Noggin Room Pub — Restaurant in Petoskey

Sorry to say, post pandemic, things have changed here. The menu is smaller/simpler, the service/training has slipped (I’m sure due to labor issues related to the pandemic). Buffalo chicken dip everything but chicken. Fish and Chips were fine. The pizza was lacking however.

One last issue was that when I requested a beer in the mug that I had earned some time ago by purchasing over $400 of various beers offered, I was told that the Beer Mug Program’” had been fazed out. The manager indicated that customers were notified by Facebook sometime last year. We don’t subscribe to Facebook. And we visited Stafford’s twice last year while it was upstairs and weren’t notified of this. Apparently, unclaimed mugs were destroyed. This is certainly not the end of the world for me. But, I’m disappointed.

12/23/23- Back again to see if things have improved since our last visit and the announcement of the Smith family selling the whole Stafford’s enterprise. This evening Sara took care of us in the dining room. Tonight we had the Perry Bib Salad with Chicken and French Dip, along with a couple of adult beverages. We found the service to rate 9/10, the food 8/10, prices 7/10, overall value 8/10, the ambience/atmosphere rated 6/10. Christmas Spirit was definitely missing, with very little festive decor. However, Sara did a great job of taking and delivering our food and beverages. The food was up to “normal” Stafford’s standards. We were disappointed to see that a relatively new policy tacks on a 3% service fee when using a credit card; seems inflationary to me. Plus, when we inquired about purchasing a Stafford’s Gift Card for out-of-town guests coming in from California, we discovered there was a new surcharge added to the cost of the purchase of the gift card for use on THEIR property! That seems unusual; something that we’ve not encountered elsewhere. So, I guess I’m still disappointed. Most likely, won’t...

Three of our group of 9 ordered the “summer berry salad” that was a whopping $18 (which is a lot for a salad with no meat - from my experience. Chicken was a whopping $10 additional cost if desired) It was supposed to be “mixed greens” with feta, blueberries, strawberries, candied pecans, and a blueberry vinaigrette. We waited quite a long time for our food.

When the food came finally, the three of us received a large bowl of small leaf lettuce. Literally. I counted THREE blueberries in mine. And ONE single strawberry sliced in half. The feta and candied pecans? No where to be found. For an EIGHTEEN dollar salad. 🙃 We asked why there was virtually nothing in the bowl besides lettuce, and stated that some ingredients were missing. Also, summer berry salads usually include the mixed greens/spinach. Not just lettuce. They were taken back to the kitchen and returned. They did have more toppings, but again, for an $18 salad it was still fairly light on the toppings and was only lettuce as the base. The vinaigrette was very good. We wanted to change our order because it was so bad, but it would have taken another long wait period and everyone in our party was already eating. So - fair warning, I would skip the salads!

Others in our group said they enjoyed the other things, and they really liked the sweet potato...

Went in for a birthday dinner on April 4th. I had to catch our waitress's attention for everything... We didn't even get asked if refills were needed. Our drinks were down to the ice level on our second basket of popcorn, way before the pizzas came out. We ordered a pizza to go and it came out with our other pizzas instead of closer to when we left so we had to sit it on an extra chair. We were the only customers when we came in and then a few families entered mid-dinner so she wasn't overwhelmed. Lastly... the bacon pickle pizza is listed at $16.95 on their maps menu and we were charged $25, times two pizzas ordered... I wish the waitress had let us know it would cost more when I asked if that pizza was still being made and pointed to it... the other pizza was the Margherita and was told theirs was the driest, most disappointing pizza they've ever had. The cheese curds were the only thing we enjoyed about the outing. Will never recommend eating...