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| - So, it's great that this massive biergarden/resto has activated Chester Avenue across from the Greyhound Station. As I strolled toward HH last night, I was struck by how many more people were on Chester. Many, many more than Ive seen in the past.
That's great.
However, aside from 2-3 bright spots, Im afraid to say that HH's soft opening is not going well from a service perspective and the quality/value of their food is poor.
What's good?
The physical space is beautiful. It's a wide open, boisterous frat party atmosphere ...even on a Wednesday night. With the polka band playing, the crowd large and vocal and an overall mood of "Let's party", the moment you step in the door, through an entryway half-heartedly stocked with over-priced t-shirts and steins, you know the purpose is for you to have a blast.
Also good? Bar snacks. The two our group tried were fresh, tasty and enjoyable. The pretzels hawked from baskets, for cash only, are soft, perfectly salty and accompanied by a tangy mustard. Perfect. Secondly, the ping-pong sized sauerkraut balls eventually arrived (more on this later and they may have been another group's that we snagged out of desperation) and they were good. Six round balls of fresh-tasting kraut were served with a creamy mustard that accented the greasy treats perfectly. Win on both.
Finally, the seating is fun. Packed in at long tables with strangers sounds less fun than it is. We had a lot of social time with three CWRU neuroscience students who were good-natured, chatty and charming.
The beer is fine, but not remarkable. We are spoiled here in CLE with great breweries. HH has a lot of competition and Im not sure their Deutschland recipes are all that special as to warrant a special trip. Again, its ok beer, but the dark, Oktoberfest and wheat beer wereacceptable but nothing special.
The bad? Too many to list, but I'll give the highlights.
Service time. We waited ONE HOUR AND TWENTY minutes from the moment we placed our food order until it FINALLY (FINALLY!) arrived. Repeated attempts to find our server and multiple requests as to our food location brought the same wan response "I'll check on it". Yes, it's a soft opening, but that is ridiculous.
We witnessed multiple double orders (guests were served their food, then 5 minutes later a runner brought the same folks the same order of food, which was obviously a duplicate order.). Massive staff confusion and back/forth. There's a problem in the kitchen.
Once our mains FINALLY arrived, the server, because of room flow, could not get to our location and had to pass our food down the table through four other guests to reach us. The food was not worth the wait. A pasta dish was barely better than Kraft Mac and Cheese and the side salad that was to accompany it was nonexistent and never made it out of the kitchen. A pork dish was sloppily sauced with leaden dumplings and an unappealing presentation with food "bunched up"on one side of the plate. An entree salad had poor quality lettuce with a deep fried pork cutlet hacked into pieces and dumped on top with a warm bacon dressing that looked eerily like jarred chicken gravy. All at a premium price. Im happy to pay $15 bucks for good pasta, but for something I can make at home for much less, I expect something that tastes good.
As for room flow, there is a focus on maximizing space to increase revenue, but it comes at the expense of providing a smooth traffic flow. In the NW corner of the cavernous room, there is no way for servers to circulate without going all the way around a huge room and then backtracking. Remove one table to create an easy way to circulate. This one needs to happen STAT.
There are not enough menus, silverware, or napkins available. Repeated requests for these items brought zero response. We ended up cadging all of these items by travelling to other tables and patching them together (2 napkins here, 1 napkin there - thank goodness for the kindness of strangers.).
The polka band is fun, but in the cavernous space, it is LOUD. There is no chance of conversation. Know before you go, anything beyond 1-3 word shouting comments is nigh impossible. This is the kind of place it is, so be aware.
All told, even if this was a soft opening, the beer is not anything special, the food value is poor/nonexistent and the systems (which are expected to be shaky during a soft opening) are SO BAD that it's going to take several months to shake them out.
I won't be back. Too many other great locations in CLE. I wish them the best, but don't have high hopes. It appears that this new venture is relying on the brand "sizzle" (a Hofbrauhaus here! Yay!) without investing in the core "steak" of excellent beer, toothsome, hearty food and effiecient service.
Nein, Hofbrauhaus Haus, nein.
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