River Walk Pub — Restaurant in Wisconsin Dells

I took the family here for dinner last night and was not all too impressed. The hostess asked if we wanted indoor or outdoor. I opted for indoor, as it was hot and sunny, and she mumbled something and seated us outdoor. The view was lovely, the flies were a nuisance.

For appetizers we ordered cheese curds and fried pepper calamari. Both were lovely. I would go as far as stating the calamari was exquisite. Our waiter, however, was sub-par but we’ll get to him after I talk about the entrees.

I ordered the new mahi mahi sandwich and upgraded to the garlic mashed potatoes. The potatoes were definitely worth the $2 splurge. I believe there is room for development with the sandwich. The ciabatta should be toasted for one. I was shocked that the fish wasn’t dry due to the fact that the sandwich arrived with the bottom of the ciabatta completely soaked and soggy. The salsa topping was a good addition that left my taste buds pleasantly pleased.

One of my sons ordered the baker tacos. Though they looked amazing with an excellent presentation alongside the chips and salsa, his opinion was neutral. This does not surprise me, as he is an apathetic teenager. He only ate one of the two that came with the dinner because he felt that too many flies landed on his second taco. I told him to man up and eat it, as no fly in the history of restaurants has ever killed anyone, but he mumbled in a tone comparable to our hostess and the second taco was not eaten.

The younger son ordered a hangover burger and requested it without the fried egg, essentially just making it a bacon cheeseburger. Despite my stellar attempt at parenting, I feel like I have failed as a father in some areas. The restaurant was able to fulfill this request. What they were unable to do, though, was cook a cheeseburger well done. At this point, we’re 0/2 on the options that have been presented to us. Why even ask your customers if you can’t deliver options you insist upon offering? His french fries were actually really good. They didn’t have that frozen taste to them at all. For the record, when I typed “french fries” my autocorrect capitalized the f in french but I do not think the french are worthy of capitalization.

The wife ordered Memphis pulled pork sandwich, no pun intended. She described it as soggy and remarkably bland and makes the claim that the blandness could’ve been resolved with additional bbq sauce, which was not an option. Though, I’m sure if she was given the option by staff, they would not be able to deliver based on previous options failures.

Speaking of staff, our waiter was completely uninterested in his job. My jealousy toward the other families with their waiters and waitresses grew exponentially throughout our dining experience. Never did he state his name, ask us how our day was going, suggest any recommendations, or check and see how everything was throughout our short time under his care. You know, basic waiter responsibilities. He took our order, brought us out drinks, returned once and just asked “refills?”, then brought us our check. In my not-so-humble opinion, he didn’t deserve the $20 tip I left him, but I carry a lot of white guilt and think it was the correct move given this nation’s despicable history.

All in all, I give this experience 2.4/5 stars. The ambiance was wonderful and appeared very well kept. The food just didn’t quite match the aesthetic, which is unfortunate. The calamari was the best thing about this place. The mahi mahi sandwich has some really good potential if brought back to the development phase. Despite all my complaining, I would be willing to give it a second shot provided I could be seated inside and waited on by someone else. If it wasn’t for my poor experience with the staff, my rating would be a 3.4. They literally took it down a...

I've heard nothing but good things about this place so our family decided to give it try. However, our experience was not great unfortunately. We had to ask for crayons from another server because our server forgot both times we asked but that wasn't a big deal. All of our food came cold, like cold to the touch even. I mentioned it to server but didn't send it back because we were all starving at that point. So the server talked to manager and got us a discount. They only discounted the meals, not the whole order which is kind of odd but whatever. We're looking over the receipt and realized the prices of all our food was increased and not what it stated on the menu AT ALL. I brought it to the servers attention and she rambled on about updates in their system blah blah. So we basically didn't get a discount at all and our food was still overpriced even with the discount. At this point we were so upset and just paid and left. She also didn't even check on us after we said we were unhappy. I'm not one to complain, I hate to complain actually but this really upset us. Had the food been warm, it honestly would've been great. There was so much potential there with the food and helping us as unhappy customers but she didn't even try. She was very concerned about the bigger tables and checked on those tables several times and even brought their food out before ours even tho we ordered before them which would explain why our food was cold. Had it just been the food being cold, we may have came back to try again but the whole price gouging with the "discount" thing really set us over the top making us super unhappy and not willing to give this place...

*Update: wrote an email to the Owner as requested, received no response.

Stopped in for the first time on a Thursday at about 1:30 in the afternoon. There was 1 table of 7-8 people eating lunch; otherwise an entirely empty restaurant. We ordered an appetizer and drinks. Drinks were great. The appetizer was still cold in the middle. We kindly asked that the appetizer be sent back to be warm, and they quickly made us a new one. The waitress/bartender then delivered food to the other party and played on her phone and then went outside. When she came back in she continued on her phone and then came to make another drink. The waitress had zero social interaction and seemed to only care about what was happening on her phone. We asked to close our tab and were leaving a normal 20% tip regardless of the bartenders' disregard for us in the restaurant. After waiting another 5 minutes for the bartender get off of her phone to collect our pull tabs and actually close out the bill, we crossed off the tip and left $0.03 because the patronage is clearly not priority.

The restaurant is beautiful, the drinks were good. The service is disappointing. For an empty restaurant, there should be no wait for service. It is especially disappointing to see that your server is paying attention to their phone instead of their customers. Normally I would have brushed this off and left a tip regardless. But after countless times of watching the server play on their phone while waiting for service, I found it impossible to...