The Malt Shop — Restaurant in Minneapolis

Once in a generation, a meal this bad comes along. A meal so bad that it shocks you to your very core, and causes you to question the very nature of existence (of restaurants). For me, that meal happened today. And it happened at The Malt Shop. My son and I arrived at 1:42pm on a Friday--a time that should have been relatively safe in terms of a restaurant being overwhelmed with customers. And indeed, for most of our visit it was just us, and a table with three teenagers. We ordered our food around 2:00 and began to wait. And wait. And wait. I wasn't really in a hurry, since they had board games, and so my son and I were able to keep ourselves entertained for the long haul. However, by 2:20 it started to seem like something was wrong. And at 2:30, the server came over and informed us that the restaurant was out of hamburger buns and they had sent someone over to a grocery store to buy some. Mind you, we had already been there for nearly an hour at this time. Around 2:50, the cook returned with bags of groceries and when the food finally came, nothing we received was particularly close to what we had ordered. My picky-eater son sent his cheeseburger back. The second attempt was slightly closer and when I commented that it still had pickles and no lettuce, the cook became defensive and told us that he was doing his best. I elected to eat my burger as delivered, although it had none of the condiments that I had ordered. (I'm also not sure how they managed to serve me cold onion rings, but they did.)

How was the ambience, you ask? Partway through our time there, they turned off whatever their usual music was and cranked up Jack Johnson to a near-deafening level until I finally asked that it be turned down. I don't know how it's possible to even tolerate Jack Johnson, let alone enjoy it. And we had to suffer through an entire album of it.

When the check finally came, we had been there almost two full hours. (It was about one hour and fifty minutes.) I guess I had assumed that perhaps they would comp part of the meal, but alas no. The cook even jokingly suggested that he wouldn't hold it against me if I didn't tip. And you know what? I did not tip. And you know what else? He absolutely did hold it against me. In my nealy fifty years, I can count on one hand the number of times that a meal has been so transcenedntly bad as to warrant no tip. And friends, this was that once in a generation meal.

Oh, and how did the teenagers fare from act I of our story? They left about an hour and a half in without...

We had the urge to tackle a malt adventure and this one was good. We had a hard time getting to the place with all the surrounding road construction, but we prevailed!

I love the decor of the malt shop portion of this place. See my photos for the cool car booth. It is comfortable and it has a touch of nostalgia--especially with the (vintage-looking) jukebox.

We ordered two large malts. One was chocolate (I appreciate good and simple choco) and the other was raspberry. My wife is a bit more creative than me. ;) They have many different flavors for those looking for more creative options. Of course, we like the malt vs. shake option for sure.

We had an unplanned adventure as the server mixed my chocolate with raspberry. The mistake was actually enjoyable. They also did something (we are still trying to figure it out) with the raspberry malt. It was super-tangy and it had a bit of choco in it too.

The manager and owner noticed that we had gotten the wrong malts and they both immediatly jumped in quickly to correct the situation. I liked mine so I kept it and my wife got hers replaced. They were genuinely concerned that there was a mixup.

Mistakes happen and it is all about how they are handled. The owner/management handled this perfectly and they even comp'd our purchase because of the error. Kudos to them for offering stellar customer service!!! :)

The malts were a bit expensive at $10 each, but the environment, ownership, and malt quality (after the fix) makes this a five-star experience.

We were actually intrigued and it was a mini-adventure to try to figure out what they did to our malts. We still don't know for sure. I recommend this place to anyone wanting a malt adventure as you can create your own unique experience here.

We need to come back sometime to test out the food part of this place too.

Kudos to the owner/management team. You have a great thing going here. Keep up the great work and remind your staff to strive for the same excellence. ...

To preface this it was pretty busy and it was clear they were short staffed, and our attitude coming away is more of a “what a comical dining experience” rather than being upset. We sat down about 6:45 and had our order taken not too long after. The server dropped by free deviled eggs, likely knowing that our food would end up taking nearly an hour to get to us. When it did-at an hour-the chicken sandwich (we got a chicken sandwich, caesar salad, and two malts) was dark on the outside and raw on the inside.

The server took it away when we pointed it out without saying much. When they returned it was explained the cook was new. Stuff happens and I’m glad it wasn’t eaten. We asked for it to just be taken off the check and a new one wasn’t necessary. When the check came, the chicken was still on there ($16) but they had put a discount of $10 on the check. We thought they may have just forgotten to take it off so we asked about it and on the final check the chicken was indeed absent, but so was the $10 discount. This leads us to believe they thought $10 off an inedible entree that took an hour to get to us was fair. Maybe there was a miscommunication, but I’m glad we got the whole sandwich taken off in the end.

Again it was busy, we only saw two people running around on the floor, maybe it was an anomaly that we were largely forgotten (we also had to ask again for the malts when the food came, but maybe they make them for you after the food gets served? Unsure!), and maybe they ran out of unthawed chicken to fry. The malts were delicious, best part of the experience. One of us is pregnant and thats kinda all we wanted to begin with (the nice deviled egg gesture was appreciated in thought but not presence due to this as well, but how would they have known). In the future we will probably venture to another malt location for a while however. If we bop back we hope it’s on a...