Moontown Brewing Company — Restaurant in Whitestown

Do not go here if you have any food allergies or like to customize your order. They think this is a Michelin restaurant and will deny your simple requests with a pretentious attitude.

Went here a few days ago and someone in my party asked about gluten free options due to having celiac disease. They told us that they had gluten free buns but when the member with celiac ordered the portobello French dip they said they couldn’t make it on a gluten free bun because of “portion size”. Really??

Then I ordered the Double Baco Chee cheeseburger and asked to trade out the American for cheddar cheese, seeing another burger on the menu had cheddar. The waitress said they couldn’t make the change saying “the chef doesn’t allow a substitution of cheese”.

I asked for the chef but the assistant manager came over and we were told that they couldn’t accommodate our requests because of the “chef experience”. This meant that the chef’s preference comes before the customers. We’re not talking about an extravagant request, we’re talking about the type of cheese. Ridiculous.

After some questioning the assistant manager finally agreed to make the French dip on the gluten free bun but I was denied the cheese swap.

This place is a brewery brewpub, not a high end Michelin restaurant. If a customer wants a different cheese or has a dietary restriction, there should be every effort to accommodate when possible, not refusal because the chef doesn’t want to do it because of his preference.

Horst Schulze, the legendary cofounder of Ritz Carlton Hotel Group, says that customers want 3 things: 1. Defect free product. 2. Timely delivery. 3. For you to be nice to them. When a company nails 1 and 2 but fails at the 3rd, customers not only will not return but they will become terrorists to your brand. Inversely, if there’s a failure in 1 or 2, but a company is nice to you, customers are quick to show grace and overlook the mistake.

We received defect free products, even though it wasn’t what I wanted. The delivery was acceptable. But the 3rd one was terrible. The whole experience was full of smugness, what the chef wants matters more than what the customer wants, and an attitude that we should be lucky to be allowed to eat there. I don’t know who the chef thinks he is, but he needs a crash course in keeping customers happy. The owner should never tolerate this smugness.

As a result of how we were treated, we will never go back. I hope either: 1. They change their tune, accommodate simple customer requests, and drop the smug pretension. or 2. Customers will choose to go where all 3 customer expectations are met, and this place closes so a real restaurant will take over the location.

Beware if you go here. Not only will you pay a lot for average food/beer, you will be denied any request and be made to feel like an idiot for even asking. I advise you to...

I rarely give reviews but feel I should provide feedback about our experience. My boyfriend and I came to this restaurant because LA Cafe was closed. We were hoping to enjoy a new (to us) local venue. We were greeted promptly at the door and sat quickly. This was the beginning and end of our positive experience at this establishment. It wasn’t busy in the dining area, however, trivia was going on in the other room. We sat at our table for about 10 minutes before we were finally greeted by our server. He said I’ll get you some waters (which he could have just done in first place) before disappearing for another 5 minutes. Finally, we ordered the pretzels, a chicken sandwich, and a bacon cheese burger. We got our pretzels promptly. They weren’t anything special but at least they were edible. Then my boyfriend finished his water. The singular refill that was given to us was by a lady that was not even our server. The server came back out about halfway through our appetizers confused about what we had ordered for our entrees. We finished the pretzels, more waiting. When the sandwiches finally came out, we were greeted with our next problem. The fries were absolutely charred and appeared to be the bottom of the bag leftovers. At this point, we were just tired of waiting. We finished “eating” and sat for 20 minutes trying to flag down any soul that could get us paid out and out of that establishment as quickly as possible. Finally, our server made his way around again. He gave us our bill. We brought up the severely burnt state of the uneaten fries still on my plate. He said that sometimes they come out like that when they are fresh…REALLY?!? We asked if we paid him or up front. He said that he would be back. We couldn’t wait another hour for him to get back to our table so we paid in cash and promptly left as quickly as possible. This is a restaurant we will never return to again! Do yourself a favor and go literally...

The short version: Really good beers, mediocre food.

The rundown: We went to the taproom for the Howl at the Moontown event benefiting the Humane Society of Boone County. A fantastic event with tons of cool people that Moontown took great care of. We had several of their beers, the King of Troy - export Lager, the Choco Deece - dbl chocolate milk stout, and the Hefe Czkowski - Hefeweisen.

All 3 beers were excellent. The lager was light and crisp. The hefe was bubbly and banana clove rich. While the stout was bold, dark and loaded with coco and oatty notes.

Then we headed over to the pub side and grabbed dinner. This was a bit of a let down. Great server who was super attentive and pleasant. Sadly they were out of the bacon flight and the soup du jour. But we had the smoked artichoke dip to start. Delicious and tasty even though it was served barely warm.

My buddy had the Bahn Mi and said it was pretty good, but not great. His wife had the Beet Salad and enjoyed it even though she kept mentioning how much dressing it was swimming in. I had the Nashville Hot chicken sandwich. This was probably the poorest showing of any hot chicken I've had. At one time I lived in Franklin, TN outside of Nashville and enjoyed both Prince's as well as my favorite, 400 Degrees, on the NW side. Moontown needs to go eat real hot chicken. The sandwich was soggy and the spicy only came from a ridiculous amount of chili sambal slathered on the chicken. I don't know if they were trying to do a spin off of real hot chicken but this was awful.

On the weekend these folks do a great BBQ with loads of variety and delicious meats that we come back for regularly. From now on I think I'll stick to their smoked meats because that, they...