice mix of whiskeys. Ordered the cheese curds and the lobster bisque. Cheese curds were huge and amazing, lobster bisque was sub-par. It was watery without any chunks of lobster, hardly a bisque. We waited to order until after the appetizers and it took them 40 minutes to bring out our food..which was a pretty long wait. I got the Amish Chicken Breast, the chicken was cooked perfectly and hot with a nice crispy skin. The grits underneath were cold with undercooked butternut squash cubes. My husband's Striploin Steak was mostly fat and overcooked..they were nice and did take it of the bill. He also had a baked potato that didn't come with butter and there was no salt and pepper at the table. Server took too long to come over to ask for some. My dad's Shepard's Pie was fine but a little cold. All in all, I was expecting a better experience which was disappointing but overall it was okay. They have the atmosphere just right, they just need to up the food and service game...drinks are delicious so it seems the bar side is...

Good food, the wait staff is super nice but the manager/owner lacks any kind of people/customer service skills. We were in town visiting friends that just had a baby, stopped in for breakfast after grabbing coffees which were sitting halfway empty on our table as we were looking through their menus. Literally no one cared about our half empty cups as we weren’t touching them and they could see we were about to order food from the establishment, then the manager or maybe the owner comes up to us and gruffly says “we’re a restaurant no outside food or drink”. While we can understand and certainly abide by this policy (which we ended up taking our stuff out to the car), there are certainly nicer and more pleasant ways to ask and bring it up. Maybe the words “please” or “thank you” would’ve helped as we were literally two seconds from placing an order and providing business to your restaurant. Our waitress even apologized on his behalf. She was amazing and so very kind, maybe management can ask her for pointers on how to interact with...