Volstead Act — Restaurant in Spokane

As a small business owner I do not believe in leaving negative reviews, however that changed last night at the Volstead Act (The Miracle Christmas Themed Bar). My wife set up up a night to celebrate (3) birthdays and (1) anniversary downtown with the family, 9 total in our party. After eating dinner @ PF Chang's she wanted us to all go to the Christmas Themed Bar for a drink. After ordering and receiving our drinks, my wife started to feel hot and not her normal self and decided to go outside to the roped off area in front of the business for outdoor seating. All of us followed her out and I noticed her starting to lose consciousness and my daughter, who is a nurse, caught her and we laid her down. We called 911 and her pulse and breathing were very low. It took the ambulance around 5-10 minutes to arrive and they put her in the ambulance and ran her vitals and she began to feel better and checked out okay. Thankfully no trip to the hospital was necessary. However during this whole ordeal not once did an employee check to see what was going on and if everyone was OK. One employee popped out while my wife was losing consciousness and everyone was catching her and told us "no drinks outside the roped off area," mind you not one of us had a drink outside! Another fantastic comment came when my son-in-law went back inside to pay the tab, "those ambulance lights are so annoying." Downtown Spokane is struggling to get people to visit with the homeless epidemic and one would think a Christmas Themed Bar would have employees that cared about its patrons. I am still shocked not one employee or any patrons of the business asked about what was going on. One other take from being inside the Christmas Theme Bar for a very short time, no...

This bar is legitimately one of the best cocktail bars in the country. I'm a big fan of cocktails,specifically some of the older ones. I live in a very small town with one bar...and they don't do cocktails. So anytime I am in any city, for work or pleasure, I try to search out their cocktail bars for some decently made drinks. This place has them, and is not confused when I ask for them. Some places have the right ingredients, but have never heard of the drink, and the bar tender googles it, and its ish at best. My two go to's are usually an Aviation and Remember the Maine. This place not only had the ingredients (which are very rare)but when I asked about the rare ingredient for each drink (creme de violete and cherry herring respectively) they knew immediately which drink I wanted. The weekend before I was in Seattle. I did the standard search for cocktails and the drinks here were much better than anything I found in Seattle. 3 weeks prior I was in Raines Law Room in NYC. An amazing bar for sure, but the cocktails at Volstead were on the same level for half the price. Or Midnight Cowboy in Austin Texas, same thing. They charge you like crazy for the "speak easy" environment where your paying for the hidden door, password, etc. But in terms of drinks, Volstead is equal to all of them. Not to mention free popcorn and board games to play while you drink. I had two nights there. I tried a lot of different places during the day but each night ended...

The bartender was kinda odd, she acted pretentious even though she didn’t know what she was talking about and ultimately didn’t know how to make our drinks. They were out of Ford’s gin for a particular cocktail and I asked if she could use another gin and she said she couldn’t because the cocktail was built a certain way, haha okay girlie… anyway she kept muttering “oops”while she was making me a drink she did have ingredients for. You know, sometimes when I get a fizz the meringue will rise past the rim of the glass but this one only made it up ⅔ of the glass! I’m attaching a pic of what I received - please note that I took this picture before taking a sip! Places like these are a dime a dozen, there’s no real substance or character it’s just the same wanna-be craft cocktail lounge stuff with no real creativity...