Granite City Food & Brewery — Restaurant in Northville Charter Township

I'd like to start this off by saying that typically I am quite skeptical when it comes to these chain style restaurant/brewery combo places that call themselves a brewery but always serve the most mediocre beer and food. In my personal opinion, this place kind of rides the line.

Both the food and the beer here, are just okay and really nothing to rant or rave about, but let me back up for a second. Don't get me wrong, I fully understand the popularity of these types of "brewery" restaurants and I think they actually play a very important part in exposing people to other types of beer that they might be hesitant to try from a full blown brewery that brews all sorts of crazy concoctions. So for that reason, I am glad that places like this exist.

If you're unfamiliar with the area, this particular location sits within a very busy part of Northville and there are various retail establishments and other restaurants sprinkled throughout the area. That means a couple things. One being that because of where this place is situated there will always be plenty of parking even during the busiest of times because of the very, very large parking lot that serves all of the surrounding businesses. The other being that the restaurants here may be consistently busier than what you're used to depending on where you're from. This establishment is large in size, so I wouldn't imagine there being that bad of a wait even if it was packed.

When you first walk in you'll notice that it is quite spacious, clean, and the staff is friendly, professional, and quite efficient. This makes for an overall decent dining experience in my opinion. As aforementioned, the food and beer are just okay, and though that might be the most important aspect for many when it comes to finding a place to eat at and have drinks, this place is a perfectly acceptable option for dinner with family, or a place to meet coworkers or friends for drinks and food. When my family and I were last here, it didn't take long for us to get our food, the beer was cold, and the food was hot and seemingly fresh. To be completely honest that's really all I am looking for when it comes to an establishment like this one, so I really can't complain.

I will say that I was a bit disappointed by the lack of beer selection seeing that it's a "brewery" and all. There are only a few on tap, and like every beer lover, I had wished there were more. While we're on the subject of drinks, they also have a myriad of different wine and liquor options since I know non-beer drinkers always end up with friends at a place that specializes in beer. So fear not my anti-hoppy friends, there is something for everyone to drink here.

Before I jet, we can talk about the food for a second. Think of it as like an upgraded selection of bar fare. It's nothing you'd find in a full scale multi-star restaurant, but it's also much better than your average bar food. Put it like this, at a place like this I always order my burger rare knowing that when I get it, it'll be somewhere around medium. It is what it is, and I have grown to accept it.

When all is said and done, come here to get a beer (or 3), come here to get a burger, or don't come here at all. The choice is yours, and I think you'll be fine either...

Second time here. If our experience is a reflection of how this place is managed then we won't be going back. We had reserved ourselves a 7-top for dinner around 7pm, with only 6 of us showing up. Everything up to food delivery was fine, no issues. Three of our meals came out in a timely manor. The other three never showed up. Us gentlemen waited 15 minutes before our ladies pleaded for us to start eating our meals before they got cold. Waiter never came to the table at that point. The 3 of us were able to completely finish our food before the waiter showed up apologizing for the delay. After another 10-15 minutes, he finally came back and admitted the meals were on separate tickets and they lost the other ticket. Didn't make sense to me why all 6 orders of the same table weren't on the same ticket. (And why the men's orders then seemed to be on one ticket if our food came and the females on the other lost ticket?) I counted this employee carry out 7 trays of food between our first 3 meals being brought to the table and him going back to the kitchen to solve the problem. When the food did come, it was suspicious enough to think that the plates were sitting under a heat lamp for a significant amount of time.

When it came time for the check, I requested that the bill be a reflection of the service and experience that we received. I guess that only meant a $25 military discount to this employee. No items were taken off for our inconvenience. Not one mention of a manager nor the presence of a manager. I would have expected a managers presence through a delay/mistake like this. 30+ minutes that my lady and both of our mothers had to wait for their food. Also didn't appreciate the employee removing my glass from the table when i wasn't done with my drink. There also was an order of soup that mysteriously didnt show up to the table. The employee did get that right by removing that from the bill.

The employee did have a good attitude towards us, and did give his apologies. I'd like to believe our experience reflects management and not the employee himself. That said, Won't...

My husband and I went here for our anniversary dinner, as I heard it was a great local brewery/restaurant. Our entire experience can be summed up with "meh."

Going into more detail:

The waitress (I don't even know her name, that was how infrequently we saw her) was only near our table one or two times. Getting drinks, ordering, and waiting for her to come back with requested items took FOREVER. I asked for a Coke and she came back 10 minutes later with a, "Oops, I forgot this."

The Idaho nachos were good - think waffle fries covered in delicious nacho toppings.

My husband got the Prairie Vixen which was decent, but didn't have a lot of flavor to it.

Everything else was straight-up disappointing. We both got steaks with the Parmesan red onions. I also got a side of onion rings, while my husband got green beans.

The potatoes were so heavily salted/spiced/covered in some sort of ranch dressing that neither of us took more than one bite.

The onion rings were basically tasteless. There was maybe a tiny hint of some sort of beer in the batter, but that was it. Even the normal taste of onion was cooked out of it.

As for the steaks...It's hard to make a steak I don't like. I take mine medium rare, no toppings, no sauce. This steak, however, came out vaguely pink and completely crusted with charcoal. It was like the cook wanted to make an "attractive" steak, and completely grilled the sides into blackness. I made it a few bites into mine and had to stop because the taste of the grilled portions completely overwhelmed any other flavors. We took home our $20 chunks of meat and fed them to our dogs.

To go back to my previous statement, it was a very "meh" experience for us - I even apologized to my husband for ending our...