The Brakeman American Grill — Restaurant in Victor

• Good review written by a local patron *

I love eating at the brakeman, their burgers are awesome and I love the thinly cut shoe string fries. I've read some of the bad reviews and I'd like to provide some insight to those of you who are from out of town, or clearly haven't waited tables in this economy lately. Or, frankly, if you only leave your second home in the big holes or Alta to interact with this community on the consumer end of things, during the 4 months you live here a year to call yourself a "local".

Teton Valley is a very small community, I've had the pleasure of befriending most of the wait staff in most of the popular restaurants in town, they're excellent people. They live off their tips. The Valley has grown in the last few years, bringing a lot more tourism and apparently a lot more people that don't know how to do math. 20-25 % is standard for a tip. I really don't care if you didn't like the burger, your drink was incorrect, or it took too long for your food to come. Wait staff typically earns around $3 an hour, if the kitchen got backed up so your burger took a long time, don't react by taking food off of someone else's table. If your bill is $30.00, move the decimal over once, and multiple by two. $6.00 would be a 20% tip. If keeping $6 in your pocket makes you feel better about the extra 5 minutes you had to wait for your drink then it probably isn't the wait staff that has a bad attitude, its you. If you can afford a home in the area I suggest you round up to $10.

If you decided to eat in the Valley on Fourth of July weekend, realize that we have a handful of restaurants. They're typically very busy and backed up on a regular weekend, let alone the holidays. Add the fact that most restaurants are functioning at half capacity, and to go orders take twice as long to plate, and its no wonder why food service has been slower.

A fun fact for those of you who can even afford to travel during covid, the economic divide between the haves and the have-nots in Teton Valley and Jackson is the deepest in the U.S. "The wealthiest 1 percent of Teton County earned on average 142 times the income of the bottom 99 percent of families in the county, nationally, one-percenters earn an average of 26 times more than everyone else." So yeah, that's awesome that you can even afford to eat out right now, because most of us just had 6 months of no tables to wait, no tourists to guide, and no option to work in another industry.

Oh, you are from here? Nice, if you decide you want to go out to eat, expect it to be different than it was before covid. If you are making complaints to wait staff that is struggling to make ends meet because of the changes in industry policy, instead of making it worse by withholding their tip, stay home and cook dinner. Because if we don't take care of the workers in this Valley nobody is going to be there to bring you your burger, mow your lawn, or teach your kid how to ski.

I have never had an issue with the staff at the Brakeman, or any establishment in the valley for that matter. If you have that experience in our community then it’s...

Sucks. Such an awesome burger and fries. We went thinking it looked cute and from the moment we were seated our waitress seemed to have a chip on her shoulder. She was rude to us when we asked for sauce and to put it nicely her service was lacking. One of the meals had a long dark hair in it and we let her know and she walked away and muttered she didn’t need to pay under her breath. No apology, or anything was said about it. In fact, the waitress insisted my friend TIP HER when she got our checks even though she didn’t need to pay. We felt she was being unnecessarily sassy, never filled up our water, asked if we needed anything, or cared to be kind when she talked to us. A few of us decided not to tip. A couple of us did. We left the restaurant after paying and were getting in the car when the waitress FOLLOWED us outside in the dark to our car. We rolled down the window thinking we forgot something and she started yelling at us about not giving her money to “stay in the valley”, and continued to badger us about not tipping her...we were in shock and told her we didn’t need to take our WAITRESS yelling at us in our own car after we had provided service. We called the business right after to let them know because we felt violated and that is just not okay in any sort of customer service job. Turns out she’s the MANAGER. Their manager followed us out to our car to yell at us for not giving enough of a tip. Unbelievable. Plenty of other good-willed Americans deserve that job. Sad - it had good food but we will not be returning or...

Sad to share, but read my older initial review to our most current experience: My son & I were having an amazing weekend, and we believed what better way to end it than dinner at The Brakeman Grill. So we got there few minutes early before their sunday 5pm open time, and just played around on sidewalk outside their front door. As we did, a few persons walked thru us as we waited, and these were not the friendliest of people!! So few more minutes, we could see a gal unlock the front door and flip their sign to 'Open', but sadly did not invite or welcome us in seeing that my son was literally playing in their doorway. I decided go in and ask if open, and 2 gals leaning over the cashier table & young man from kitchen just stared at me unpleasantly. . I had to repeat asking if they were OPEN which one finally answered directing us to sit anywhere. . I was completely shocked that a place we loved had such horrible employees, whose service not improve with us or other customers after us . . if anything the food was still amazing (although their avocados were not being served) . . We suggest ordering TO-GO rather than being treated horribly, no food is worth their poor attitudes . . . [[OLD REVIEW: A must stop when you're in Teton Valley, ID. . Although all their food is 5-stars, we must admit we love their bacon and fresh produce, especially avocados. . Be warned, seats get full as soon as opens, so don't get stuck having to wait (but worth the wait!) . . Friendly staff and excellent service complete an all around...