McMenamins Thompson Brewery & Public House — Restaurant in Salem

If you have time to kill, this is a great place to do it. Both because the food is good, and because it will take a really, really long time to get it.

The wait staff is always very friendly and competent, but extremely slow. the last time we went here, it took about 45 minutes to get drinks and put in our order. This was verifiably due to staffing issues, though I think the typical slow service we encounter is a deliberate choice by the restaurant - maybe to provide a more relaxed atmosphere. This isn't unique to this specific McMenamins location - I've been to at least 10 of their locations and saw the same thing in all of them - good food, friendly and competent staff, with very slow service.

This particular location used to be a farm house. It's a little funky on the inside due to this, with a bunch of small dining areas in the various rooms of the house, with some seating upstairs and some downstairs. This keeps it pretty quiet even if it's moderately busy. There's a good amount of outdoor seating as well. The size and relative isolation of the various seating areas might contribute to the slow service - takes a while to get from room to room...

The food is sort of generic NW fare with lots of options for people with specific dietary restrictions. They also serve a lot of specialty drinks that are difficult to find other places since they are the brewers/distillers. If you have a specific alcoholic beverage you particularly enjoy, you can purchase a...

I really wanted to like this place, and I almost did. The food was good, the place is really charming, the guy who sat us (with the ponytail) was really nice, but our waiter was really rude.

It took him 15 minutes to come take our drink order and by that time we knew what we wanted to eat, but he just said, 'I'm not doing that right now'. Then another 10 minutes he dropped our waters, 10 more for our actual drinks and THEN he would take our order. My friend got a drink from the bar that had almost no alcohol in it so we had to pay their outrageous prices for another one with extra shots so it was twice as expensive.

I finally asked if he was super busy because he was being so rude, but we have all worked service positions so while I couldn't understand him not saying 'I'm sorry' or explaining anything I really wanted to like this place. He said they were a small place only two on staff so he was cooking and tending bar and taking orders, so I tried to cut him some slack, but he was rude twice more to my husband when we were trying to get the check and pay him so we could leave.

The McMenamins idea is great, the place is beautiful and charming and the food is good, but either hire more help or learn to talk to people like you actually want them sitting there in the 2 seconds worth of time you do have to make eye contact with...

Mediocre at best! Met my sister at this location for dinner and waited over twenty minutes for a beer. My sister arrived and when the server came to our table we let her know we were ready to order our food. She asked if we wanted anything to drink, so my sister ordered a drink and she said she would be right back to take our food order. The server came back over twenty minutes later with my sisters lemon drop and asked for our order. After a half an hour passed we still hadn’t gotten our food, so my sister went up to the bar and asked the bar tender if he could come to our table and check on our food. The bartender came to our table, took our next drink order, and came back promptly with our drinks and food. When we received our food our salad was wilted and our tots were cold. Ten minutes later our sever came to the table and asked if we needed anything else, and I told her I wanted to place an order to go. The waitress told us she needed to close a ticket and she’d be right back, but she didn’t come back for over twenty minutes again. Finally, she came back and said she would ASAP my to go order, but we ended up waiting for nearly twenty minutes again. Definitely will not be back to visit this location. We frequent the Liberty street location, so if you want good service don’t come here and visit the Liberty street...