Water Street Brewery Oak Creek — Restaurant in Oak Creek

Once upon a time, long before the Oak Creek location opened, I was a fan of Water Street Brewery aka WSB. Many excellent meals and beers were enjoyed at WSB downtown location and at the Delafield location shortly after it opened which was many many moons ago. All of my favorites have since disappeared including an awesome pasta dish they once served. Things change with time. Sometimes for the better... in the case of WSB... sometimes for the worse.

We walked in the door at 8pm on a Saturday night and were greeted by friendly staff. We were immediately seated. WSB was fairly busy but there were empty tables & the dining crowd was starting to thin out. One thing that stands out is that the acoustics in the restaurant are terrible. It is so loud & noisy that its hard to concentrate or have a conversation.

The hostess handed us the menus and said our server would be right with us. This is where the problems began...

The menu is formatted like you are reading a newspaper. Even the specials or additional offerings are on what they call the "Green Sheet". It is a novel concept and is unique.. However, it does make it difficult to read and is confusing at best. In my opinion, the food is expensive for the type of food & portion size they serve. Its like they have taken a sportsbar menu, added "WSB" sauces, and tried to make it something more than it is worth or has to be.

The server came to our table within 5 minutes and took our drink order. Nice enough guy but not very personable. 10 minutes later he returned with our drinks. I had ordered a Raspberry Weiss beer that I believe was their own private brew. The beer was flat and had no flavor at all. My wife ordered a Brandy Manhattan that was served in a ridiculously small glass especially for the price we paid. She said that it tasted nothing like a Brandy Manhattan and that it was bad. The server then took our food order and he did not return again for just shy of 40 minutes. He came by to say our food would be out shortly and he inquired if we wanted another round of drinks. It would be another 10 minutes before our food finally showed up. Totally unacceptable. Good thing we had no where else to be.

Everything looked great but tasted AWFUL. It takes a lot for me to criticize or dislike a meal. My wife ordered a Club Sandwich which looked great. However, the toasted bread was hard and the sandwich was bland. I had ordered chicken strips with a bowl of chicken dumpling soup. The chicken strips looked good but were slightly undercooked and we all know what that tastes like. About the soup. It was obvious that the kitchen had not sampled the soup. It was so salty that it was inedible even after adding ice and water to it. I really tried to make a go of it... in the end I mentioned it to the server and he promptly removed it from our bill.

We then had to wait for our bill to come. Add on another 10 minutes. We waited another 8 minutes for the server to return and take our payment. He never did come back so we flagged down another server who ran our card so we could leave.

The good:

Staff is friendly Immediate seating Bar area looks nice and may be the perfect place to catch a game Food has nice presentation & looks great

The bad: Unacceptable acoustics & noise level Menu is cumbersome, difficult to follow, and confusing at best. Prices are too high for the type of food offered. Extremely slow service. Avoid if you have somewhere to be after dinner. Food tasted awful.

Summary:

The owners of Water Street Brewery have a great location and the potential to be something special. Its just sad that a place this new is already in need of a Bar Rescue. This may be the perfect place to catch a televised sporting event and have a drink. However, as a restaurant, I will not return.

If you are looking for the brewery/dining combination experience, take a 5 minute drive to St Francis Brewery * or * if you are open to more of a drive, head to the Delafield Brewhaus. Both of these places know how to do it right...Sadly...

As of Dec 2023, service is still on the slow side - 40 minutes between order and food. But servers are nice.

Appetizers were GREAT, main dishes weren't.

Punch you in the eyes IPA not really a punch to it

Moscow Mule very sweet

Cheese Curds Kinda on the salty side, but delicious nevertheless

Panko green beans they look like fries! and are crispier! and so yummy! A bit more on the bland side than not, and was well complemented by the saltier cheese curds.

Haystack Onions Delicious! A huge stack of onions crisped to perfection.

Short Rib Panini The bread was toasted well and the beef looked mouth watering. It was chunks of pulled short rib rather than shaved beef, and topped with a generous amount of arugula.

Mac and Cheese side looked kinda soupy and too much veggies. Friends said it was meh.

Chicken Schnitzel Dinner It came smothered in gravy sauce, which looked good, but probably because of it, the schnitzel was soggy rather than crispy. If trying again, ask for sauce on the side. But probably not.

