Gritty McDuff's Brew Pub — Restaurant in Portland

I was pretty disappointed at my last visit at Grittys. My boyfriend and I went for an early dinner about 4pm and it was not busy on this afternoon. We ordered a beer and a cape cod. After waiting at least 10 minutes and wondering where our drinks were, the waiter came back to the table and said he forgot what we ordered. So we told him again and continued to wait about 10 more minutes. At this point we decided to get up and leave, there is no shortage of places in the old port to get something to drink and eat. As we started to get up a woman who might have been a manager came to our table and asked if the man whatever his name was had taken our drink order. I said yes and we've been sitting here for about 20 minutes now. She said please stay I'll be right back with your drinks. So we stayed and a few minutes later she came back with the drinks. She quickly put the drinks on the table and walked away, not even bothering to ask if we wanted to order any food. I noticed our first waiter was now sitting at the table next to ours with a group of people, and he continued to sit at that table for the rest of our time at Grittys- which was about another two hours incidentally. Assuming our first waiter was finished with his shift since he was now drinking at the table next to us, we had to waive over the waitress who brought the drinks over to ask if we could order some food off the menu.

We ordered a chicken stacker sandwich and pulled pork sweet potato fries (which I noticed the sandwich is $2.00 more than it was last week so the prices have increased). The chicken stacker sandwich and fries that came with it were overcooked. I ate it anyway because I hate to complain and send food back because I'm afraid of what will happen to the food when it comes back to me. Probably an unnecessary fear but you never know. The pulled pork sweet potato fries, however, were completely black and burnt underneath the cheese that was on top. It was inedible- we had to send it back. By the time we could waive the waitress over to bring it to her attention (I cant believe they tried to serve it to us in the first place) my meal was already eaten. She gave us attitude about it, like how dare we complain about these black fries covered in cheese. The second pulled pork fries was much better. At this point our quick dinner had turned into a 2-2.5 hour ordeal. After finishing all of the food, the waitress came over and asked if we wanted anything else. We said no just get the check, at this point we just wanted to get out of there because of all the waiting. After waiting about 10 more minutes for the check, the waitress came back to the table and asked if we needed anything else, without the check. I was like um you already came over and asked us that 10 minutes ago, we've been sitting here waiting for the check. All the waiting was just ridiculous, it was early on a Friday and it was not busy. All of the wait staff were sitting at tables talking to patrons and just standing around chatting with each other. I'll go elsewhere...

While the food was very good, we had a very rough experience last week. The waitress took all of our ID's and took them to the bartender to check them. Afterwards she brought some back and didn't bring the others and said "we are going to keep these let me know if there are any discrepancies." Which we just thought meant they were going to have the manager check them because they are out of state ID's. She has now taken everyone's order but still haven't brought the two drinks in which we asked "are we going to get our ID's back and are we going to get our drinks?" And she replied "well, they are fake." So the bartender has the ID's in his pocket and I walk over and explain that the ID's are real and we need them back to be able to get on the plane whether or not they want to serve us. He refuses to return the ID's to us. So we continue to say we need the ID's back and we will leave the restaurant all together and he agrees. Well we are all starving and when I go back to the table, the family asks if I will go talk and see if we can stay if they don't drink because our food should be coming out pretty soon. So I go back up to the bartender, who has now retrieved the ID book that has all state IDs in it, and I say is there any way we can stay and eat because we would rather not go wait somewhere else. The bartender says yes, but can you bring those IDs back. So I grab the IDs and he looks at them in the book and then says "oh they are not fake, you guys can drink." So-while this experience sucked our waitress then came up and said "so would you guys like me to ring in your food now that that's figured out. We ended up waiting around an hour for food, and not a single person came to the table to apologize about the situation-which i would expect from a manager... then they were out of lobster... so overall, the customer service that night really ruined the taste...

Had a quick visit here. We originally came in through the basement bar entrance not even realizing there was a another whole floor. LOL The basement bar is accessed from the backside alley the main bar entrance is on the main street side.

The lower bar was kinda cool. Not much bigger than a some waiting areas for a larger restaurant. The bar is tucked in a corner with a see through window wall giving view to the brewery tanks. Bar seats 6 to 8. And there's a few other high top deuces and maybe one four top. So maybe 20 total. Real cool to stop in for pop or two.

The upstairs bar seats many more plus there are two other rooms with a combination of long communal tables and traditional 2/4 top tables and high tops. It was seat yourself during the mid afternoon when we arrived.

The beer menu had a good mix of styles a pale ale, a summer, a stout, plus a few of their regular flagship styles. One thing to note if you're not into craft beer the options are limited. I had one of their own- Vic's Secret, a Session NE IPA and enjoyed it.

We only had a quick bite of boneless wings and some cups of chowder and chili. The chowder was very flavorful and not too thick. It was a little lean on seafood though. The chili was meaty and tasty. The buffalo tenders were tender and a decent size order for sharing with 2 to 3 people. They had a nice tang to them. I enjoy a more spicy buffalo so I would say they were on the mild side heat wise.

We saw some sandwiches get delivered to another table that looked very filling.

If I was back in the area I'd stop in again to try more beer and some other...