Firehouse Brewing Company — Restaurant in Rapid City

If I could give this place a zero, I would. Kinda disappointing when you consider we have been here many times in the past with our family on vacations to the Black Hills and stopping in Rapid City to eat here. It was our favorite restaurant in RC. But that changed today. There weren't many people inside the restaurant or outside in the seating area. So it should have been a quick meal. But no. We were seated upstairs, away from the lively vibe that greeted us upon arriving at the restaurant. It was very dark and quiet, almost like an attic, we took our seats upstairs. There was only one other couple up there with us. Our waitress was slow to arrive and greet us. We ordered our drinks, and I remembered they made their own root beer here, so that's what I ordered. When I got my drink, I noticed it tasted awful, very bitter and sour, and there was no taste of root beer at all. So I sent it back and got a Dr. Pepper instead. My daughter's drink wasn't much better but she said it was alright so she kept it. Our meals arrived. I got beer cheese soup and a reuben sandwich, my daughter got the bison lasagna and my husband a burger. My soup was disgusting! Bitter, watered down ( not creamy like it's supposed to be) with NO cheese taste at all. My daughter's pasta dish was overfilled with dry, no flavor bison meat and no sauce. She didn't get lasagna. What she got was a large stuffed shell, not lasagna. No pasta sauce and tons of bitter, over cooked cheese. It was gross. My husband's burger didn't have much hope either. The hamburger bun was dry, day old, and stale. The burger was dry with no flavor, and the toppings looked like they were plucked out of the garbage. Wilted and mushy. His fries were undercooked and tasted of oil. Yuck! We were so disgusted we just wanted to leave, so we got the check and left. We're never ever going to go back after that horrible experience. Our meal cost $125. OMG! Not worth it for the terrible food we got! Would have rather gone to McDonald. at least you know what you're paying for. Firehouse Brewing Company restaurant has gone in the gutter with no hope of getting out, and that's a shame considering how iconic they were...

Few vegetarian options and less flexibility with flights.

We've gone to the Firehouse Brewery since they opened and over the years their brews and food have been highly variable. There have been none which we found to be particularly memorable. They did have a signature "Porter Float" which was like a root beer float made with a Porter that was very tasty, so much so that we went there while visiting Rapid City only to find it had been replaced with a beer wort shake.

We thought we'd try it out and have some food and a flight of brews to go with it.

Most places when you order a flight the customer can choose which brews to sample. Not so at this place. Here you can get a flight of the first 5 on the menu or all 9. That works if you like every type of brew in the first 5 but not if you don't. In our case 3 out of 5 is not good enough, so we skipped it. Having to order 2 out of 5 brews of a type we know we don't like so we may have the privilege of trying the other 3 because of the rigidity of their internal rule does not make for a satisfying experience.

Their beer cheese soup has a meat broth stock so we skipped it. There were a couple of vegetarian options such as a black bean burger and of course the perennial salad. Ultimately we got an order of beer bread with our "shake".

The bread was tasty. The shake made with beer wort was rather non-descript, like a vanilla shake with a weakly favored swirll drizzled on the interior of the glass before the shake was dispensed or poured in. Our waitress even tried adding some Porter to it which helped but the old favorite was not to be found.

The Firehouse Brewery was a novelty when it opened. Now there are multiple microbreweries in the area. We're less inclined to return. If they weren't so stupid about restricting how customers can order a flight of brews we'd consider revisiting them even with a paltry selection vegetarian options on the menu. Under present circumstances nothing there is particularly welcoming to us and there are other places in the...

Driving from Sioux Falls we kept seeing billboard after billboard and old fire trucks lining I-90 advertising this place. Has to be good if you’re spending all that money, right? We arrived at 9:10 PM tonight, Saturday, and see they close at 10. Still plenty early for most places. We walk in and are sort of greeted by a young blonde behind the hostess stand. Most like surprised her since she had her head buried in her phone. She ask how many, 2, and inside or out. Inside. There was a high top table right next to her. She grabbed 2 menus and said, I guess you can sit here and threw the menus on the table, turned, sat in her chair with her back mostly to us and buried her head in her phone again. Yeah, she is glad we stopped in. I looked at the table. Not only was it not clean, there was only one chair at the table. The table next to that was also open, had 2 chair but was even dirtier. So we’re the next two after that. We looked around and every empty table was very dirty. It old the “hostess” that the table is dirty and there is only one chair. I said, in fact these are all dirty. She said, oh, grad a filthy rag out of a bucket of water and slopped in around the table, leaving it very wet and still dirty. She threw the menus back on the table, turned her back, sat back in her chair and buried her head in her phone. We sat down dumbfounded. The bartender saw us but looked away as soon as we made eye contact. At this point it was obvious we weren’t going to get any kind of decent service. I made eye contact again with the bartender but she immediately looked away. So, we got up and left. No reason to stay in a place where it is made obvious they don’t want you there. All for the best, the place was filthy. They should probably take some of that advertising budget and spend it on training their staff and hiring a...