The Onion Bar & Grill Downtown Spokane — Restaurant in Spokane

Delicious, fun, historic, iconic restaurant and bar in the heart of downtown Spokane! Without a doubt, BEST ONION RINGS on the planet! Of course, you might expect it, since the restaurant's name is The Onion. The onion rings are HUGE and served with tartar sauce. Yes, tartar sauce! At first, I was very reluctant to dip my onion rings in tartar sauce. However, the experience has changed my life forever! Don't be afraid....try it. You will love the combination! The Onion is an Spokane icon; famous, historic restaurant that is a must visit when you find yourself in Spokane. Although there is plenty of opportunities to sample onions, the menu is very diverse and has a large selection of sandwiches, burgers, salads, chicken, wraps, fish & chips and desserts. I, along with my colleagues, visited this location twice. My first visit I ordered the "best" cheeseburger with a side garden salad. My meal was excellent (not the best cheeseburger I've enjoyed...sorry!) Everything was fresh, hot and tasty. My second visit I enjoyed the grilled chicken Cobb salad. The salad was fabulous! Served very fresh with lots of crisp veggies, bacon bits, egg and avocados. I ordered the smaller version and it was a lot of salad, perfect amount. The service during our first visit was superb! Great server whom made us feel so welcome when she learned it was our first visit to The Onion. She was patient and answered our numerous menu questions. She even gave us an excellent history of the restaurant. Fantastic experience!! The second visit we were not as lucky. Our exquisite server from the first visit was not working. The server assigned to our table was completely opposite of the first server, minimal personality. He seemed indifferent and disinterested. Honestly, from my observations, I think most, if not all, the servers are excellent. My colleagues and I, unfortunately, experienced a less enthusiastic server on the second visit. The Onion has a pleasant, warm and welcoming atmosphere. Full service bar is also available for adult libations! When in or near downtown Spokane, YOU MUST dine at The Onion! Absolutely, onions rings are a MUST!! Try the tartar sauce with the rings, you will thank me later!!! Excellent restaurant! It has my highest...

I gave two stars only because The Onion USED to be one of our favorite places in the past. However, we had a horrible experience there last night. We were celebrating our marriage and had our kids/grandkids join us for dinner. We called early in the day to try to make a reservation for our group of sixteen and were told we could not make a reservation, but could come in person and wait for a table to open up. We went at 5:00 pm and put our name on the list. We were told we would have to wait for some other large groups but we could get a table around 7:00 pm. So we sat at the bar from 5:00 on. We checked with the front desk twice to make sure we were still on for 7:00 so we could let the rest of our group know when to arrive. We were told yes, 7:00 we just had to wait for the group in the back room to get finished and the tables get cleaned off. The nice bartender checked again for us and came back and said that the people in the back had left and that they would finish clearing the table and take us back shortly. At 7:20 after we had waited for 2 hours and 20 minutes and were waiting to be seated they took a different group to the back. We were less than impressed that they had given our table to another group. We asked to speak to the manager to get it cleared up. He offered to have us sit in fours at the booths across the windows when those tables came open. He was very rude and offered no solution, nor did he apologize. We left our unfinished drinks and walked out the door with no intentions of ever going back to receive such horrible treatment.

Thank you to RedRobin for hearing our story, making room for all 16 of us on short notice and showing us that there still is good customer...

My family and I decided to here Saturday night and this is something that I deeply regret. I leave reviews every once in while, and it is usually when I am trying to prevent someone else from wasting thier money on terrible service and awful food. This is one of those situations. For some reason the server seemed really disgusted by our presence, despite our family being really quiet and not really asking for anything beyond what we had ordered other than maybe one drink refill. Our party of 4 ordered 4 beverages, one appetizer for family to share, and we each ordered a meal. Our meals were absolutely on inedible. The food came out cold, it was just indescribable in words of how terribly it was prepared. We maybe ate 4-5 small bites of meal s each. We attempted to take the leftovers home to try to salvage our uneaten meals at home because we were still hungry after sharing our appetizer of 6 motzerrella sticks. However, we ended up throwing our leftovers in the trash because our child was feeling sick to her stomach by the time we got home, and we were concerned that the food at the restaurant was the source of her illness. We wasted a total of $200 to be treated like trash and in the end we ended up not eating a good meal. We left a 16% tip (I have proof of this tip because I paid with a card) which I know most people consider low (I could tell that the server did by the scowl on her face). However, please remember we treated like second class citizens and our food was inedible. I am just beyond disappointed by...