Pioneer Pub and Grub — Restaurant in Wild Rose

Came through Wild Rose on a work detail and stopped here for lunch. I would like to preface this by saying that I have waitressed and bartended for 10 years from highschool through college and even into my full time career. There was a lack of professionalism with our server as well as a lack of urgency, which for such a slow lunch was not justified, and we were in uniform, which to me when serving always meant that you be that much more diligent and conscious of time, but she seemed to have no care in the world.

We were greeted right away and the atmosphere was inviting, we enjoyed looking at all the mounts as we were waiting for our server; we were one of two tables, a few people at the bar, a slow Monday lunch. Menus were handed out as soon as we sat and a drink order was taken. Our server came back with our waters and said a new pot of coffee was brewing just for us, great! She then gave us time with the menus, too much time, and we could see that she was hanging behind the bar a lot talking, and all this while there sat the fresh pot of coffee on the warmer. Once she came to take our order, she came without coffee and noted out loud that she had forgotten. Our soup came out (a different one than we had ordered because according to her "the gabby one at the bar took the last of it"), again after waiting quite some time, still no coffee, and she had walked past the coffee pot many times. Wraps came out again awhile later, we were asked if we needed anything else and said no, because at this point we had had our soup and now had sandwiches, the thought of enjoying some hot coffee was no longer intriguing so we didn't mention the missing coffee. We were almost done eating our sandwiches when our server asked from across the room, with a rag and table cleaner in her hand, how everything was - if she would have came over she would have seen we needed more water and were almost finished eating. Then there we sat ready for boxes looking around to see where our server was but again she was busy talking behind the bar. Boxes and a single bill then came, we asked for the bill to be split and the coffee to not be charged, she then asked us why we didn't speak up and remind her she had again forgotten the coffee and proceeded to call us "silly girls." I left a bit disappointed and didn't tip how I usually do. The food was good and the place is quite neat, it's somewhere I'd come back to but not if that's the standard of service and...

Horribly slow service and wrong food orders.

Went in for food and drinks. After waiting a bit, we were able to place our order. We then began to notice that the restaurant was extremely understaffed. It appeared they only had two waitresses to cover the entire inside and outside areas. We finished our first round of drinks and attempted to flag down our waitress for another round with no luck for a long time. I went up to the bar to order drinks and noticed customers from other tables were also going up to the bar due to lack of wait service. I stood at the bar for a while attempting to order drinks, and noticed the owner was the only one running the bar. I then noticed that the owner seemed more interested in chatting with his friends then serving drinks. I was unable to get drinks at the bar and sat back down.

After well over an hour of waiting for our food, we began to complain to the waitress. We stated we were ready to just leave. She told us the kitchen still didn’t have our food, and she wouldn’t blame us for just leaving. Another waitress stated we might be better off just going elsewhere for food. Eventually, they brought food, but the entire order was wrong. Not sure if they delivered to the wrong table or what. After another 20 minutes, we finally got our food. Upon getting our food, we noticed that several of our orders were still wrong. At that point, we were just hungry and ate what was in front of us. I saw another table get sick of waiting get up and leave, so pretty sure I ended up with their food.

When we started eating, we noticed a lot of issues with the food. The homemade chips were broken and burnt. The grilled cheese was toasty on the outside, but the cheese wasn’t even slightly melted.

I went and confronted the owner about all these issues and the fact that after an hour and half, they still screwed up our orders. All he could say is he had staffing issues. While speaking to him, of course one of his friends sitting at the bar had to get involved. His friend told me to shut up, leave the bar, and not show my face there anymore. Of course the owner didn’t bother to tell his drunk friend to stay out of it or leave it alone, he just sat there and let him rip into me. This was one of the worst dining experiences ever.

Don’t worry, you can be assured I will not be back at this...

I've been to this restaurant five times over the past four years (under old and current management).

Positives: The atmosphere is outstanding; especially the outdoor deck overlooking the lake if the weather cooperates. Inside is comfortable, clean and lots of TVs for sports fans....great wildlife decorations as well.

The wait staff was nice and friendly, but not very well trained. There has been a lot of turnover at this place over the past few years. The past couple times the waitress admitted to making a mistake on the order, but didn't do anything (or even offer) to fix it.

Negatives: Wait time past few visits (even under new management) has been extraordinarily long....a hour for burgers and fries! Not very busy either....lots of open tables. We all ordered our burgers to "have some pink" and ALL of the burgers were burned and dry. The portion of fries was relatively small for the price.

I would honestly like to keep going back because of the atmosphere, but one could go to Culver's and receive higher quality food, at a faster pace and lower price. There is simply too many other options in the area for us to keep going back to this restaurant...