Bald Top Brewing Co. — Restaurant in Orange

I came here with my daughter pre-covid and we loved the place...beautiful outdoor setting, new craft beer ambiance, great food trucks and cool bands. However...my recent visit left a lot to be desired and the owner’s/business response to my husband’s review made poor excuses and blamed the customer for their shortcomings. First of all, I’m not a stranger to good cuisine, I’m a native NewYorker who’s lived in CT and travelled extensively, including Chicago. Try Brooklyn, New Haven and Chicago for examples of successful pizza aficionados! I had high hopes for the Tennessee brick oven pizza...it fell flat, badly. You do NOT have to burn a brick oven pizza, they did. The flavors were promising...but they were quickly thrown together with no artful melding. When I saw it I thought, ok...it’s burnt but maybe the taste will save it. Nope. What came to mind was inexperienced and bouvier attempts at real cuisine. I still liked the setting and the guy on guitar was decent, too, and the girl gave a good recommendation for the beer based on my preferences (only reason for the 2 stars). I would have let it go had my husband not gotten the pretentious reply to his review...(he put 5 stars initially but accurately reviewed the food and shared our experience upon leaving-see attached screenshot, he took it down after the snarky response he received; please also see the other review where it seems feedback would be accepted, not this time...) I too was on my motorcycle. It was broad daylight a little after 6 pm. The woman in her car was barreling up a business gravel drive (dust flying everywhere , perhaps her pregame was a little much), and almost hit my husband at the little bridge curve. He did NOT need to flash his lights. What I would suggest is the owners put up a sign at that curve to slow down and watch for people exiting. Instead he blamed the riders. Incredible! I had been talking the place up and this was my husband’s first visit. You guys blew it...You might want to think about a little customer recovery...

The food was delicious and the setting wonderful, but we had (and witnessed) some pretty weird actions by a young male staff member. He pressured members of our party to chug their beers before leaving rather than “waste” their drinks and made jokes about not serving members of the party who weren’t as good looking. It was very bizarre, rude, and fake-macho.

Luckily, the rest of the wait staff was wonderful and we still had a nice time. But that staff member is enough of a reason for me not to go back. I wouldn’t want anyone - let alone my date - to be talked to like that.

EDIT: Thank you! Of course it is your choice how to address this behavior, but I hope you can help/teach the young man what was problematic and how he can be better moving forward. My intention was not to “punish” him, but for you to know what happened so you could address it. From all the other reviews, and from our experience with all other wait staff, the standard of service and experience are clearly high and kind. Thank you for listening and we’ll try...

Yesterday was our first day trying out the new pizza set up. We ordered around 7pm, the “Rita pizza” and an order of wings. Our food was not ready until close to 9 pm. I went to check in around 8pm and they said they hadn’t even put the pizza together yet. This was insane to me for one pizza and one order of wings... 2 hours?! I have been to bald top multiple times and yesterday was a pretty slow day compared to what I’ve seen in the past, especially around the time we went. I’m not sure what the hold up was but we heard multiple people say the same thing about their food wait times.

With all that being said, I have always enjoyed my time at bald top and hope that this is something that will be corrected in the future or that it was just an off night. If not, the food trucks always worked well 🤷🏼‍♀️

I can’t give a bad rating for this one negative experience when I’ve had multiple good ones. Just some feedback...