Fred's Rivertown Alehouse — Restaurant in Snohomish

I’m embarrassed to say I took my out of town family here for what was supposed to be an enjoyable dinner. First off, it took about 10 minutes for anyone to acknowledge our party of 6, finally a girl came over and asked if we had ‘drinks on the way’ no ‘hello’, no ‘how are you’, no nothing and no, we did not have drinks on the way. My brother-in-law ordered a burger and asked if he could sub onion rings for fries for an additional cost and the waitress flat out said no. Keep in mind that onion rings are on the menu so why the hell isn’t this possible? It’s simple math, just charge us the difference in price and give him the onion rings, we were willing to pay however much.

To make matters worse, 5 out of 6 people got violently ill after eating at Fred’s. The only person who did not get sick was the person who only drank and did not eat the food. I called the manager to express my concerns and he didn't seem to be very concerned nor was he sincerely apologetic. Now I've never been a restaurant manager before, but I would think that this is when you assure the customer that you will look into the matter, or that this has never happened before, and that you will do everything you can to make sure that this doesn't happen again. Instead, he completely blew my concerns off saying that ‘food poisoning is very rare and we probably contracted a stomach virus’. I call BS on this, I know we have no way to prove we got sick from eating here but some sympathy would be nice. I wasn't calling to blame them, but to warn them so that no one else gets sick. The manager didn't even say he hoped everyone was okay; he expressed no concern for our situation. Bottom line is we all ate pretty similar food (burgers/fries) and we all got sick that evening. The person who did not eat the food was fine and the young babies at home did not get sick (who did not...

We love Fred's, there is a really great selection of rotating beers, the Scotch wall is fun to sample from, the Asian nachos are awesome. We are in a fair amount, after work, on a date night. The atmosphere is great, comfortable but somehow classy.

With that said, the service is sometimes very slow and over the last year has been declining. But our last experience was really disappointing and insulting, which is sad, because we love the place.

We ordered our beers and the Asian nachos. They arrived and we tucked in. Good as always, but the center, as we ate, was cold, cheese unmelted, meat cold to the touch. Whatever, it happens, we know how Nachos are made, we've worked food service. We ate around the cold center and kept an eye out for the staff, who never checked in even though it wasn't particularly busy, but this is also an accepted/normal part of the experience at Fred's. We got our beer, we had food, we could talk, who cares? The bartender finally checked in, and we asked if the plate could be nuked, and for a box just incase we didn't finish. We were neutral about it, not asking for more/free anything.

Wife goes to the bathroom, and overhears cook and bartender talking about her in the kitchen: "Well, they didn't have any problem eating it." "You'd think they would have said something before they ate the whole thing." She called them out on it. They comped the nachos, which wasn't really what we wanted or needed. The bartender told us that banter was part of the job, and that if it had been her, she would have just "laughed about it." No one likes to hear someone talking about them. Despite an apology; we left with a pretty nasty taste in our mouth. Might be awhile...

We came in for dinner at about 630 on a Saturday night, so we were expecting it to be busy. We were a table of four and it took over a half hour and multiple reminders to get our appetizer out, and when we got it, it was obvious it has been sitting in a holding area of some kind for a while, as the pretzels were dry and had a very tough exterior and the cheese dip had a thick firm film on it from sitting after being dished up. (Strange considering it should have been fresh if they were that busy).

I excused myself to the restroom at one point and could clearly hear staff complaining loudly about tables, even one who had just questioned why something was missing from their meal.

When our food arrived, it was a disappointment. The only abundance was fries and bread. My husband's halibut was very small for paying $22 (especially considering this is a higher priced place and I could get better quality and more halibut at Ivars for less). My gumbo was good, but advertised prawns and I recieved only 3 medium sized shrimp and maybe 4 slices of sausage. The onion and bell pepper were HUGE chunks. And the bread that came with my meal was cold, which sucked, because it was topped with cheese.

The final thing that really was frustrating was that we were in the restaurant for a half hour before we actually got any drinks, another table was sat right when we got our drinks, and they were given their food and out of there before we'd even gotten our meals. We will not...