Oak Barrel Public House — Restaurant in Milwaukee

I will never come here again! Super disappointed in staff. We had plans to take our colleagues on a boat ride right across the street and needed a place to hang out beforehand. Oak Barrel had 3 customers and was open. There was about 10 of us that went in and I personally talked with the hostess and asked if it was OK that we just ordered drinks and if we could sit at the tables closest to the bar, she said that would be OK. The bartender was just awful! She said we couldn’t come up to the bar to order drinks, she said we couldn’t do multiple tabs and was just plan rude. There was not enough bar stools for us so we said fine, send us a server. I then asked the server if we could have separate tabs and he said sure! The bartender over heard him say that and proceeded to say NO we can’t do that. More colleges started to come in and the server put everyones drinks on one tab. We were unaware of this as we were under the impression the tab was just for us 10 that originally walked in and anyone else would need to start their own tab. As we were closing out our drink tab, we also got hit with a “large group fee” for DRINKS!!! Each person that paid for their drinks got hit with this $10 fee. It was awful! I also think we had other ppl’s drinks that were not apart of our group had their drinks put on this tab because this server didn’t start new tabs for these other ppl who walked in after us. We ended up paying more for other drinks that no one was claiming to be theirs. The bartender was rude, didn’t seem like they wanted to work and slapped us in the face with a charge that she didn’t even tell us about. I will never be going back with my coworkers, friends or family ever again and will be telling others to stay away. I’m a bartender myself and the place was NOT busy. I would have welcomed the business and would have not treated the ppl with such disrespect for wanting just drinks. Once we left, the place was dead. We were only there...

Unfortunately can't rate the food because we were only able to order appetizers. The appetizers were good. The service was horrendous. I had family in town and were going to a show at 8:00 PM. I made a reservation for four people to arrive at 6:45 PM. When we arrived, we were eventually met by a nice young man in a t-shirt and jeans. I didn't get his name but I don't think he was a normal host/waiter. He was the only positive part about our experience with Oak Barrel. We were told all tables were full unless we wanted to sit outside. So much for a reservation. We opted to sit outside since we were in a hurry. The same young man that greeted us cleaned off the table, sat us and brought us water. I ordered two appetizers immediately as it was 6:55 PM. T.he young man checked on us 10 minutes later as our server never came outside. We asked for two beverages from him which he retrieved immediately. He told us he was going to check on our appetizers and that was the last we saw of him. While waiting for our appetizers, we watched another unhappy couple get their food in a to go bag and eat it while walking down the street on their way to the show (they were going to the same show we were). Shortly after 7:30 a waitress appeared with our appetizers. Knowing that if appetizers took 35 minutes to come out, we weren`t even going to attempt to order main dishes so I immediately asked for the check. We ate our appetizers with no utensils and three paper napkins between the four of us. Ironically I feel bad for leaving this review because this was the first time in my 45 years of life that I've EVER left less than a 20-25% tip. But I've been to many, many restaurants and have never experienced service like this. Maybe we went there on a bad day, I don't know, but it was a Tuesday at 6:45 PM. What do they do on...

Very disappointed. We were really excited to try this restaurant, but unfortunately, it was a huge letdown from start to finish. We had a reservation for 6, and they shoved two tables together, but one of them was slanted. Within 10 seconds of sitting down, the water slid across the table and spilled all over my lap. The waiter gave us some napkins to clean it up, but then didn’t return to remove the dirty, wet napkins from the table.

Throughout our time there, we had to keep flagging the waiter down, who was too busy laughing and joking around with the staff to notice our empty glasses, dirty napkins, and empty bag of popcorn sitting on the edge of the table. He preceded to disappear for 15 minutes before asking if we are ready to order.

As he was bringing out our food, the power goes in and out shutting down the tv's and flickering the lights. Once we got our food, it didn't make things better. My fries were cold with two hairs in it. Both of the Wisco burgers we ordered didn't have bourbon cider braised thick cut bacon on it like the description says and the pulled bacon was straight gristle.

The waiter didn’t check on us once during the meal. I was still waiting for my diet coke refill, and my friend never got the chance to ask for more ranch. We had finished our meals for about 20 minutes before the waiter came back, and he reeked of marijuana. To top it all off, we tried to use a gift card but were told the system was down due to the power outage, so we couldn’t even use it. We were so disappointed with the lack of service, poor food quality, and overall experience. Will not be coming back even though we still have the gift...