NY Steak special For the price, I really expect a better steak. My medium was more on the medium-well side, and the meat needed more seasoning. (Funny, I had steak the night before at a different restaurant, and theirs was too salty.. Hubby and I laughed at this. At least with the under seasoned version, I could add more salt.) And because it was a little more done than I had hoped, it was dry. more au-jus would have helped. The topping of fried sweet potatoes were delicious.

Steamed veggies side beans, carrots, and cauliflowers. These were done how I like - cooked but still crunch. But there wasn't much of any seasoning - perhaps just a sprinkle of salt? Maybe a little garlic seasoning would have made this stand out.

Mushroom side (in the steak special) Just normal mushrooms. Nothing special.

previous review:

A nice brewery with pub food nicely located in Drexel Square, with good food and great interior. It's quite large inside, with high ceilings with a very open feel.

I've come here on Sunday evenings quite a bit, and their service has always leaned towards the slow side. I mean, slow, like 40 minutes between ordering and getting the food.

This was my first time back since covid, and either the service just got better or there were less customers. Either way, our service was better. So yay! Our server Lex tried very hard to be accommodating and pleasant. He may have been newer, though, and almost dropped the plates once or twice.

IPA can't remember the name of the IPA, but it wasn't fruity. It was really good. Hany approved.

Butter Burger Love how well toasted the sesame buns were. Patty was juicy (though I wasn't asked how I wanted it cooked and it came medium by default), and it just had a good flavor though and though. And the fries! Oh my. My favorite kind, not too thin, not too thick, and crunchy crispy on the outside while soft on the inside.

Tandoori Chicken looked a bit dry from where I was sitting, but my friend cleared the plate!

Pizza Bianca Friends said it was really good.

Korean Glaze Wings App ($9.99) So-so. Five pieces of wings and 2 pieces of celery sticks. Taste...

The experience of the wait staff greatly contributed to the negativity of this review. Upon arrival we were told that they could not find our reservation which had been made the same morning, but they seated us right away. That was the best part of the whole dinner. It went downhill from there, as we received an appetizer with no small plates for sharing. Since there were only two of us, it was not hard to slide the plate across the table, and we kind of shrugged it off. However, they did the same thing with our entree! We had ordered three tacos, with beans, and a bowl of soup. So our food sat there and got cold and greasy, while the waiter went to look for another plate. By the time we ate our food, our tacos were soggy and my steak taco was absolutely cold. My husband's short rib tacos were as well. If they would have served the soup first, maybe they would have time to remember a second plate as there were two people. However, the soup was not ready, and I was told that there were no bowls available since they were backed up and there were three other people besides me waiting for soup. After talking to the manager and the waiter, (who tried to persuade me to try a different dish) I restated I really like the soup. That's what I came for!! So the manager herself brought the soup, and then we told her about the service with the tacos. There was no apology from her except "oh he shouldn't have done that." We asked if we could get a percentage off our bill because of our bad service and cold food. She said of course and went to talk to the waiter. Well, apparently that didn't happen because the waiter brought our bill with no adjustment made. So we again had to ask for the manager, who came back to our table and obviously did not remember any of this situation because she just stood there smiling with a blank stare. In the end they took off the value of the soup which was about $9 with tax, but again, no apology for the bad service or the delay!! If you are knowledgeable at all about the order of service, obviously the soup should come before the meal. I was fine having it after but the no apology for the lack of attention to detail really made me think twice about coming here again. However, the other Water Street Brewery in Delafield I have had no issue with it at all. They are wonderful and also the same for the one downtown. I have not been to any other ones. I would really appreciate it if management would give us some sort of acknowledgment that they have heard this review and are going to train their people better, not only the order of service but giving more attention to the details, if you go out for a nice meal you expect that, and it's what you're paying for as well as the food itself. After sitting on the couch and eating over your lap, a higher level of attention to detail is not only expected but should be enforced at any good dining establishment. Side note about my background, I was raised by a gourmet cook and I'm a kitchen manager. I've also worked in customer service for 20 years+ and reward people for doing the right thing. Unfortunately, our waiter did not get much tip because of his errors. You can do...