Shipgarten — Restaurant in Virginia

We had high hopes for this place on a Saturday afternoon but deflated those fast. What you see online isn't what you get. We will never go back.

Photos are outdated. No grass is left inside the entrance and everywhere else but under the limited Adirondack chair area is mulch.

It's a place with a multiple personality disorder. It'd not be surprising to see it on a restaurant turnaround TV show. Place is packed with stuff to walk around. No sense of traffic flow and customer experience. No one on staff smiled. Not. A. Single. Person. Of 10+ we encountered over 2+ hours. Even after we said hi and introduced ourselves and walked throughout the place. Sense in the whole setup is grim, not a happy place for staff to be. Tats with frowns, smirks at best. Bring your own sunshine.

Music is way too loud and right next to the entrance. Then music blasted under the main bar tent sofa area. Place is great if you want to yell at your friends.

QR codes for menus are hard to find. Mediocre food is served, worth half of what is charged. Especially when, for a biergarten, you get for your $8 bratwurst (which you have to buy two of at $16); it comes dry with no house or European mustards to choose and yet do you get the high honor of squeezing your own half a teaspoon out of non brand plastic packets of generic mustard from a food court style stand with nonabsorbent napkins. Cucumber salad is just sliced cucumber with a cheap bottle vinaigrette tossed in. Decent beer selection.

Beware this is another automatic 20% tip place which is calculated for you with buttons for more that that but not less than that (knowing you get the honor of bussing your own food!). You take your own food off a common finished food spot where no one announced your food is ready. What's most scary is that there's no one monitoring who picks up or touches that food after it's left there by the cook. So anyone can walk up and dose it anything nefarious. There's no tray, so you must walk paper bowls by yourself to your table. In the auto tipping, it's 3 more discouraging steps on a hard to read screen to cancel that tip and manually type your new % or $ value. There's no hand sanitizer there or at the self serve ordering monitors or central condiment and utensil station. The one server who picked up one beer glass in the middle of our meal while we're all talking was gruff. "Hey. I'll take that glass." No asking. The self serve trash bin near our table was grimy and broken. Lid tumbled off.

There was even impressive staff. Two mean looking security front door staff grunted when we arrived and one fanned us through with a hand wave while looking away from us. No one was nearby to welcome or say how the place worked. Could find no one with a staff identification to answer questions. Two said I don't know. Go ask at the bar. Signs are not tall enough to read over people's heads. Beer tasting for 20 types or so was handwritten in a scrawl that wasn't very readable. Don't know where dog bowls were. I never saw a one. But I asked twice for a glass of water for my dog and was told twice there are bowls around.

Valet parking was not worth more than $10. Charged $20. You'd think we were at a fancy steak place for that. Staff upon drop off and receipt of the vehicle at the end of our experience spoke too fast with too heavy accents. Remember the loud music near the entrance? That didn't help. Valet driver had to drive another car down the hill to get our car to bring it back up the hill. Then he didn't rip off the tag to the keys to the car and hand the keys over (for which we paid parking up front when we arrived) until after he was handed a tip.

There are better places for hard earned paychecks where visitors are treated like valued patrons and...

A 10 dollar cover charge is not expensive, at all. In fact, a 10 dollar cover charge is completely acceptable (despite almost no bars in Tysons or the surrounding area having a cover charge). What ISN'T acceptable, however, is charging ANY cover charge, when the establishment's website specified no cover charge for that night. Everyone in line was being charged a cover charge-it was not based on gender or any other factors, which is fair, at least. When I asked a man directing the line about the cover charge (Hello, is there a cover charge tonight? Yes? Oh I'm just asking because your website says there's no cover charge, right here on the event page), I was told "not to argue", that he was the owner (he was, to be fair), and that my friends and I would be kicked out that night if we were seen in the bar.

After this, I told a few dozen other people in line who were standing by my friends and I that, contrary to the website posting, there was in fact a cover charge tonight, at which point around 20 people including myself left the line. I know that's not a lot of people in the context of an entire night, but the fact that having a cover charge when your event page SPECIFICALLY states NO cover charge causes that many people to willingly leave the line without a second thought, especially in an area where a $10 cover charge is pennies to all of us, should definitely tell you something about how Shipgarten is really just not worth it. On my way out, I talked with a very nice security guard for a few minutes, who expressed his own complaints about the owner (security badmouthing the owner during their shift should also tell you something about some of the issues here).

I've also been here for several work events, and was never really impressed. The music was always too loud to have a conversation with coworkers, the food was...well, it existed, I suppose, and drinks were technically beer, I guess. Nothing even remotely impressive about the venue.

If you want an open air bar, with a VERY nice view, oftentimes with live music, cheaper (and better, and colder) beers, and reasonably decent food, walk 500 feet across the street to Star Hill Brewery. There are also several rooftop bars in Arlington/Clarendon, 2-3 Metro stops away on the silver line.

IN SUMMARY: Security dislikes the owner, cover charges are required even when website specifically says no cover charge that night, at the specific time you show up, food and drink has always been mediocre, music is too loud and speakers seem to kind of just suck (maybe I'm spoiled by EchoStage), and there are much better options with better food, drinks, music, and ambiance within a stones throw of the bar. Thank you for coming to...

I’ve never left a negative review, but our experience last night at Shipgarten was just unacceptable from start to finish.

To start, the outdoor trash cans were absolutely disgusting- live maggots crawling all over them. It was vile and honestly a major health concern.

We came for the UFC fight and after seeing their Instagram post advertising $3 margaritas “all day,” but we were charged $26 for two margs. No signage, no clarification, just misleading marketing and overcharging.

They had Gatorade jugs set out like they were providing water stations but every single one was empty for most of the night. Not even water? During a packed fight night event? That’s insane.

But the absolute worst part of the night was the bartender who initially took our order. Her attitude was outrageous, completely unprofessional, rude, and obviously not trained in bartending or customer service. She took our order, brought back only 1/2 margaritas. She went back to taking other orders so we waited patiently to ask her to make the 2nd one we paid for but resorted to asking another bartender what was going on because the original girl was visibly busy. That person informed us they were waiting on more tequila, which was fine. We were willing to wait.

But after 10 minutes passed with no update and the staff member who told us about the delay had disappeared, we figured it would be easier to just substitute the second drink, if the tequila still hadn’t been restocked. When we asked the original bartender if that would be ok, she straight up accused us of lying, claiming one of her coworkers already gave it to us. Thankfully, her coworker immediately said, “I thought YOU made it, so I didn’t. Want me to make one now?” Which obviously showed she was in the wrong.

Instead of apologizing or owning up to the miscommunication, this tiny bartender popped a massive attitude, rolling her eyes, huffing, and talking to us like we had done something wrong. My husband and I both have managed in retail and food service, so we completely understand busy nights and difficult customers. But we were calm, patient, and respectful the whole time. Her behavior was absolutely out of line and ruined our entire night.

Honestly, someone with a mouth and attitude that big should not be behind a bar, especially on a night that requires real professionalism and teamwork.

Shipgarten seriously needs to reevaluate their staff and sanitation if they want to continue...