Babes is a top notch restaurant with the best Utica greens and chicken riggies in town. The service here is always amazing and the staff is super friendly and all seem happy to be working here. They are very involved in the community and I always see hockey players and other sports players from the college here. I always have a great experience here and love the food
Review Source:This place saved my ass the night I pulled into Utica at around 11 and the only place open that wasn't fast food is Babe's. It add issues to my eating situation, I have a severe gluten allergy and Babe's happened to have a gluten-free menu. Saved my ass totally! I had the gluten free buffalo chicken salad. It was no frills but the dressing was good and the greens were fresh. I cant say anything horrible about the place. The server was nice and it was a generally good experience.
Review Source:I went into Babe's around midnight on a Saturday night with a few friends. I asked for drink menus. I was told by the unhappy acting bartender that they had no drink menus.
At this point we all ordered various types of drinks and sat down. We tried ordering food and were told the grill was already off.
About half way through our first drink the bartender came over and said we can order one more drink only because they were closing early tonight.
It was a Saturday night and we were in Utica NY at a bar that was closing before 1 am. I don't get it.
I wish I could give this place 0 stars.. I had eaten there before and the food is simply blah. Â After an experience I had there, I will never go back again. Â It was late and I stopped by with a friend (her idea, though I protested). Â We sat down and ordered our beverages. It was not busy at all, however 20 minutes passed before beverages arrived. Â We then ordered our appetizer and dinner. Â An hour and a half passed. I lost my patience and went up to the manager and explained to him what was going on and that we were going to leave as we now had no time to actually eat our meals anyway. Â To my surprise, instead of apologizing, he charged us for our beverages- 2 fountain sodas. Really??
Review Source:I've been to Babe's a few times. Â It's a decent and large place, but by no means a home run place to go. Â Service is rather meh and the prices for food are average, but they do have an extensive menu and a number of neat wall decorations.
If you come to Babe's try the chicken riggies, which is a Utica food speciality that combines chicken, rigatonis, a spicy sauce and peppers. Â I wound up here during "Riggie Fest" once, so I got to put steak in my riggies instead of chicken. Â There's better food choices in Utica, but you'll do OK eating here.
I hope my recent experience is a recent experience. I was once a local and in my youth ate here frequently and though the food was good. Fast forward 15 years later and I can't believe the sub-par quality and amount of food for the price.
We ordered take out because it was after 10pm and good luck finding any place that delivers.
The "Appetizer Sampler," is described on their website as, "Large platter with some of our favorites including chicken tenders, mozzarella sticks & loaded potato skins. Served with honey mustard, marinara sauce & sour cream for dipping. 10.99" We received 2 chicken tenders, 4 mozzarella sticks, 2 loaded potato skins, and 1 container each of honey mustard, marinara sauce and sour cream.....For $10.99!
Ahhhh hahahahaha, we were hungry suckers.
The second portion of the order consisted of buffalo wings. They were alright. We received 10 wings, with celery, carrots, and blue cheese dressing/sauce. The price was $7.49. Price relatively good, sauce ok, only complaint (and it's more a personal preference) the chicken could have been crispier. There are definitely better choices in the area. I'm looking at you, Washington Mill's Charlie's!
The final part of the order was fried dough. Oh how Carmella's beats you in this department. As does every Italian grandma, aunt, mother, cousin, sister, and neighbor in East Utica. Shame on you. That was the greasiest yuck ever. Don't even say well, it was take out and it sat while you were driving. I could drive from Maria's Pasta Shoppe in South Utica to Frankfort and their dough wouldn't be half as disgusting.
Meh. 2 stars.
Meh---service makes up for the seriously lacking good. It wasn't horrible, but it by no means was great.
Inside was pretty clean, service fantastic and everyone making sure you're taken care of. Prices--reasonable.
Food--Had the veggie sandwich the extra order of sweet tater fries. The sammy consisted of grilled eggplant, grilled sweet red pepper, mushrooms, lettuce and tomato with a side of dill sauce all on a toasted multigrain bun. Here's the low down--thin slice of what you can tell was pre-roasted grilled eggplant, picked jarred roasted pepper (which wasn't horrible b/c the vinegar gave it a nice little bite through the veggies, tomato, shredded sub lettuce, and canned mushrooms, on too toasted multigrain bun and frozen, not fresh cut, fries. The mushrooms I would have even preferred a lower quality like white button but freshly grilled down for the nice hearty, beefy, mushroom flavors, and the multigrain roll was nothing more than a kaiser roll that was too dry toasted. However, I will say this--the dill sauce was very good (though not much dill flavor). The nachos that our table ordered complained that while they were nice and cheesey that the chicken had a weird spice flavor to it.
All in all, probably what I was expecting as I went in. Not terrible, but not great. It was tolerable as our passerby restaurant on our way out to Syracuse.
This might be a good place to go in and have a beer with some apps and watch a game because their bar area was pretty cool with the tvs and the set up.
