Olde World Bistro and Bakery — Restaurant in Ohio

This is a place to avoid! Our party had the worst experience trying to get lunch here.

To start, the restaurant needed to be shut down that day because the A/C was broken and since they had zero fans to provide any type of air movement in the place: the heat made the wait for our meal unbearable!

Next, even though there were many empty tables (and it’s not a big place) our lunch took over 1.5 hrs from start to finish.

Even with the service being sloth-inspiringly slow, unfortunately the actual meal was NOT worth the wait. Examples of what went wrong: a wrong sandwich was brought out for one guest, a second had their meal dropped to the floor (with no apology), extra dipping sauce had been requested for one meal at the start and wasn’t brought. The chicken fingers must have been scorched on the surface of the sun they were so dry; biting into them was hard but trying to cut them with the dull knife provided was impossible. The supposedly “fresh cut fries” were stale and room temperature, a serious letdown.

The absolute worst for us was the server. He was rude, short tempered and lied to us about the billing process. When we requested to speak with the manager he denied they were present.

One of our party requested the automatic gratuity be removed from their bill, the original cashier left and sent the server to question the guest. When they were told it was “against their policy” to remove it from the bill, the guest requested the manager be brought into the matter (we pointed out that it was illegal to not remove it), the server disappeared and returned a few minutes later to say that he wouldn’t budge. “Did we realize it was money coming out of HIS pocket” and he “didn’t see any problems with his service!”, we pointed out his bias and that the service was terrible and the food inedible. The guest again requested the manager to come to the register and the server flat out lied and said the manager had left—Despite the server having discussed the issue 30 seconds previously with the manager. When this was brought up the server fled back to the manager’s office and finally agreed to remove the gratuity.

This was an unacceptable experience from...

As soon as we arrived we could see they were having staffing issues. The hostess took our name then went to help wait on some tables, collected payments as we and some others waited to be seated. It wasn't too long before we were seated. The hostess came back to help the waitress with our drink orders. It was probably 15 minutes before the waitress actually made it to our table to take our food order. About 30 minutes after that we were brought a salad and some bread at the table. In all it was about 50 minutes before we received our food. Stuff happens, we get that and the way to loan would not have negatively affected this review.

Our food was the problem. Our expensive food. My wife ordered the Chicken Parmesan and I had the Chicken Broccoli Alfredo. The chicken for both of our dishes was extremely dry. Along with that, my alfredo sauce was lacking flavor. It had the consistency of milk with a little bit of flour, there was very little cream or cheese. Without coaxing, my 6-year-old daughter said her macaroni and cheese didn't taste like anything. She was right, it was bland and did not even taste like cheese. It wasn't awful, just not tasteful. My salad with ranch dressing was good, the bread was really good, the garlic mashed potatoes were also really good. However, the main dishes left a lot to be desired. Now we were slightly hesitant to order the Italian dishes off of the menu, our waitress actually assured us that the Chicken Broccoli Alfredo was one of their top items. We may have had a better experience with the more traditional items local to the area, but because of this experience I'm not sure we will ever know. Neither my wife or myself finished our plates and I'm not usually one to leave food.

The reason I rated three stars instead of one star is because of the bakery items. We ordered six or seven items for sampling to take with us.

This is probably one of the most expensive meals you can buy in Amish Country, so I certainly expected more.

It is worth giving a try, but definitely plan to get some bakery...

Wholly TOLEDO this place is a hidden gem...well dang, all Berlin Ohio is, so add this to the list. My wife and I were in town celebrating my birfday and stayed just down the hill at the Encore hotel (O how we love thee🤭). We started looking for restaurants at 5 PM on Google. After a short time, my wife came across the Olde World Bistro and read some of the menu items. Burgers, Reubens, onion rings, fries...say no more, let's go! At the time, I had no idea where it was so I jacked it in Google maps and I was like "wait, where is this? It says it's in walking distance!?!?🤔" And sure enough, I drove up the hill, exited the lot to the right and pulled right back into the small parking lot at the Bistro (right down from the pup 🐕 shop). I didn't know what to expect but the pleasant cooking odors that met my olfactory organs when we entered told me this place was gonna be BANGIN! My nose told the truth! We started with onion rings. Delicious. Crispy, funnel cake type batter and ketchup mmmm. Being an all-American guy, I ordered the all-American burger and fries. It was a juicy, well seasoned, 1/2 pound burger. It was a messy, delicious monster. Came on a warm chibatta roll. It was served hot amd the juices softened up that roll. Could hardly finish it. The wifee got the reuben sandwich. It was in my top three reubens of all time. I know, you're saying, "I thought your wife ordered that!"🤭 O she did, but I had a bite and couldn't put it down. It came on thick, marble rye bread with a healthy portion of corned beef, kraut, Swiss and Russian dressing. It was lightly toasted and just melted together in heavenly corned beef bliss. Coke paired perfectly with it all. We left stuffed but the dessert case called our names and we responded...it was my birthday after all. Probably could have chosen anything and been happy but chose the chocolate torte cake...it was decadent and delicious. A perfect foil to wrap our meal and evening! We will be back!...