Ella's Public House — Restaurant in Town of Genesee

Placed a pickup order on their website. Arrived at the time they said and saw two togo bags on the hostess station. I told the hostess I had an order for pickup. She looked at the bags, went to grab them like they were for me then said they were not. Ok, so I sat and waited. A few minutes later a doordasher came in. She asked told the hostess that the she was picking up for doorsdash. Hostess replied ok and something along the lines of not done yet. So both or us are sitting there. A third person arrived and asked for her pickup order. At that time the hostess said something like the online orders came in late. Fast forward to when I finally get my order (20 minutes after it was supposed to be ready). Now the place was not that busy. There was a table of 6, table of 4, another table of 5 arrived when I did, and about 6 people at the bar so that shouldn't have taken that long. Service like that would have resulted in a 4 or three start rating but it gets worse, the food.

We order a few items. The cheese curds were really good and so was the pretzel. The sliders we ordered had a few issues. First the cowboy burger (which really needs a better description on the website) was dry. The cheese, which looked like it was on the burger had evaporated by the time we were able to eat it (about 15 min after i picked up). The honey burbon BBQ (which also needs a better menu description i.e. Pork?) tasted like a plan Sysco BBQ sauce. It was ok but nothing exciting. The Genesee Chicken sandwich was ok but had a few things off. (I have to admit here that I did not check everything was on it before I ate it). It was an ok sandwich however I don't remember tasting any bacon or the cheese and one bite includes a chunk of raw onion (which you can still smell on my breath). The fries were good and even held up on the trip home.

A couple items. The bartender seemed very friendly and another person that I assumed may be the owner also sounded very friendly. The food presentation was great and I can understand that some things do happen and order can get delayed. However, as the doordasher said, there seems to be a lack of urgency from the staff. If I was told right away that "hey, the online order are behind" because they came in late, this review would have been much different. I also decided to not take a picture of the burger and post it because I didn't want that to be something people see. It may be a one off issue and don't want it to be a permanent picture on there page because hopefully they are working on improving.

I don't see myself going back to this place in the near future however I do keep up with the reviews on local places and if they do start to improve, I...

If I had to title this review it would be "Not Yet Ready for Prime Time"! Four of us decided to go their for their friday fish fry. We arrived around 5:15 and were told that there was a 1/2 hour wait despite many open tables - so it must have been a shortage of trained servers. They took my cell number and called us when our table was ready. While waiting, we decided to order some drinks. Slight disappointment with the lack of craft beers on draft. The interesting thing was one person in our group ordered a bourbon old fashion sour. We were amazed at how the bartender made it. She muddled added sour almost to the rim and then realized she forgot the bourbon which she then splashed on top and it ran out of the glass resulting in a very weak drink. Does not bode well for their craft cocktails! On to the food. We ordered the brie appetizer because it was unique, crusted in hot cheetos, deep fried and with a raspberry sauce. It definitely was not crusted with hot cheetos, the brie tasted like rind only and apparently the raspberry sauce was lightly drizzled on top - was expecting it as a dip. We all ordered the fish fry. One in our group wanted the potato pancake which was not available. Which is odd as the server told us that the menus are printed daily plus how can you not have potato pancakes for a fish fry in Wisconsin? The fish itself was good and I would order it again. The fries were another story. How can they be so mushy on a busy night like this? The server tried to tell us that it was due to how they cut them. Umm, more likely the fryer could not be kept at temperature. Our server Nichole tried hard and she was good. I found it odd that I never noticed an owner or manager checking on tables. This is, in my opinion, vital especially for a new place. If this was an established restaurant I would never go back. I'm going to try them again in a month and see how they do then.

Ok we went back. Won't be doing that again unless something drastic changes. The Fish Fry was still better than average. Fries were a different style than the last time we were here - but surprisingly still bad. They were stale and cold. We didn't order any but noticed a table near us ordered wine for somewhere between 10 - 12 dollars. Even Lilliputians would have a hard time with that size glass and pour. Again, the server was great, she just needed a kitchen to back her up. DId see someone who looked liked a manager leave the office walk to the hostess stand and then straight back to the office. Never saw any interaction with any guests to get feedback. Friday nights between 6-7 should not be...

Went to Sunday dinner and there was maybe 5 tables of diners max the whole time we were there. We ordered an appetizer and two cocktails right away. It took half an hour for the drinks to get to the table and the server came a few times and apologized that they were taking so long. After the drinks were there we had to ask for water which would have been nice to have while we waited. I got the blackberry bramble and it was okay. My wife got the porch pounder and it was way too strong and tasted really bad. Oddly enough the manager stopped by later to ask about the drinks and we mentioned it was way too strong and did not taste good. Instead of offering to remake it he kept trying to explain it was because of the type of ingredients they use which was bizarre. We got bruschetta as an appetizer and it was pretty good. After 50 minutes our server stopped back again after being gone for an extended period of time and asked if we didn’t get our food yet which seemed odd as there was only a few tables and she was the one that would have brought it to us. People that got there after us got their food already. Our food came out about 10 minutes later which was over an hour of us being seated. My wife got beef stroganoff and noodles. It was hot like it just came out. The meat was so chewy is was really unappealing and even the noodles didn’t task good. I got a chicken bowl and it was okay but you could tell it was sitting for awhile as it was cold. We didn’t complain or anything at this point but the manager proactively came over and offered us a free dessert at this point. I didn’t really want more food they prepared but he said it was from a local bakery so we got a strawberry pie. It ended up being tasty but felt like it was frozen and not fully defrosted. I think the thing that summed up the meal best was that my wife only ate about two bites of her meal and the plate was obviously still full. The server brought dessert and didn’t even ask if we wanted a to go container. It felt like they knew the food they make is not good and we wouldn’t want to take it home. I was really disappointed as the website has delicious looking pictures of the food and there were many good reviews here. Not sure if it has taken a severe turn for the worse since those reviews or what. I would definitely not...