The weather was too miserable to trek to the waterfront on Saturday, so ended up going to BJ's with some friends. I will say that my expectations were low (I was thinking Hops), but hoped for better. It did exceed my low expectations, but there were some big problems.
We arrived at 6:15, told there was a 45 minute wait, we found a table in the bar to try some beer while we waited. Over the course of the evening, I had the Pale Ale and the Nut Brown, I also sipped at the Hefe and the Porter from others orders. All were good to very good, much better than what Hops used to offer. I do have some minor issues on the beer side:
1. If you are brewing the beer in Reno (or wherever), you shouldnt have Brewhouse in your name.
2. While the glasses werent frosted, they were chilled. It was too cold. Good beer shouldnt be that cold. Cold is good when you dont want to taste your beer, but they are serving beer meant to be tasted. It needs to be a bit warmer. Not chilling the glasses would solve that problem.
3. Kudos for making a real hefeweizen - not an American Wheat. I consider American Wheat to be a worse scourge upon the beer world than macro lagers, especially when called a hefeweizen (Im looking at you, Widmer). BJ's hefe was good, but drinking a hefeweizen out of a standard "pint" glass just isnt optimal. This is a very tiny nit to pick (especially considering some to follow) but it bugs me.
Onto the food: I had the scampi, I thought it was excellent, others seem to enjoy their food. No complaints, and definate thumbs up here.
The problem for the evening: SERVICE!
1. We arrived at 6:15, as I mentioned above, it was over 2 hours before we were seated. That is unacceptable after being told 45 minutes. I realize that is an estimate, so anything up to an hour would have been fine, but to be off by a factor of 3 isnt.
2. Once seated, the waiter was slow in getting around to taking our order.
3. The food came out in a reasonable amount of time, except for 1 order. Half of us were done eating before the final person got their food order.
4. The waiter apologized for the situation (he kept checking, tried it keep us up to date, all in all did a good job in a bad situation, but the kitchen let him down), mentioned it had been a problem all evening, said that tables had been yelling at the manager all evening, that she was in tears in the back, and thanked us for not being that way. Also mentioned meals being taken off bills and etc. So, why wasnt that meal comped at our table then? If they realized its the same situation, they should have taken it off, we shouldnt have needed to force the issue by yelling at the manager. If it had been my meal, it wouldnt have been paid for, but it wasnt my bill, so not my place. It ticked me off though.
All in all, Im willing to give them another chance. The problems are correctable. Maybe it was just one bad night, kinks to be worked out and all. I would expect thunder night to be a light evening though, what with a few 100k potential customers being out of the mix.
