Not my favorite place for wings but they aren't bad. Â They have pared down their ridiculously huge menu into something much more manageable. Â Had a bartender tell us not to bother with the cream of crab soup - that was amusing. Â The crab pretzels are delicious, as is the crab dip. Â The Cowboy Wrap is a favorite - packed with flavor and very filling. Â Also love the Chesapeake fries. Â Very much a locals hangout and a great place to watch the O's. Â AND they have both Smithwicks for my Heart and Angry Orchard for me - On Tap !
Review Source:I used to enjoy going here for some wings and a few beers. Unfortunately, they've gone WAY downhill. For example, I enjoy Loose Cannon. It's a local beer and one of my favorites. I know what it tastes like. The Loose Cannon they have on tap is gross. It tastes old (the hops have faded really badly), and when I questioned the bartender I just got a, "Durrr, you'll have to just deal with it," type of answer. I thought this was a one time thing, so I ordered a week later (still gross), again about a month later, but it was still gross. I almost wonder if it even IS Heavy Seas' Loose Cannon.
The bartenders are horrible. They go out of their way to not notice when someone wants to order... or maybe it's just me. Maybe because I don't look like their regular customer (seems to be older white folks), they don't think I'm worth the time, but this happens almost every time I go there which used to be on a weekly basis -- when their wings were still good.
Speaking of their wings, they used to be really good and worth the bad service and gross beer (absolutely none of their other food is worth the time), but the last few times I've gotten them, they've been ice cold and pretty inedible.
The last time I was at the bar, my girlfriend and I waited for well over an hour for 1 order of wings. Â Eventually, I noticed the bartender go to the back and come back with our wings. Â They were obviously sitting out because they were cold (not lukewarm -- ICE cold) and the wing sauce had congealed a bit. Â I worried about food poisoning, and didn't eat them. Â I would have asked to see the manager, but from overhearing a conversation down the bar, the manager was busy socializing.
I emphasize last time because I will never go back. It's a shame, too, because there aren't many places where you can get a craft beer and wings in the area.
They also have Fox News on all the time. Â Gross. Â Even if everything was awesome, I'd probably not go there much just because of that.
Very nice service at this bar. Lots of food and drink specials. If only the food were as consistent as the service. We had Jamaican jerk tenders that were burnt along with a horribly overcooked steak. They were very accommodating though and remade the entree. I will give this place another shot.
Review Source:I used to come to Bateman's quite often several years back when I lived in the Owings Mills area. The place is really suitable as a divey sports bar only but I wouldn't recommend it as a restaurant for any reason. A few years back the place was in rapid decline with worn old stained carpet, filthy bathrooms and rickety booths and tables. I will say they have made some nice updates. The bathrooms are less dirty but still not really clean. Better than what you've find a true dive bar, worse than what you'd find a chain restaurant. The old carpets have been torn out and new hardwood like flooring put in. Much nicer aesthetics but same old mediocre food and service.
Bateman's is bar despite it's attempts to be a "Bistro". The bar area is large with plenty of area to stand, sit or host events. Â The beer selection on tap is one of the better ones in the NW Bmore suburbs. Resurrection, Flying Dog, Dogfish 60 min, etc join all the other mass produced piss waters that are featured in various signage across the establishment. Arrive at the tail end of a happy hour, weekend night or prior to a holiday and you will find drunk, stumbling and obnoxiously loud folks. In the past, burgers are decent, anything deep fried is tolerable and of course their "famous" wings are serviceable. Nothing outstanding but come into Bateman's expecting this and looking to drink with friends, have some average bar food and you will be fine.
This leads me the story of my triumphant return to Bateman's that has finally sworn me off the place for good. Its kinda long so skip to the TL;DR if you don't want the dirty details. Our party of 4 arrives around 8pm to a packed house due to a Ravens player hosting a radio show. We find a table in the bar area and the waitress takes about 5 minutes to acknowledge us. She takes another 5 or so to come back to take our drink order and we ask for menus. At this point, no worries since we know the place is busy and she seems to be running around.
Drinks come by about 10 mins later and no menus. She runs off before we can remind her. After another 5 minutes, we flag a busboy down to get a couple menus. Waitress returns to check on us after about 15 minutes after we get the menu, asks if we were good on drinks. We say we're fine and she turns to take off. We catch her and say we'd like to order food. At this point it is about 8:45pm when we place our order. The Ravens player's show is over and the place is starting to empty and the place ends up about half full.
