Congregation Brewery & Cocina - Pasadena — Restaurant in Pasadena

I came here with my friend JL to undo everything we had just done at the Rose Bowl Loop Track on a Friday night. The parking lot is a bit wonky; there is only one entrance, off of Raymond, and the parking spaces are actually quite limited. Luckily for us someone was leaving when we pulled into the lot; otherwise we would have had to try to find street parking or parked at the public parking garage up the street.

You order at the counter by the bar, and they will give you a number. Then you find a seat and eventually they will bring your order out to you. This place is packed on Friday nights! We had to wander around for several rounds before we were finally able to grab two seats at a long table.

My friend got a glass of their Urban riesling, which she liked, while I went for their Reverend Nats "Revival" apple cider. I thought it was pretty good. They have an extensive beer list here so there are always new drinks to try out.

We decided to share two orders of fries. All fries come with two dipping sauces, which I thought was cool. We got the following: -- SWEET POTATO FRIES Can't go wrong with these. The sweet potato fries were really good, and paired especially well with the Sweet Chili & Sour Cream dipping sauce. I would definitely recommend that combination. -- GARLIC FRIES: Our house cut fries are fried to perfection then tossed on a house mixture of salt, cilantro and fresh garlic. Served with Saison cheddar sauce on the side. They gave us regular fries instead of garlic fries when they brought out our order, so I had to flag down the server to tell her the mistake. It took a while but eventually they brought out the garlic fries, except there was barely any garlic in the fries. They were just fries with some cilantro and maybe a couple pieces of garlic on them. We felt misled by these fries and would not recommend them. -- DIPPING SAUCES: Chipotle Mayo, Pesto Ranch, Sweet Chili & Sour Cream, Rosemary Garlic Mayo Like I mentioned before, I really liked the Sweet Chili and Sour Cream sauce with the sweet potato fries. The dipping sauce itself is really good, but that pairing is great. The Rosemary Garlic Mayo was also pretty good and I would definitely get that as my second dipping sauce next time. The Chipotle Mayo was just okay and the Pesto Ranch barely had any flavour so I will not be getting either of those again.

Congregation has a decent menu and I would not mind coming back to try some of their other food items. A couple at our table got one of their pizzas and it looked pretty good. My disappointment in the garlic fries does give me pause, however, and this venue is not a great place for conversation since it is so loud inside. It is a nice place however to just chill and drink (responsibly) with friends in the area. 3.5 stars...

TLDR: Food still okay, beer selection is good, service has plummeted. Party wanted to spend more money but unable to due to inattentive staff and clunky new system.

I used to love this place. I’ve been coming here with friends for years. The extremely causal vibe and the wide open tables made it the perfect place to meet friends after work, and for large parties. Ordering was always easy. One could walk up to the counter, put their order in, grab a number and their drink and then go sit down at a table. People could come and go as they pleased, join up with a group that was already there close out when they needed to without closing out the group. The kitchen was always open late and the food was delicious.

Unfortunately the move to table service is clunky and not fitting for a place like this. A place where people are meant to congregate.

Our latest experience was rough. We had heard from a friend that they had switched to table service and so my partner called ahead and reserved two tables for our party of 15.

When we arrived one of the tables was still occupied by other patrons that had been there for 3 hours. So we crammed our whole party into one table. We brought this to the attention of the staff and they assured us they would leave soon. There were other available tables.

We were given drink menus and discovered the food menus were available via qr code. No problems there but it took 20 minutes to put in our first drink order. Our other reserved table was still occupied at this time.

It was extremely unclear who our server was. We were announced to, twice, that a new server would be covering for us. Our second server never came out to take new orders. Our third server took our second round of drink orders about an hour and 15 minutes in.

It was impossible to order additional rounds of drinks. People from our party had to flag down a server to put in a drink order and we were given food and drinks we did not order.

A couple of friends joined later but were seated separately because our second reserved table was still occupied.

Over the 3 hours we sat at our table we accumulated a $350 bill for 15 people, food and drink. That’s pretty low in my opinion.

I personally had 2 beers and a burger and tots. I would have ordered more food and drinks if given the opportunity. Everyone in the party shared the same sentiment.

A friend of mine attempted to order a shot for me for my birthday but was told the bar was under new management and that was not possible so he didn’t bother. This was available in the past.

Going to hold off coming here in small parties or big parties. Unfortunately no longer on my list of regular spots unless the new system improves or goes back to the...

Happy hour all day Mondays!

After hanging around Pasadena during the day, my friends and I dropped by Congregation Ale House for their all day happy hour. I was surprised to find out that they had a nice big lot for us to park in, which is quite rare for most restaurants in the area. The best part was that we had a friend coming from the West side and it was a breeze for her to take the metro since there was a metro station walking distance in front of the restaurant!

Upon entering Congregation Ale House I immediately felt like I was in a cozy little cabin! There's stained glass windows behind the bar and cute beer handles decorated around the room. The menu itself lists all of the food items and a number of their beer, but for the full listing there's a board with each of the beers clearly listed.

For happy hour they have food items from $2-$6 and selected beer at $3. We went with three giant pretzels ($2/each) and sweet potato fries ($2) to share. I also ordered an IPA bratwurst ($6) served with peppers and onions. The food itself was probably the BEST happy hour food I've ever had. The giant pretzel was baked fresh from the oven and tasted great with the dijon mustard dipping sauce that it came with. The sweet potato fries were crispy and not overly fried, and the sriracha ketchup dipping sauce was absolutely addicting! The IPA bratwurst was tasty and I really could have ate another one of these before I left! As for drinks, we ordered about 5 different types of beers throughout the night and I was able to sample all of them, including tastings of the pear cider and a pumpkin flavored beer.

By the end of our night we couldn't stop raving about this place! There's really not many restaurants that serves such good affordable happy hour food and drinks, with excellent service! Our servers were quick with bringing our food and they consistently checked up on us throughout the night. I also found out that there's a Congregation Ale House about 15 minutes from my house, so it looks like I know where I'll be spending most of my happy...