Benders Bar And Grill — Restaurant in Salem Lakes

I'm writing this review more to help others with forming a vision for what the Bender's experience is about. We live about 30 minutes north and were looking for a new place to try. It was a Friday night about a month ago. Got there at 6:15pm, expecting it to be a packed "fish fry" night kind of deal - based upon what I read in other reviews. There was 1 bartender, 1 cook, and about a dozen people sitting at the bar, and I saw none of them eating. Probably 12-15 tables there, and all were completely empty. Took over 5 minutes to get the bartender to acknowledge us, as we felt the need to ask if table service was even going to be OK with her. She said it was, so we sat at a table. As we waited, it took a good while, I expressed to my wife that we could leave if she liked (as this new place was my "surprise" to her), because the fact that I saw nobody else getting a fish fry or any food at all, for that matter, this had me concerned about what the quality of the food would be. Bartender eventually took our drink and then food orders, and we weren't in any kind of hurry, so I'm not complaining about the time it took - but I could see if she actually had a bunch of tables going, it would have gotten to the point of ridiculous very quickly. So, seeing that this kitchen wasn't slinging out tons of fish, I made the decision to order "not fish", LOL, but my wife was in the mood for fish no matter what. The fish was essentially average, not terrible, but certainly not great, and I have no doubt that the lack of fish leaving that kitchen had a negative effect on the quality. I ordered the Torito = basically a steak burrito covered in mozzarella, ham and bacon, with habanero salsa - sounds a bit ridiculous, but it actually works, LOL. My Torito was decent, but I could tell the burrito itself was most likely prepared in advance and then warmed up when the dish was assembled and the cheese melted on top, as it wasn't evenly warm throughout the center. It could have certainly been better/fresher. I could have easily made this a 2 or 3 star review, but chose 4 because I don't feel like Bender's deserves that overall, and because a good part of our disappointment was due to the inaccurate expectation created by the reviews I saw here - so I'm hoping to create a more accurate expectation, which is that Bender's (at least to me) seems like more of a drinking (and probably music) place than a restaurant/eating place. But keep in mind this was after just one visit - but albeit a visit from 6:15-8:15pm on a Friday night, at what we expected was a "fish fry place", in Wisconsin. And even as it got past 7pm, and a few more people shuffled in, we saw some food being served to patrons at the bar - but food was visibly not a busy part of their...

It’s fine if you don’t mind paying $12 for a mediocre, regular-sized margarita. No drink menu was available to verify prices beforehand-you wouldn’t expect to have to ask for the prices while ordering to be sure to not end up getting ripped off that badly. Long Islands are also in regular sized glasses and taste like soda water for the same price. Not to mention not being able to order with light ice. Paying more for a single low-end drink than a whole meal doesn’t make sense. It also would’ve been nice to have known about the 3.5% up charge for paying with a credit card before paying the bill vs. after the fact as well. Would go back, but only for food unless they make the prices more...

Tried Benders fish fry. The fish was ok, nothing to bring me back, basic bar fish fry. My wife and I each had the combo fish plate, with fried cod and walleye. My plate had 1 walleye fillet and a nice amount of cod sticks. My wife's plate had 2 full walleye fillets and a nice amount of cod sticks. The walleye was not sweet tasting like high end walleye normally is. Unfortunately, the portion size was not equal. Now on the other hand, we had their pizza and that was pretty good. Would go back for pizza but probably not the fish. Please be aware, Benders charges a 3% surcharge for paying with credit card. This was a surprise seeing we did not see and notification of this. We could have...