The Beerhouse — Restaurant in Urbandale

Had an interesting visit here tonight.

For a timeline, this was our first visit since they finished the remodel. We walked in and it was self seating, the bar area looked really well done and put together but the restaurant/seating area had real cafeteria vibes. We selected a high top table, as those were optimized for groups of 6. I will note, the high top chairs are not the most comfortable. They are square bar seats with a back attached to them in a way that can make it hard to sit comfortably with your center of gravity. The regular height chairs look much better, with a full seat design that has a back and supports built around it. The bar stools are exceptional in comparison, with full circle to sit on and a back/arm rest that wraps around about half of it. They also feel quite sturdy (relevant later).

They swapped to the toast ordering and paying system, which I generally like. Pricing and options matched a sit down chain restaurant like I remembered, think Apple Bees, Chilis, or Ruby Tuesday. Upon submitting my order is the first thing that made me confused. Soda, which was priced at $4, is self serve. There is a station between the dining area and the game room with a machine and some twelve or fourteen ounce plastic cups. This is not a typical sit-down restaurant expectation. Gets me wondering if I sat at the bar, is it full service? Ultimately, its fine. I don't mind getting my own soda.

Then, a bit later our food arrives. The burger and pork tenderloin sandwich in baskets with fries, but a giant pretzel on just like a piece of brown wax paper. Interesting. Break it apart, it tastes good, probably not $11 but I'm a sucker for a giant pretzel. The burger was fine, the fries had no salt on them. So I look around for napkins and salt, ketchup, stuff and its not on the table. Wander over back by the drink machine to fill up and find that there's single use forks and spoons, the big squirt jug of ketchup and mustard with the little cups to fill up, and what appeared to be individual salt and pepper packets and a napkin shoe. This caused the next bit of dissonance. Just seemed odd.

Anyways I wander back to sit down, we're in one of the high top spots, and as I sat down and slid my chair forward, the foot rest bar gives way the chair shoots out from under me and I land on my back. I'm super disoriented, and before I'm getting up the bartender is running across the restaurant to ask if I'm okay and figure out what happens. Around this time I process that I was still holding onto newly full cup of Diet Pepsi. Well its empty as its spilt all over me. He was great, seemed concerned, 10/10. He got another employee to come clean up the soda from the floor and replace the seat with one of the nice ones from the bar while I wandered to the bathroom to clean myself up. This is when I hit the third bit of dissonance, I washed my hands, arms, and face then turned to look for paper towels to find one of those blow dryers on the wall. Not the biggest of deals, but in this case a paper towel setup would have been really nice and something I'd expect from a lot of the sit-down restaurants. So I make my way back to the napkin shoe and basically empty the thing trying to dry myself off before walking back to the table.

So there I am, standing at the table, talking to my buddy, covered in Diet Pepsi, eating unsalted fries and looking around the room at the 'get stuff' area and the 20 person sitting low rise tables, and the game room trying to figure out like why everything feels... off? I realize that I came expecting a sit-down restaurant experience, I'm paying a sit-down restaurant price, but I'm really at a fast food place. They are really cutting the amenities and service, but not the costs, at least on the non-bar half of the restaurant. We watched quite a few people come in and do carry out pizza. I suspect its still pretty good, I always loved their pizza.

I'll try it again, probably sitting at the bar, see if that aligns better with my expectations of sit-down service, sit-down food,...

