Oak Creek Brewery and Grill — Restaurant in Sedona

This place was disappointing from the very start. Right away, our greeter was on his phone and wasn’t off his phone the entire time he brought us to our seats. We were brought water, and started with the mac and cheese and pretzels for our appetizers. When asked about a life threatening egg allergy that pertained to the Mac and cheese, our server was extremely hesitant to check with the kitchen and only went off what she thought it was. Not only was she abrasive to this, but she was also extremely unwelcoming and rude about my allergy question. I doubt she even checked, as she didn’t tend to anyone else and was later seen eating food with other team members in the dining area. When we got our food, we were THOROUGHLY underwhelmed. The mac and cheese did not have what it said it had on the menu. We instead got basic pasta with cheese melted on it. Plainly put, it sucked, and was the most low effort version of a mac and cheese I’ve ever had. The pretzels as well were disappointing and clearly packaged and microwaved. Maybe from Costco? Not to mention the cheese that was disgusting and tasted old. All of it was sprinkled with this parmesan that I’ve seen at Frys. It was low effort and basic. After this abhorrent first impression, my girlfriend and I decided to leave. We had already ordered the fish and chips and a burger, and said that we wanted to cancel our order and pay for the appetizers that we got. Unfortunately, our food had already gotten to us before we could find our server to request this. We were extremely disappointed with our experience with the appetizers, and we decided that if the food was ANYTHING like the appetizers, we were better off finding dinner somewhere else and not wasting our time with the main dishes. The server, from earlier, was incredibly disrespectful to my girlfriend, and didn’t understand why we wanted to just pay for the appetizers we had eaten and leave. The server did not let us take the food off our bill and still made us pay for it and take it. The server claimed there were no other options, and we would have to pay for it whether we took the food or not. When we asked to speak to a manger, we were told that there was not a manager onsite. What kind of place doesn’t have a manager during open hours? That is terrible management and obviously leads to disrespectful staff and terrible treatment of customers. I am incredibly displeased with our experience at the Oak Creek Brewery and Grill. There is zero surprise as to why the place was sparse and poorly staffed.

In response to the restaurant’s comment: You did NOT do everything to accommodate my allergy. How is your server guessing on if the food has an allergen safe to a guest or anyone seeking to purchase from this establishment? We seemed to inconvenience the server by asking if our food had the allergen I was worried about. We clearly shared our complaints with the server, and instead of being understanding and accepting of our complaint, she was outright disrespectful and fought us on what we said. The management team is a joke, and obviously isn’t present within the restaurant; as there wasn’t a manger on duty during open hours. This is despite us being at the restaurant 3-4 hours before closing. The restaurant is unable to take criticism about very clear issues that is struggling with. The restaurant frequently discredits and undermines other comments as well, despite many of them saying the exact same things as other comments Don’t waste your time...

Food and drinks were decent, service was not great.

Pros: My Favorite pizza was tasty, the brie adds a great flavor to the already delicious pizza and crispy crust. The pork chop was good, the bourbon sauce on it was delicious. The Apple crisp was underwhelming, but the vanilla ice cream it was served with made up for it. The menu has a great variety with interesting dishes, which really appealed to us. The Ruta 22 Malbec was good, the beer flight was only ok.

Cons: Beer flight was only ok. Service was super... interesting... and left us confused. Starting with the hostess- a lady who was not friendly (we expect that now in this area, so not a big deal), but she seemed extremely flustered and unable to handle the amount of customers coming in. It didn’t seem like a ton of customers to us (I’ve worked in the service industry about 15 years), about a 15 minute wait, but if you can’t handle that with poise you probably should not be in the service industry.

Our server was “off” from the very beginning. First, I politely ask for a napkin and explain there’s beer on half our table from before the curt hostess set our menus down (on the spill), and water on the other half of the table (I’m still super friendly at this point despite weird host service because I’ve dealt with bad customers on a bad day before and I don’t want to put that energy into our experience). The server mumbles something, takes our drink order, then mumbles something about girls who were sitting there earlier when they weren’t supposed to. She then walks off leaving us in slight confusion, comes back shortly, and-I kid you not- half wipes the water part of the wet table and leaves the beer spill on the table, as if she were looking into the great beyond instead of what she was wiping. I ended up grabbing napkins from the table of guests who just left to wipe up our table.

The rest of the service was slow and our server left us laughing in disbelief because her behavior was so odd. I think she would have done a lot better with 4 tables instead of the 7 she had. Again, flustered and seemingly unable to handle the crowd. Everybody else (including bussers) who dropped off our food, cleared our table, and filled our water was awesome and we kept saying we wish we had them as our server. I even watched other customers try to get our server’s attention and get flustered after they were unheard or ignored. Lastly, we heard something fall near the server station, and watched our server pick up from the floor an empty water pitcher and place it back on the shelf where the rest of the water pitchers were. I’m not super disgusted by stuff like that but it had to have been against regulation.

As much as I liked my food and wine, I would not recommend this place to people I care about. 4 for food, 2...

We are so disappointed to have wasted a dinner here. I think the best way to describe Oak Creek is that there is no pride in what they do. We visit a TON of breweries everywhere we travel to, and there is always a sense of pride from start to finish. You can tell there is passion behind the business from ALL staff members. That was completely lacking here and it could be felt throughout the entire visit.

When we first arrived, the hostess was laying down in a booth looking at her phone. She barely greeted us then sat us outside. When we left, she and friend were still laying in the booth - legs in the walkway, staring at their phones with piles of napkins and silverware around them that they clearly should've been working on, but weren't.

The small covered patio was empty, which we felt we had lucked out on, but soon realized it's because there was zero airflow and was suffocatingly hot. They could benefit from a couple overhead fans out there since so much of the year is hot weather and most other restaurants have some kind of accommodation to assist in that. We moved inside, which our waiter was very friendly about it.

He recommended the burgers - said they were top notch and REALLY good - obviously we'd take his word for it, but soon regretted that decision. I ordered the BBQ burger with a side salad and I really wish I had taken a picture of it when it came out. My husband immediately said "SERIOUSLY...?" when he saw it. And all I can say is it was the saddest burger you'd ever see. Zero pride. Zero creativity. Zero care on presentation. Just an open faced, plain yet somehow still sloppy burger on a massive, empty plate. The "crispy onions" were shriveled, cold, stale and anything but crispy - they'd definitely been sitting out all day. It wasn't the worst tasting burger I'd ever had but by the last few bites it was really dry and flavorless. For what I paid to get it...sheesh, at least make it LOOK like it's worth the price.

The beer was mediocre - we tried the flight so we could attest to each one. The amber was probably the best, then the hefe - definitely squeeze the lemon in there though.

When we left, we used the restrooms and on our way, started noticing that literally in ever corner, nook and cranny of the restaurant there were piles of junk. Old carpet rolled up. Boxes of...stuff? Stacks of seemingly broken chairs. Garbage. No rhyme or reason, just like they ran out of space for things and don't care to deal with it. That's when we realized there was simply no sense of pride in the establishment and were so sad to have wasted a dinner out here.

$85 later for two sad burgers, one beer, and a flight? Save your money and...