| rev:text
| - Heist Brewery has some work to do. My wife and I visited yesterday, and while we were very impressed by the location -- really beautiful spot -- the dining/drinking experience itself was less than satisfactory:
1. TOO EXPENSIVE: The food is overpriced by $2-3 per plate. We don't mind paying for good food (Customshop and Five Church are favorites), but the portions and flavor profile has to justify the high cost, and they didn't for us. We felt we were helping to pay the investors back for the huge, beautifully-appointed restaurant.
2. FOOD (2.5 Stars out of 5): So, what about the food itself? The menu was impressive, and we were excited to try a number of small plates (since you can't access a menu online, we're going from memory):
---- Beer Cheese and Warm Pretzels (4 Stars out of 5): The best thing we ate - five or six warm, long/slender pretzel bread with a piping-hot triangle of beer cheese. We'd recommend adding some salt to the pretzels and continued work on the cheese - fairly one note - but compared to everything else, satisfying enough.
---- Ahi Tuna & Seaweed Salad (2.5 Stars out of 5): This likely would have been a four star dish, but our server noted that they were having trouble deciding whether they could do it for us, and its clear they didn't have enough tuna to serve a full portion. The way its served is as bite-size portions (with dollop of salad) on small forks situated in a unique display with seven slots. Ours came out with just five forks of tuna, and at $14, it was a crazy-small amount of food. It tasted okay - I do a better version of it myself, and with about 3oz of tuna total, we were very let down.
---- Duck Quesadillas (1 Stars out of 5): Yikes. These were not very good at all. Very small portion with just a little smoked/prepared duck in each one. We wish we hadn't ordered this.
---- Flatbread Pizza (2.5 Stars out of 5): So, which flatbread pizza did we order? Well, we tried to have the jerk chicken pesto, which sounded delicious. And since we were still so hungry after the first round of food (the three dishes above were so insubstantial, we had to order a pizza) we started to wolf it down when it was delivered without inspecting its ingredients. But 5 minutes later, another server came by with what looked like our pizza ("that's right, this was supposed to have pesto!") making us look down at what we were eating. My wife doesn't eat beef, pork or lamb, and I'm pretty sure we were eating the one with bacon. It was tasty, but my wife wasn't too thrilled with eating bacon when she's so cautious to avoid it.
3. THE BEER (2 Stars out of 5): I never understand when a brewery tries to have a dozen different beers on hand. Why? Assclown does this as well, and its a rookie mistake IMO. Find 4-5 beers you can produce well and do those only. We did a flight, and I have to say that I'd likely only order a couple again - the Peach Hefe was quite good, and likely our reason to go back.
4. THE SERVER (2.5 Stars out of 5): We were seated upstairs, and our server had to comment every time she came up about what a trek it was to walk upstairs. Well, yea, I know, but come on, don't make me feel badly for you having to wait on me. Also just too talkative -- clearly, they are still getting their act together being open for such a short amount of time. But we had 9 different people stop by our table, and obviously the flatbread pizza mix-up... I'd prefer one server, not a team.
5. Overall (2.5 Stars out of 5): I'm giving such specific notes because I want this to be a great brew pub. The backdrop is stunning, but just because it looks great doesn't mean people are going to come back if they have an uneven first visit. Looking at the burgers and sandwiches, that appears to be how one should experience the food. And some of the beers were standouts. Work on the cost/portion size, slim down to a narrower number of high-quality beers, and make sure your servers are experienced. I started at 2 stars, but I'll upgrade to 3 stars as encouragement to keep at it.
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