Around 9:30pm, the waitress comes up to us and asks us to tell her what we ordered again since there was some food sitting and she thinks it was ours. We tell her and she says "Yeah I think that's it". Hooray heat lamp warmed food! Nope, we should only be so lucky. She comes back about 5-10 minutes later and says that they're working on our order. So was it ever put in? She had come  around once prior to 9:30pm and told us that our food should be up soon. What was the deal with the food that was sitting? Up until this point we were irritated but hey it was busy around the time we ordered, maybe the kitchen was backed up...now we're not sure what the issue is.
So it gets better, while we wait some more, we had to repeat a request for another round of drinks. The mixed drink we ordered was made incorrectly. Since our waitress is coming by as often as Halley's comet, we take it directly to the bar and say what we ordered and what is in it that is not correct. Bartender takes the drink and remakes it the exact same way...lovely.
One of our party decided to keep track of how long it took from when we RE-ordered to when we received the food. 41 minutes later, our food comes out. Burger that was ordered well done has pink in the middle and appears medium, borderline med-well. Sliders were brought out without cheese on them. Everything including the fries and wings are all lukewarm at best. Clearly the food was sitting for a while. For those playing along at home, we ordered at 8:45ish and we receive cold incorrect food at 10:15ish.
This is a momentous occasion fellow Yelpers. Bateman's has busted my "I need to see manager" cherry...at least in a bad way. I've asked for managers for great service before but I'm pretty patient and usually service or food is never bad enough that I need to go that route. To be fair, the manager was apologetic, comped all the food and offered to remake or get anything else. At that point, I was done and I didn't really want give them another shot or eat what was there. We finish up, pay for our drinks and hit Wendy's on the drive home.
TL;DR: Poor service from server and bar; waited approximately 1 hour and 30 mins for cold and incorrect food. Ate delicious Wendy's instead.
I've been to this place off and on since it opened in Reisterstown. Â I run hot and cold with it. Â The food and the service isn't always consistent. Â I sometimes felt that because we had kids and weren't drinking that we didn't get the best service. Â Could be in my head .... Â I think the older I get the quieter I want my restaurants to be. Â Now that's sad.
Review Source:Despite any connotations assumed by "bistro", (tantamount to "brasserie"), I'd kept my prospects true at Bill Bateman's Bistro. By denotation a bistro's "a type of restaurant serving customers drinks with or without food". Truth be told, that's Bateman's.
Truth also dictates it's a sports bar/pubby place full of sports bar/pubby patrons, pubby grub, a sports bar/pubby "canteen" with memorabilia plastered on it's sports bar/pubby wood paneled walls, and sports bar/pubby tellies about a rowdy sports bar/pubby saloon.
I've had decent Mushroom Burgers with Swiss and Blue Burgers with onion straws & crumbled blue cheese, bacon, and tiger sauce. Not disappointing, but issues with the kitchen's discerning med-rare from rare occurred as burgers were more squishy than moist. The Crab Pretzel app's lovingly liberal with Old Bay and was a chewy, doable meal alone. It's crab dip heavy on flour. Baby Back Ribs a favorite when slathered in bourbon sauce. Old Bay Wings worthy.
Beers on tap abound with Fosters, Guinness, New Castle, Stella, Blue Moon, Loose Cannon, Dogfish Head, Leinie, Heinie, and Resurrection represented.
In a world where my prospects are relative & true, Bill's was workable. I just kept my head out of the clouds with my fellow sports bar/pubby patrons pounding crab cakes and quesadillas, (as a means of soaking up suds), amidst our sports bar/pubby truism.
I have been here three times and the last time was the last time...im serious. Where shall I start...The bartender walked away with my friends license to check for authenticity but didn't even say why she was walking away with it. She came back and instead of handing it to her, she sat it on the counter. I ordered the crab skins which is supposed to be like potato halves with a crab mixture and melted cheese on top of it and I don't know what I got. The potatoes were so old that one of them was just about black underneath of the mixture. It was just bad, seriously. I didn't ask for my money back or another order, I just wanted to pay and have it be over with. I also ordered the fried shrimp which was ok, two shrimp were hot and three were cold...if they were all cooked at the same time...how did this happen?Also my friend who had her drivers license taken away ordered the chicken fingers...smh. One was literally black and a very dark brown, like it had black spots on it. I don't even want to go on, just save your time and money and go elsewhere. Leave this place to die out as it is already doing. No wonder with the food its serving and the poor service from the bartenders. SMH. Did I mention that they are slow as H*ll in there...its a shame.
