Saucony Creek Franklin Station Brewpub — Restaurant in Reading

We found this place using Google AI prompting for a brew pub walking distance to a hotel along our travel route. What a find! We will be coming back. Yes like a 2 block walk from the Doubletree. The building is a refurbished train station. So the inside is really cool. High ceilings, station architecture - they did a nice job preserving the building. But enough of the building and on to beer and food. Problems with the keg cooling system so not too many beers on tap. But no matter, because they have their offerings in cans. We ordered the Hayzeey IPA, Saucony Creek Lager, and Unicorns Hazy IPA. The Hazeey has a light flair to it. You definitely taste the hops but not over powering. I found it really drinkable and at less than 7% you can have more than one! As an IPA fan I had to try the Unicorns IPA. The description lent itself to a heaviness that I was skeptical to try. But no, a fav for me! It’s a light IPA with nice flavor. I don’t mean light in the marketing sense of light but rather just not as heavy as I was expecting. Very tasty indeed! My husband had the lager which was a really nice drinkable beer. He had a few of those. Service was really fast and friendly and our waitress Mia was great! Live music now, Tres Hombres, and they are great. Music from The Monkees to the Foo Fighters! For dinner I had the Miyagi bowl - lots of food, totally splittable for 2. It came with a huge piece of tofu and an abundance of veggies. My hubby had the Turkey Rachel with fries. He described his sandwich as very good! And the fries were steakfries. Also very good. I took a pic of my dinner but only after I dug in and thought ooh I should post a pic of this. So please don’t judge the bowl by my partially eaten bowl. All in all a wonderful experience and a call out to the host. What a cool guy! Would love to package his look and aura! And final edit - what a really nice Women’s room: large, clean, and a variety of hand lotions and femininely products for use! This nicety has not...

We were served on the 18th of September at 5:45 pm. The host at the door was very friendly and sat us promptly. Upon being seated it took us 20min for a staff member, Marrisa (Melissa?), to come to our table to ask for drinks. Her first response was to apologize that she was seated with three tables simultaneously and was overwhelmed. Having worked in the service industry, I understood and said no problem. We placed our orders at this time, approximately 6pm.

Fast forward 30 more minutes, our drinks were refreshed and our appetizers came out. Great. A little lengthy but given the forewarning I understood completely.

Here is where the service took a turn for the worst. The waitress, who was overwhelmed to begin with, frequented our table every 20 to 30 minutes, promising our food to come out shortly. We waited and watched as others were served and the kitchen door turned ever so frequently.

Check in 5:35 pm, now approaching 815pm and 4 drinks later, agitation and annoyance had set in. Our food finally arrives close to 8:30pm. I promplty asked for this to go as I had only budgeted 2.5 hours of time to be in here total with prior obligations. The bill was a thick $86 for 4 drinks, an app consisting of 4 meatballs and food that was 2 and a half hours late. The waitress apologized and said they were not prepared for the crowd. Panning my head around and given the current pandemic restrictions, there were 4 other groups in the etablishment, i scratched my head confusingly. I tipped her fairly as clearly this was not her fault.

This was a Friday night, unacceptable for an establishment that, although has good beer, charges $20 for a piece of bread with grilled chicken on it.

I hope some remedy is in order. This is piss poor service and...

Well here we go. The place had plenty open seats. The host asked if we had a reservation. We said no, than the next question wad if we have a preference. The host was very nice and friendly,cescorted us to our table and stated that someone would be with us shortly. About 5 min later a young waiter showed up, atating welcome to....etc left the menus and dissapeared. Even the chairs are compfy...the sun was just setting and 3 out of the 4 seats had the sun shining in, just in the right angle so reading the menu was nearly impossible. As the waiter showed up, he saw the blinding, asked for our drink selection and said, well yes its the time of the day. Wait about 30min and the sun is gone, and he left with that. After returning with tge beverages, we asked about the very small menu . He replied, that, oh yes this is a limited menu because of the event in the Arena. Ok understandable. I was watching the food, which was served, the sampler looked dark and wax more an apperatizer than a meal, we elected the Brats on bed of yukon potatos. Well we fould about 4 to 6 cubes of potatoes barely any mustard on the brats. Taste wise the brats were very tasty, apecially the one with cheese, however pricewise I think overpriced. I posted a copy of the menu and 2 of the brats dishes. I understand, that you would like fast service if you expect a full house is a rush, but how about a carving station for Roastbeef and Ham, quick, easy and fast. Best of all nice show. Overall, I certainly will say, that it was a flavourful dinner, would I get out of the way or plan to come for dinner? Sadly not really. If you like to eat something, that you wont get someplace else, pleaee stop in for the experience, the food is flavourful, just the portions are not...