The Pelican Post Bar & Grille — Restaurant in West Des Moines

The s/o and I ate here last night 05/11/23 and the bartender was amazing, the owner was friendly and took the time to come out and thank patrons for coming. The menu is fairly extensive, there are burgers, nachos, wings, wraps, etc.. We ordered the chicken tender basket and the mini steak sliders. The fries are amazing, I love that it was just a straight up crinkle cut fry with some salt and that's it. Perfection. The mini steak sliders were delicious. We had three kinds of cheese; pepper jack, american and smoked cheddar. My favorite was the American cheese but the smoked cheddar with some mustard just really brings it all together. They have other cheese choices as well. The only thing I would change out the sliders is maybe make the patty just a little bit bigger, was a little on the dry side but still tasty as all get out. Will definitely order these again. The chicken tenders basket. I'm a horrible person, if this is on the menu I WILL judge a restaurant based on chicken tenders. You really can't mess up chicken tenders and if you do, try it again. Anywho-- these are some of the tastiest chicken tenders I have eaten. A little bit of spice/heat. Freshly breaded and fried. Not too much breading. The chicken was tender and moist. Easily cut it with just a fork (some places I need to use a knife). Good sized portions and I do wish the chicken was a little thicker but I was a happy camper and did my "food dance". So, the tenders passed with flying colors. I tried the tenders with the mustard, ranch, honey mustard, and ketchup. I don't even like honey mustard but this one made me question myself. Would I go out of the way to order it next time I go there--probably not BUT if it were already on the table, I'd definitely sneak a couple bites. I highly suggest that you just don't even try the tenders with the ketchup. The ketchup actually kinda ruins the taste-- not terribly but this is definitely a chicken tender I would eat without ketchup. The ranch, not sure if it's house-made or not but it was definitely good but I used it more for the fries than the tenders-- the tenders were just so delicious without any "sauce". Give this place a try fam, when we go next we are DEFINITELY ordering the bucket nachos (yes, you read "bucket" correctly). Those nachos looked bomb last night. Stay tuned for...

It was a beautiful night so my husband and I decided to go for a drive. We see The Pelican Post and think the patio is adorable so decided to stop in for a drink and a bite to eat. We seat ourselves, as the front sign told us to, and wait for our server. We wait several minutes and then a server stops by and says she will find our waitress. Another round of minutes go by and that server comes over with menus and apologizes saying she will let our waitress know again that we are here. Our waitress finally shows up after we have sat there for over 10 minutes and gets our drink order. I order a mocktail and she tries to argue with me about it not being on their menu when it is on your website. She goes and comes back later with water and says she will grab the drinks we ordered. Comes back 5 minutes later to take order with no drinks. We finally get our drinks and another server brings our food. That same server later brings napkins and silverware and asks if we want refills because our waitress is no where to be seen. We finish our food and drinks are empty and around another 10 minutes go by before we see our waitress again. She ignores us and starts cleaning a table off. She walks by and asks how everything was and we say we are ready for the check. She said she will be right back with it. Well that was a lie because she continues to close down two more tables before getting us our check. It is near close so I understand closing tasks but that doesn't mean you ignore current customers. When we get the check she then asks if I shared the food with my husband like I originally said when we ordered. I said yes I did. She made a comment about how she was surprised I actually shared with him because I seemed so excited to eat. It honestly came off really rude. From the receipt, it said her name was "Bug". Well Bug spent more time disappearing and making unnecessary comments then providing good service. Our encounters with the other two servers indicated they could also tell she was giving poor service. Long post but wanted to be clear how poor the service was tonight which was a real bummer because we really liked the food...

One word sums up my experience. S L O W... I do not blame the wait staff as my waitress was running all over the place trying to serve her customers. I felt extremely bad for her (2 people for the entire restaurant inside and outside patio). This is a management issue and failure to properly staff their restaurant. 2 waitresses for the entire restaurant at 1:30pm. It took 15min just to be waited on. After almost 40 minutes we received 2 Burgers and Fries specials.

The verdict on the food. It's Meh. Average. The burger patty was extremely thin and there wasn't a lot of flavor to it. Fries were luke warm when they arrived. The beer was good and cold when we finally got them. That's at least a positive. The Patio was decent but pretty loud. That needs to be tuned down a little or change it to a calmer type of music. The party next to us even complained to one another about it so it wasn't just my party.

I was very disappointed as this was a spot I wanted to try for quite awhile and when I finally got there, it was just a huge miss. I read reviews on how management would come over and say hi, and if you had an issue, please address with the management, and they would take care of it, etc. I received none of that today but instead waited patiently for service and eventually drinks & food. I didn't complain to my waitress because I saw her busting her behind all over the restaurant but she can only do so much by herself. She was a rockstar and wasn't the problem. To the management: Please get your act together and provide some support for your wait staff!

I cannot recommend the Pelican Post Bar & Grille at this time. Lacking service and just average on the food I had. To be honest, one can get a better burger in about 5min. at the local B-Bop's via drive through. There wasn't anything spectacular about my experience that would make me choose the Pelican Post over any other restaurant or...