Bar Louie

My favorite late night bar and restaurant. They recently renovated and are offering new drink features.  
The bar staff is always friendly and welcoming to me and my friends.  They know our drinks and are prompt to offer refills.  $1.00 burgers are offered on Tuesday nights (when I usually visit).  The have the best tater tots on the Bay area.  The California Chicken Sandwich, Hummus Plate and Chicken Wings are the favorites amongst my family.  Several other items on their food menu are just as wonderful.

Awful service at bar. Staff talking to each other and **ignoring** customers. Poor liquor selection.   Stay away!!!

I guess I just don't get it.  People are always saying, let's go to happy hour at Bar Louie's!  I have been to several and I think that they are expensive and soulless.  I would rather go to any number of places for happy hour instead of this place but I am not the sit in the corner and pout sort so when I am overruled, I go anyways.  

But I don't think I will have that problem anymore.  Why?  Huge Roaches.  This past week, my wife's riends, my wife and I went to Bar Louie for happy hour.  Jen ordered rum and cokes for around $6.50 a pop (expensive for Tampa/St. Pete and even worse for happy hour prices).  I took advantage of their pretty decent beer selection and the happy hour price which I think dropped it down to $4 a pop (not too bad).  We also ordered flat bread of the half price appetizers menu.  As we settled in to our stools and enjoyed the company a giant roach/palmetto bug ran right up the wall behind us and disappeared behind a TV.  We called over the manager whose response was oh I am sorry let me comp you a drink.  I frankly didn't want comping but never turn down a drink.  What I wanted was to be moved and assured that it was just a fluke.  But we did not get moved and the manager disappeared.  

A few minutes later, we looked up at the TV again and the roach was sitting on top of the TV and began to run back and forth across the screen.  The thing about roaches or palmetto bugs is that they don't like to come out into the open or the light unless there are large numbers of them so I started to get itchy looking at this.  So I walked straight up to the kitchen pass through and I told them that we needed a manager ASAP.  This time a woman came and my friends told me that while I was gone they had seen a second roach.  So clearly this was not an errant bug.  This was a colony or at least the start of one.  

So as we watched another roach came out and perched on the side of the TV.  It crouched down and FLEW straight at one of the women in our group who SCREAMED!  And all of this happened right in front of the manager.  The manager apologized and was nice but did nothing further with our check which had grown sizable or our table location.  In fact, she took the opportunity to blame the poor sanitation on her neighbors.  Passing the buck infuriated me and having just had a giant flying health code violation fly at a member of our party, I paid out my check and then informed her that I was posting this on Yelp.

Looking back I regret that I let this cat out of the bag.  I almost never do it and think that it is bad form.  BUT the manager's reaction was telling and is the main reason that I won't go back.  When I mentioned that this was going on Yelp, she visibly jumped.  She then focussed her apologies on me instead of the women who was shaken by the experience.  Bad move.  AND she chased us down as we were leaving with a free drink coupon which my friends took but I declined.  I don't intend on going back (see my other Bar Louie reviews).  But the fact that they were less visibly concerned about what amounts to a serious health code violation in full view of the entire restaurant than they were about me posting this review took what would have been an isolated experience with 2 stars and a chance of me re-reviewing it later to a solid one star.  

Cleanliness around my food is non-negotiable and has serious consequences for your patrons as well as your bottom line.