Backwoods Brewing Company — Restaurant in Portland

Tldr: great potential but terrible service that kept getting worse.

I had similar experience to Dan. I visited 20 different breweries and restaurants over a 3 day period. This place was the only bad experience of the whole trip. This place has so much potential but the service will definitely kill it unless management does something about it. Walked in and loved the decor with the live music, the metal art, logging saws, etc. I even was going to buy a tshirt as I love the outdoors. When we got seated, we ordered beer and got it in fair amount of time. My friends ordered chicken wings and nachos to share. I was hungrier so I ordered the beef brisket sandwich. My friends' food came within 2 minutes of order. Strange that it took 2 minutes to whip but it came hot so no issue there. 5 minutes later they bring the same wings and nachos to the table beside us. They ordered before we did as well. So I'm pretty certain they mixed up the tables. We sat near the kitchen so I can see the food pass from where I'm sitting. I see the kitchen put up a beef sandwich. I expect it to be brought within a few minutes. I see 3 different serving staff walk by the food into the kitchen and nobody bats an eye. 5 minutes later I see one of the servers talk to the kitchen and started touching the fries. Nobody does anything about it and just ignores the food for another 5 minutes. During this 15 minutes of my food being put up, nobody is even in our area that I can speak to. Well when the server finally comes to our table, I said that I did not get my meal and that I didn't want it anymore as my friends have finished eating and also I don't want them waiting 20 minutes for the food to be made and for me to eat it. So we just ask for the bill. No apologies or trying to make amends. The server does try to bring the 20 minute sitting in the window, cold burger and fries to the table and asked if I still wanted it. Bit of an insult to pass off cold food and have me pay full price. We wait a full 15 minutes to get our bill... The burger gets taken off the bill as "long wait". We put cash on the table in plain view...server doesn't check in for another 15 minutes. So now it's been 30 minutes since asking for the bill and getting change. Finally we get change and leave. I went to little big burger instead for my meal. So all in all this was one of my worst restaurant experiences in my life. I'll make sure to tell others to avoid this...

Backwoods was a good but a bit strange experience. We came after going to Deschutes which is right across the street. We tried every single beer on tap from backwoods and I have to say most of them were top notch. I very much enjoyed the Out For Blood chocolate vanilla blood orange beer, that was absolutely my favorite. The service was great at first, our server even brought us out the 13th beer since we got 2 flights of 6 and had to pick one to take off. Yay!

Now we get to ordering food, we order the impossible burger to share. We were very excited! Our server comes to tell us the burger will be half an hour to an hour to make because they are out of them. I presume this to mean that it's frozen and they didn't have any thawed, or that the kitchen just didn't want to make it. When we said we might wait that time, the server walked back to the kitchen and seemingly told that to the kitchen. However, trying to not be 'difficult' we changed our order to a vegan loaded tot-chos. This is where the what I call 'vegan drama' got a little more intense. We were not sitting far from the kitchen window, and I could see the server put in our order for the tot-chos and then go and give the kitchen a thumbs up. Seemingly as though to say "I saved you from having to cook a vegan burger" of course I don't know for sure that's what he meant, that's just what it feels like when someone tells you they'll be 'out of something' only for the 30-60 minutes you are there, then gives the kitchen a thumbs up when you order something else. The server proceeds to tell the kitchen what vegan means loudly through the window. Appreciated, but a strange scene to witness. I wish I had been further from the kitchen window so as not to hear/see all of this go down, it was pretty uncomfortable.

The tot-chos came out with a bunch of good stuff on them and they were delicious, crunchy and topped with all kinds of veggies. Overall though, if you are vegan I reccomend getting the beer and going somewhere else for food. There are much more accommodating places elsewhere in Portland. It was a nice place, but a...

Ordered delivery to our hotel at almost 9 pm when our original order at a different restaurant said it was delivered, but it really wasn't. Appreciate that they were able to accept our order so late.

First off, I want to say that I almost never order salads because 1. If I'm traveling, I would want to try whatever food that that city is popular for 2. If I'm at home, I feel like I could just make the salad myself. But the salads at Backwoods are next level. They are combos that you wouldn't really think of (though now I may try to steal their recipes). And you probably wouldn't even think to order a salad at a brewery! You would normally order a burger and fries, or some pub food - but don't sleep on the salads, people! We ordered the NW Fiesta Salad (mixed greens, tortilla strips, black bean and corn salsa, red onions, pico, cheese and avocado, jalapeño lime ranch) and Trail Grazer Salad (Italian kale, organic quinoa, tomatoes, cucumbers, banana peppers and house made candy walnuts, citrus vinaigrette and garnished with cotija cheese and balsamic reduction). Both salads were great, but we ordered the entree version (I guess because we were trying to be ambitious and eat our greens on this trip) so unfortunately, we couldn't finish it all - which by the way, the entree sizes are HUGE! So if you are two, or maybe even three people, you could share one as a starter.

We also ordered the Cuban Sandwich (pulled pork, pastrami, Swiss cheese and pickles with mayonaise and mustard on Bianco bread) because we thought we needed carbs - again, I didn't realize how large those salads actually were. This was an interesting take on the cuban but I didn't care for it. It tasted mostly like pastrami, and the bread was floppy, but I don't know if that is a take out issue or if that's just how their bread is. It does come with tater tots though (and lots of ‘em) so at least there’s that.

Wish I got to try their beer, if it's as good as...