A great location with an intriguing concept, but the execution during my first visit was just short of a total catastrophe. If not for some tasty dishes, this would go down as my first ever one star Yelp. As it is, there is a bunch of issues this place needs to work through if this concept is going to survive in a neighborhood that puts a premium on value and a pleasant experience. Neither of which was the case during First Friday night.
A friend of mine caught wind of this place earlier in the week. A new cocktail bar on 3rd Street & McKinley that serves Polish food? Count me in I said. I've only been to one other Polish restaurant in the entire Phoenix metro (A Touch of European Cafe in Glendale), but I remembered how much I enjoyed that food. So a group of 7 of us decided to get together here on First Friday artwalk night. Don't get me wrong, we knew it would be busy, but most any bar worth its weight in Downtown Phoenix knows how to handle a big crowd on a busy night. We got here around 7:30 & surprisingly found seating immediately. The building itself is one that I've walked by dozens of times, but this is the first I've seen the inside since becoming the Milk Bar. The atmosphere is modern & clubby with a decent sized bar up front & a small amount of seating inside, as well as a pretty sizeable outdoor seating area. The walls & tables are almost all white with neon colored lighting throughout & clubby music in the background (like I said, very clubby). There's even a random multicolored portrait of Pope John II on the wall (which makes some sense since he was from Poland).
The menu is fairly limited but consists mostly of Polish food classics like pierogis, kielbasa, & cabbage rolls. The cocktail menu is pretty wide-ranging with drink combos of all kinds, but almost all have a Polish flare in terms of the alcohol used and/or the ingredient combos. After we were seated, the problems began to ensue. For starters, it took almost 15 minutes just to be waited on by our waitress. When she finally arrived, we were ready to order both our drinks & our food, but she told us she could only take care of drinks at that time. Alright fine, we just gave her our drink orders. She came back 10 minutes later having forgotten our drink orders. 5 minutes after that, she came back again having forgotten half our drink orders. Finally 5 minutes later we got our drinks.
For my drink, I got a Polish Flag Shot. Its a shot of Polish vodka mixed with what tasted like raspberry and strawberry syrup. It actually wasn't too bad, but for $7 it was hardly satisfying. And after going more than 30 minutes between our arrive time and first drink, we were starving. Finally after giving us our drinks, she took our food orders. I went with their cheddar pierogis. They come in a plate of three. They also have goat cheese, spinach, jalapeño cheddar, meat, and sauerkraut pierogis as well. I asked the waitress if my plate could have three different pierogis but she said that was forbidden. Really? To compensate, everyone at the table got a different kind. Another 20 minutes passed by before the waitress brought our food by. By now we were all in a pretty bad mood about the experience, but we were so hungry we all dived in as soon as our food arrived.
To the credit of Milk Bar's chefs, the pierogis were delicious. Great texture and tasty filling in each. Mine were topped with bacon and sauerkraut and included a side of sour cream. My favorite was actually the jalapeño cheddar pierogi. They aren't as good or as authentic as A Touch of European's pierogis, but still very respectable. The downside however was (again) the price. $7 for three pretty small pierogis? A Touch of European would give me twice that many for that price. I was still hungry after my dish, but we were ready to leave and walk around Downtown.
It was after eating that our bad experience became a disaster. It took about 20 minutes for waitress to come by and clear our table, another 10 minutes to get our checks, another 10 minutes for her to come by and pick up our checks with the cards, and then 30 minutes (!!!) for our waitress to charge our cards so we could sign the tab and go. Altogether, we were stranded at this restaurant for more than 2 hours from start to finish. Based on the limited amount of food and drinks we ordered, we should have been here for less than half that time. I've worked in food service so I'm usually a sympathetic tipper, but tonight I didn't give the waitress a good tip. She didn't earn even a sympathetic amount.
To the credit of the manager, he did come by to apologize and offered everyone a free shot for the trouble, but we were so done that we just wanted to get out of there. So yes, all in all, it was pretty brutal. As intriguing as this Derek Pasieka creation is, the staff needs to improve their service and the prices need to moderate if this place is to last beyond the next First Friday