The Forum — Restaurant in Tacoma

We usually go here for midday happy hour. The Juicy Lucy is amazing and their shrimp Tacos are great too. The fries are double fried and extra crispy. With a variety of fry sauces which is fun. Usually our service is fantastic also. We have also hit them up mid evenings mid week.

When we came for late night happy hour after a later show down the street, I was surprised it transformed into a busy bar/club vibe. People constantly in and out. Extremely loud and poor music, even when I like a variety of the new stuff.

We eventually had a waitress come over after about 15-20 or so minutes. No drinks offered or asked about. She drops off menus and comes back about 15 min after asking our orders. Then she disappears altogether. We wait about 30+ minutes without seeing her again. It is so extremely crowded I wouldn't even know who to ask if our food was even being cooked or how long. We decided to leave and go elsewhere.

I believe they need to stop serving food by a certain time on busy nights. Or have dedicated staff that just do food orders.

Too much chaos going on. It's disappointing too because the bar has a charming vibe. And this was not the crowd I was expecting to be at it.

We will come back but not...

The restaurant we wanted to go to had a long wait (during lunch hour) so we just looked around and we happened to walk-in to this restaurant and turned out to be really good. Since we are in downtown area of course there’s no private parking. Just metered parking and if you’re lucky may find a street parking. It looks like a bar from classic movie. The antique/tavern decor tells the history of this restaurant.

The food was good. From soup to salad to Mac and cheese. It was all delicious. I ordered the Mac and cheese topped off with bacon. My Mac and cheese was on point because it was served hot and the bacon was still crunchy. It was a large serving in my opinion can be for two people.

My friend had a beautiful cob salad and fried pickles. Now the fried pickles is recommending! It came with two different house sauce, you can’t go wrong with that. We were in a bit of a time crunch so we asked a lot from our server and he honored all of our requests. Our server was so polite!

The food came same time as the check as we requested. Also they do not have a problem splitting up the bill which is such a convenience for different parties!

FYI: this is also a hotel. I have to say location and vibe is...

The Forum Scale: 0 = Worst, 5 = Best

Food Quality • Me: 2 • Mom: 2.5 We had to wait 45 minutes for food. By the time we got it, our hamburgers were lukewarm Service • Me: 1 • Mom: 1 Even though the restaurant wasn’t busy, we might a staff member at our table with no food like every 15 minutes or more and only asked us if we wanted more drinks never updated us what was going on with her food Ambiance • Me: 4 • Mom: 4 The atmosphere was nice, but they had music that was playing too loud and made it hard to have a normal volume conversation Value for Money • Me: 1 • Mom: 1 Took 45 minutes for food to show up wasn’t really warm so tells me the food was sitting there in the kitchen for a while. I had roasted jalapeños on my burger that felt like mush. Cleanliness • Me: 5 • Mom: 5 The restaurant was super clean → Total Score • Me: 13 25 • Mom: 13.5/ 25

Altogether for a bloody Mary, a Dr Pepper and two burgers even with the bartender giving us 20% off each of our food items giving us a total of $40 off. We still paid $44.72 for 45 minute wait from the time we ordered our food , barely warm food and cold fries bad service from the staff and all around...