River City Grill — Restaurant in Winona

Okay, so here’s the thing, I wanted to love this restaurant. I tried so hard! Winona deserves more quality establishments so I wanted River City to be good. But, it just wasn’t. I gave it four separate visits, both during Covid with a partial menu and then after they had a full menu and every time the food has been a lackluster let-down.

At my most recent visit today I ordered the Black and Gouda burger, because how can you mess up a burger? Simple right? Wrong. My burger was small, and by small I mean smaller than my palm (and I have a glove size medium female hand aka not big). It was about the thickness of a McDonald’s dollar menu patty as well and oddly enough was square (it should be noted that my friend who also ordered this burger had a slightly larger, rounded burger so ??? why the difference idk). The burger itself was also very dry and my bun had only a very thin layer (also only on half the bun) of “zesty ranch” sauce so that didn’t make up for anything either. The burgers one redeeming factor was that it was cooked to the level I ordered (medium) .

Then let’s talk about my side. I ordered and paid for the sweet potato fry upgrade and for my extra 2 dollars I got a grand total of 14 fries, 14!!! The fries themselves were good A+ sweet potato fries, favorite part of the meal, but if I’m going to be paying extra for the upgrade, generally I would expect more than 14 fries. It should also be noted that my friend, who ordered regular fries, had a regular amount of fries.

Finally, the wait staff wasn’t the best. Bless our waiter’s hard work, the bar was crowded tonight, but I never got my drink refill. After I finished my first drink, she took my cup for a refill, but then never returned with a drink. I reminded her when our food was brought out about the drink, but still, nothing. I made it through my dry burger with nothing to wash it down with (also my drink was water so it’s not very hard to get, just saying).

So, long story short, after 4 visits of mediocre at best food, I won’t be returning for future dining.

Update: my friend, who had the same burger, has worked in the food industry before and later told me that the burgers were definitely frozen patties and not fresh, which makes sense given the subpar quality. Do...

We arrived around 4:00 on a Sunday afternoon, stood inside the entrance for a time waiting for staff to see us and seat us. After 5 minutes, we started walking around looking for someone to help us eventually found someone and were seated. She took our drink orders which came quickly but my Son's soda had a weird flavor, he thought maybe the syrup was out and my Daughter's milk had chunks in it. We told the server about the milk and she kind of argued that she just opened the milk container, even checked the expiration and it shouldn't be bad but we showed her there were clearly CHUNKS in the milk so we just opted for water after that. We ordered the chips and queso for an appetizer, it came quickly, but the cheese sauce tasted old and had a really weird gritty consistency. We ate the chips with the salsa instead; the salsa was really good. My Daughter ordered the pasta with shrimp scampi, the shrimp were ok but the noodles were bland and no flavor. No butter, no garlic, just plain noodles with cooked shrimp on top, not what one would expect with scampi. She was hungry, added salt and ate it. Everyone elses burgers and fries were ok. At the end of the meal, I handed her my debit card before she could bring us the check, she came back with our receipt and when we got home over an hour away, we realized she never gave us back my debit card. I called, they said they couldn't find it, I just cancelled the card and chalked it up to my fault for not checking to make sure I had it. Just an overall odd experience and we won't...

Hate to be cliche but, if I could give negative stars I would. Worst service ever. We didn't even get seated. Pretty sure it had to do with our race. I'm black but my wife is white. We checked in and were told there was a wait because they were short staffed. No problem, although odd for a Saturday night. We asked if we could sit at the bar so we could have a cocktail while we waited. We were told flat out no. That counted towards the wait and we could not. Meanwhile, several parties that came in after us and had larger parties were either immediately seated, seated before us, or allowed to sit at the bar. Mind you, we were a party of two only. My wife and I were staying at the attached hotel and were trying to enjoy dinner for our anniversary without having to go far. Well, this place ruined it. We finally were seated and by that time, the menu switched to a limited menu. Also, another found our situation funny so we decided to leave. I told the guy laughing at us that the situation was not funny and that he should grow up. I was then “cut off” and told to leave. Two things…we were already leaving, and secondly “cut off” from what!? We were never served anything. What a joke of an establishment. Be better and...