Review Source:I haven't had any problems with this place since I've been going but I usually am there for happy hour and the occasional lunch. Â As far as Batemans locations goes this one is on par. Â I like it better than Towson but it's still behind Fallston. Â Space is large, Â bar is pretty big. Â Happy hour specials are decent. Â $2 Resurrections on Wednesday. Â How you gonna argue that? Â Their crabcake platter has some filler but hey, they sling it for $10 on Wednesdays. Â Complain all ya want. Â If you're not gonna finish that then slide it over here. Â
Tons of tv's for sport and, well, Fox news. Â This place seems to have a lot of regulars so that's a plus. Â I wouldn't pay $5 for a pint here but their specials are decent and regular enough that I am usually satisfied. Â
Tip- Â don't stand in the eye-line of the keno players. Â They mean business.
This dump is no "Bistro". Â The only atmosphere there is a big bar. Â The food sucks. Â It tastes like it is frozen or canned. Â No flavor, and low quality. Â We wasted $40.00 getting crab cakes, french fries and a crab dip . Â Where was the crab meat ? Â They did not serve any rolls or butter. Â The Restrooms need to be over-hauled, they were dirty and smelly.
Review Source:I used to have a much higher opinion of Bateman's. It seems like the quality of food has gone WAY down and the service has as well. I took a friend there for dinner and I got prime rib. I realize it's not a steak house, but  wasn't expecting Ruth Chris'. It was downright bad. It was tough and flavorless and the rest of the plate was just "eh". The service on both the restaurant and bar side is just plain SLOW. I went to the bar w/a date on a Tuesday night. There was hardly anyone there. My date and I sat there staring at the bartender & servers for 10 minutes before someone finally came over to take our order. It took 35 minutes for my date to get the chicken wrap sandwich he ordered. There was no excuse for it. I was embarrassed that I even suggested that we go there. I won't be eating there again, and the only reason I'd grab a drink there is because there aren't that many bars in the area. Pretty sad.
Review Source:I personally do not like Bill Bateman's night life. It is WAY too crowded for a restaurant. I feel like they need to either separate the restaurant and the bar better or decide which they'd rather want. I can not eat dinner there because I literally have to scream in order for the person next to me to hear them.
If I were to go to Bill Bateman's I would rather do so in the afternoon. Their food has gotten a lot better over the years, and their crap soup is great! They have decent drink specials and sometimes great beer on tap.
If Bateman's was only a restaurant at day and only a sports bar at night I'm sure I would love it a lot more!
I feel inclined to bump this place back up to a 3. Â We hadn't been in a month or two and were pleasantly surprised with the improvement in service when we went back last time. Â Instead of one waitress attempting to do the entire bar area, there were several waiters, waitresses and busboys and it didn't take 30 minutes for a drink or an hour for food. Â Food also is back up to a 3 since my last order was actually 100% correct AND didn't taste like crap, yay!
Review Source:Good place to go watch a game. I like to go here on Saturdays during the football season so I can watch multiple college games at once. They sometimes have drink specials such as $2 bottles and a nice $5 bar menu with burgers and fries. If you are planning on watching a Ravens game, go really early or you will never get a seat.
Review Source:Avoid this location at all costs!!!
Food is not prepared from fresh it is all mostly from frozen. Most orders are done one way. If you ask for a variation they do not know what to do or refuse to do it......even when the place is empty and its just you and your friend.
This is not a family friendly location. If you are not at the bar ordering drinks then service to you is secondary and you are made to feel like you are in the way and not welcome.
.....again.....Avoid this location at all costs!!!
The 5 best restaurants in the 2015 Denver Restaurant Week
3,611 Views | Category: Denver
The complete list of 2015 Denver Restaurant Week businesses
1,972 Views | Category: Denver
The tourists' guide to Portillos: 5 must have dishes
3,318 Views | Category: Chicago
Pho = Pronounced "fuh" not "foe" for pho-king sake
2,915 Views | Category: Denver
Indulgery selected to exhibit at Collision Conference
2,987 Views | Category: Press Releases
Not Logged In
BUSINESSES
Local Businesses
Near Me
My Favorites
SOCIAL
Blog & News
MY ACCOUNT
Login
Register
Contact Us
Add Your Business
