Public at the Brickyard — Restaurant in Wichita

My husband and I joined some friends to celebrate a birthday dinner in the dining room of Public last night. The friend who was celebrating had made a reservation for 6pm and told the wait staff she was expecting 12 people. For some reason, we were seated 20min after our reservation even though the room was mostly empty and we were seated at tables designed for 10 so we had to smush in two additional chairs and crowd together. The room was warm when we entered, being seated very closely to others didn't help.

Our drink orders were taken fairly quickly, but it was another 15min before we ordered our food. My husband ordered a Cajun pasta dish with shrimp and sausage, we split an order of pork belly bao, and I ordered the espresso and mushroom encrusted filet. All of it sounded amazing and we were excited to try it.

The pork belly bao was basically just bacon, too many sesame seeds, and sprouts, served open face. It fell apart constantly while trying to eat it and the pork belly was cut so thin, I couldn't even taste it.

My husband's pasta came with the shrimp served whole. While it doesn't usually bother us to remove shells, it was a little surprising to see the heads. What was much worse, however, was that whoever put together the dish tossed the whole shrimp in while mixing the pasta and sauce instead of placing them on top. This resulted in the appearance of a whole shrimp, but the reality of bits of shell mixed in throughout the pasta. I tried the dish and told him that the flavors were correct for a Cajun seasoning, but they had been really heavy-handed with the salt.

My filet was served as a round stacked dish. I hate it when restaurants do this. It is only done to look good, but the reality of serving something that requires cutting -- like a steak -- is that it will have to be entirely disassembled prior to eating. Also, the filet had been cut into three big sections just so it would have this round shape for the stack. Why? The steak was served with a brussel sprout and cranberry combination and rosemary roasted potatoes. I love all of these ingredients, what could go wrong? Salt. Okay, I cook with salt. I add it at all stages of cooking to bring out various flavors, but literally everything was overly salty and overly seasoned. The potatoes had so much rosemary in them that it felt like eating pine needles. Rosemary is a wonderful aromatic, but not the most pleasant to chew. I will say that the steak was cooked to a beautiful medium-- they got that right. But out of the 12 of us at dinner, 5 commented that the food was overly salty or overly seasoned or both.

To make matters worse, our waitress was completely missing in action. After our food was delivered, she never once came by to ask if we needed anything else, offer dessert, or refill drinks. We sat there for 20min boiling in this overly warm room after we had finished eating before she finally showed up with our check. She then mixed up all the checks so we had to go around and verify the correct people has the correct bill. This added more insult to injury when a 20% mandatory gratuity was added to our bill due to the size of the party.

I have heard great things about this place for years. I'm not sure why, though. My husband and I don't...

An Great Venue, Serving Mediocre Food and Good Craft Beers, with a Weirdo.

When you show up, you can turn right to visit the outside patio area for live music drinks or turn left for food and drinks. The patio is awesome--a crumbing building, with no roof, converted into a great outdoor space for small concerts. You can eat and drink out there. We actually had dinner inside and then headed out to the patio to hang out for a bit. One weird and tacky thing happened while we were outside. As the band was setting up, it was about 30-45 minutes prior to the start of the show, and a person (not sure if he was with the band or the restaurant) started shaking people down for a cover charge. It didn't matter if you were in the middle of your dinner or sitting there to enjoy the ambiance--he was telling everyone to pay the cover. We told him to go fly a kite because we already paid for our dinner and had been hanging out for more than 20 minutes prior to him shaking us down. Who does that? I just couldn't believe people were acquiescing to him.

Anyway, we ordered beers and started with the Buffalo Cauliflower ($8), lightly fried cauliflower, tossed in buffalo sauce, and served with celery and house blue cheese dressing. It was pretty sad--more like not fried at all--and basically thawed cauliflower drenched in sauce and piled on a plate. I ordered the Koren-style Pork Spareribs ($18) that are grilled ribs, smoked with a dry spice rub, and slathered sweet and spicy BBQ sauce, cabbage, carrot, and radish wasabi slaw, served with a choice of a side. It was a big letdown because the ribs were overcooked and leathery; the sauce was good, but not very zesty or robust for Korean-style BBQ. My date ordered the Serenity Farm Smash Steak Burger ($16), which was a half-pound Creekstone Farms burger with Alma Creamery aged cheddar, Serenity Farm green tomato Relish, caramelized onions, lettuce, within a Bagatelle Bakery sesame-seed bun, and a choice of side. While it looked amazing on paper, it was a disappointment for her--she couldn't decipher all the amazing farm-to-table ingredients and the whole thing fell flat. The kids ordered the Prairie Slider ($6) that comes with a choice of fruit or fries and they were happy with it.

Overall, this place is OK as a venue and bar, but not good for food. You pay a premium price for mediocre food. I doubt...

Edit: I’m updating this review as Public reached out to us and not only apologized but credited back some of our meal and invited us to visit again. We were very surprised and impressed with their customer service handling the situation so quickly and trying to make it right. You don’t see that often these days so we are looking forward to trying them out a different time.

We were so disappointed with our visit. First, we tried to order cheese curds and bao buns and unfortunately they were out of both, so we just skipped the apps. We then ordered the brisket tacos and a teriyaki salmon dish. The brisket taco was nothing like photos we had seen online. It only had one slice of brisket, they were out of salsa & pickled vegetables (it’s listed as part of meal, we weren’t told they were also out of all of those things, we just didn’t get any)—it was unseasoned and cold, like it had been sitting for a while. We order brisket tacos often and were baffled at the portion size and the fact it was basically just a tortilla and slice of meat with some sprinkled cheese to make an $18 taco. The salmon was bland, but the portion size for the meal was at least good. The noodles were oddly pasty, it was supposed to be in a peanut sauce but again, maybe from sitting for a while—it was pasty and grainy. My husband has never not finished a meal out and he only had about half a bowl.

We ended up leaving and went somewhere else to finish our night. I wouldn’t recommend based off our food experience. Our waitress was friendly, but the food was really just not good and overpriced for what you got. We are fairly easy going and have never left a meal like that in our lives. Maybe we just hit it on a really off night—we aren’t sure...