I am beyond disappointed in our dining experience. I have been anxiously awaiting the re-opening, as we always enjoyed the Beerhouse. We stopped for dinner around 7pm on a Friday night. There was no one to greet us, just a sign that said to seat yourselves. There were plenty of open tables, so that was not an issue. We sat, and realized that you will have to scan a QR code to get the menu. This was inconvenient, because menus are really difficult to see on phones for some people. Luckily I brought my reading glasses. We ordered the 10" Beerhouse Supreme pizza ($13), the Nashville Hot Chicken sandwich ($12) with fries ($2.50), and the Pork Tenderloin sandwich ($11) with tots ($3). No one stopped by the table at any point. We heard one of the staff who was delivering food to another table tell them that the drinks were self-serve and pointed to a corner. We went and got our glasses of water, plastic plates, plastic silverware, napkins, ketchup, mustard, red pepper flakes, dried parm, salt, and pepper ourselves. The station was a mess, with napkins on the floor and food spilled on the counter and the floor. Our food was brought out in a reasonable amount of time. The pork tenderloin photo showed lettuce, onion, and pickles. There was nothing on the sandwich, just the meat and bun. We went and asked for the toppings, and eventually pickles were brought over, but not the other items. The pork tenderloin sandwich was not good - it was very dry and bland. The tater tots were extremely salty. The Nashville hot chicken sandwich was very hot - and we enjoy spicy food. It didn't have flavor, just a lot of hot sauce. Although we do enjoy spicy food, we do not enjoy spicy food that is hot for the sake of being hot... it needs to have some flavor and this did not. There was nothing on the sandwich, just the chick and the bun. The fries were fine, however for $2.50 charge we expected a lot more than the few that were included. The pizza was soggy. It was impossibly to eat without folding the piece in half as the crust would not hold up. No one came by to see if we were happy with our food order. No one came by at any time other than delivering the original food order, and then the additional pickles. Payment is via a link that is sent after you place your order. There is a credit card processing fee - this is extremely annoying, since there was not an option to pay other than by credit card. The receipt also shows a delivery fee... I don't know if this is for delivering the food to the table? Then, believe it or not, there is a place to leave a tip, that defaults to 18%. When I have received absolutely no service, that is bold to assume I will be leaving any tip, let alone 18%! We left, and no one said thank you or have a good night. I am very disappointed. I get the staffing shortages right now, and the accommodations for COVID. Unfortunately Beerhouse has fallen far short of the mark here, and has compromised their service and quality to the point where on a Friday night there were no more than 5 tables with people at them. We were extremely unhappy with every part of our visit - from the lack of service, lack of interaction, lack of quality & taste, all the way to a $45 bill, basically for having someone else poorly cook our food. We will definitely not be going back and would never...

My fiance and I decided to try out Overtime last night. We read some not great reviews of the place when it was apparently run by different owners. We had friends that went there recently and really enjoyed it. And we're beer lovers, so we figured what better place! We got there at about 5pm and it was BUSY (I consider that a positive!)! It was open seating, so we went right in and sat down and were greeted promptly (by a waiter and a waitress who it seemed were confused about whose table it was or were fighting to get the table) and our drink orders were taken. My fiance ordered a Blonde Fatale in a bottle, and I'd expect a beer house to provide a glass, but not a huge deal. The beer selection was decent overall, however I'd like to see more Iowa beers (I think I counted less than 6 between bottled and draft). Our food orders were taken when our drinks were brought and the food was delivered pretty quickly considering how busy they were! I got the lamb sliders which were about $10 but don't come w/ fries, so I got a separate order of fries. The lamb sliders were good but not great; they use the usual gyro meat. My fiance got a burger (I think it was called the Rise & Shine burger) w/ a fried egg and bacon on it and it came out piping hot, it definitely hadn't been sitting under a heat lamp waiting for service! She ordered it medium well and it was cooked perfectly for her taste. I tried a bite and it was a really great burger! It was served on a great brioche bun w/ thick cut bacon and you could really taste the egg; the bun held up really well and didn't become soggy at all! I should also add that the menu wasn't huge and overwhelming like you get at some places; I'm of the belief that your menu should be pared down and offer a smaller amount of things done well rather than a huge amount of things done so-so, and this was the perfect size menu with a good variety! Our waiter was attentive without being overbearing. One of the owners, Nick, came over and chatted us up to see how we liked everything and to see how we'd heard about the place. He seemed like a really genuinely nice guy and seemed to really want feedback, not just to walk around and tell people he was the owner like you get at some places. It was loud like you'd expect at a sportsbar and there were a lot of TVs on the walls. But it was definitely not too loud to carry on a conversation, and for a couple who could really care less about sports, the TVs weren't distracting to us. We'll definitely be back! From what I read from reviews during the previous ownership, the place has really overcome the problems of the...