Yuck, Yuck and another yuck. Â This place is run down and needs updating. Â Especially the bathrooms. Â I couldn't even get hot water out of the sink to wash my hands!! How in the world are the employees cleaning their hands then?? EWW. Â We ordered. Â I ordered chicken riggies, my husband ordered boneless ribs and my daughter ordered a BLT and fries. Â My husband had no complaints about this food, he said it was good. Â My riggies were good (not the best by far) but the portion size was SMALL. Â I like ordering riggies for many reasons, one being that I like leftovers for lunch (and sometimes dinner) the next day. Â But, with this portion size I did not have left overs. Â My daughter (11years old) took a bit of her BLT and said it was spicy. Â I looked at it and it had some sort of pepper on the bacon. Â I wouldn't call this spicy, but an 11 year old does. Â When the waitress came over I asked her about it and she said "oh year, our bacon is peppercorn bacon" Â This type of information should be on the menu! Â We even double checked the menu, no mention of peppercorn. Â Also, common sense might tell you to tell a child this when ordering. Â It's not like it was busy there, so she had the time! They did allow her to order something else and they took the BLT off the check. Â Overall the things that bother me the most are the oldness of the place and the dirty/old bathrooms. Â I'm pretty sure hot water is a necessity!!!
Review Source:The food here is basically inedible. To paraphrase Wolfgang Puck: if you sold this food in Italy they'd arrest you for it.
I was in Utica with a coworker and we wanted to get something to eat before getting back on the Thruway. He spoke so highly of Babe's that we had to go there. OK, I'm willing to give it a try.
In retrospect I should have immediately vetoed his recommendation and kicked him out of the car.
It was an awful experience. There is nothing redeeming about this restaurant. The sauce is very poor, lacking in any enjoyable (or even observable) flavor. The pasta had the most bizarre texture to it. The chicken was dry, bland and overcooked. Everything about the food was disappointing. Our waitress, while incredibly friendly and pleasant, completely vanished and did not check up on how things were going or if we needed anything else (i.e., refills on drinks).
So take note: If your friend says, "Hey, let's go to Babe's," veto it by kicking him out of the car and leaving him on the side of the road. This place really needs to take a serious look at the food they're preparing and the people they're hiring to do it. It's time to go back to the drawing board, Babe's.
We ate at Babe's this past weekend on the recommendation of the desk clerk at our hotel. Â We were looking for decent food and a place to have a drink and this place fit the bill. The other side of the restaurant is a full bar. Our server was good, other than one prolonged absence. The food was average to slightly better than average, overall pretty good. Â My mother had a bowl of minestrone soup and a ham sandwich, and I had the pizza bite appetizer, which is really just a small personal pizza. Â As a note, after 9:00pm, the appetizers are BOGO. Â Bottom line: Decent service and average food, fun decor.
Review Source:Terrible food. Avoid. There have to be better choices in the vicinity.
While traveling through Utica, my wife and I wanted a dinner from a local restaurant instead of a big chain. This was one case where we should have just gone to the Friendly's next door.
Nearly every aspect of dining experience was terrible. Although our server was friendly, she disappeared for long stretches. The food was of poor quality and very poorly prepared. First came my side salad. It was served with lettuce that both partly frozen and partly spoiled. It was disgusting and completely inedible. I would have sent it back to the kitchen, but our server was no where to be found until she brought out our entrees.
I ordered the chicken parmigiana, which was listed on the menu as one of "Babe's favorites," which I thought meant that it would be well prepared. When it was dropped in front of me, I could immediately see that the chicken was overcooked - over a quarter of the breading was burned black! The chicken itself was tough and dry, and the breading had a strange taste. The pasta was cooked properly and the sauce was mediocre. My wife ordered the spaghetti and meatballs. It came with three large meatballs, and she could only eat part of one of the dry, flavorless balls.
They do have a good beer selection, and the bar area on Saturday was packed with locals. Prices were low, but when the food isn't really edible, I can't say that they were good prices.
Decent Food with nice wait staff. We sat in the bar to watch World Cup and the bartenders were courteous and attentive. We never lacked for a drink and got our food quite promptly. I can't say that the food was amazing, but it wasn't bad either. I got a spinach salad that probably could have used less dressing. I'd suggest ordering dressing on the side if you are going here and order a salad. The sampler plate left a little to be desired in terms of the food that was there for the sampling, but they had some great desserts and 23 oz. local brews for $5.
Review Source:There's nothing like a long drive and extreme hunger to make a so-so meal seem great. Â And what would generally be bar food, thusly, was made wondrous. Â We stopped off at the same exit of the awesomely bad motor inn we'd slept at last night, and were vexed slightly by our lack of choices near the road until we came to this place. Â Bar food. Â Fine, whatever. Â We ate and were sated. Â I can't say the food was the best ever, but it did the work, and somehow we made it back to Boston by ten despite stopping. Â Thank God for that.
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