Grandma's Saloon & Grill Virginia — Restaurant in Virginia

UPDATE: Recently visited on a weeknight and was rather impressed by the food. Walleye sandwich said to be very good. My "Marathon" pasta dish was excellent. Loads of semi spicey Italian sausage and a big helping of aldenti pasta (just the way I like it). A little spendy. But experience was better then previous visit.

I spent a couple of years working in Duluth (mid 90s) and going to Grandma's main eatery and the adjacent Grandma's Sports Garden on Canal Park (off of Lake Superior). Both were the "go to" places for great food, good beer, and excellent service at the time. I have gone back for at least the past five summers. More current, I visited both Canal Park locations and the Virgina, MN location this past summer. It seems that the Sports Garden and Virginia locations have been left to rot. The Sports Garden was void of patrons (at 5:00 P.M.) and it was filthy. There was some sort of sticky residue on the floor and there was no service to be found. We actually left. The Virginia location was extremely dated and, well, not that clean. The service was okay, but prices do not match portions or surroundings (inside and outside). The parking lot is in bad need of repair (not something I care about, but just thought I would forward the information). The main Grandmas on Canal Park was a far better experience. Although a bit spendy for drinks and food, the service was very good, it was clean, the food was decent, and the ambiance was every bit as good as 25 years ago. It was also really busy on a weekday at 3:00 P.M. What does that tell you? As the long lived monk said In Indiana Jones: The Last Crusade:...

The food has always been good at Grandma's and the atmosphere pleasant. When we arrived we saw a notice on the door about the addition of their new 5% food service gratuity for the kitchen staff preparing the meal. I have always wondered why the gratuity is not always shared with the cooking staff by the servers as a matter of policy at different places to begin with. I can understand the difficulties of today trying to get people back to work and retain employees. If 5% does it for them then it is the new cost of going out to eat. It is also an easy number to calculate and on our bill yesterday, it would have been $1.90 but it was just over $3.00 making it more like 7.8%. I would not have even cared to look normally but seeing the notice for the first time yesterday, I just took a look to see the impact it will make not for me but to the cooking staff that will see the benefit of the policy. I would suggest changing the notice to the percentage that will be charged or find a way to prevent those future errors. As noted on other reviews the prices have gone up otherwise and have become more in the price range of a pre-Covid steak dinner for a sandwich today and it is about $10 more for a dinner of two than it used to be before we toss in a tip for the waitress. We rarely get a chance to go out for a dinner together and the cost of dinner is the least of our concerns when we do get to go together but it does give my wife pause about stopping there to eat on her own or...

New update-we were excited to stop and get the kabobs tonight but we ordered them medium and they came out rare. I tried eating one piece and it had a line of grizzle thru it so spit it out. Brought them home and am cooking them more here, hope they're ok. Not worth the 40+dollar bill. A refund would have been nice or at least a discount considering how much we spend here throughout the year. BTW, we heard our waitress ask a Ryan to put something back on the grill a little longer for someone else so maybe get a new cook who understands steak doneness or train better? Don't trust sending food back or we'd have done the same.

Food is usually pretty good here. The wild chicken tetrazzini is the best! It's enough for 2 people, or 2 meals. It's nice to sit outside in the small amount of time we have warm weather in northern MN. Employees are hit or miss..most are friendly but some are rude and don't check if you need anything else after you get your food. We've noticed that one hostess is usually very snobby which is funny because it's the range (there are some that are very...