The Bridgetender

The Cajun bacon burger was decent but the garlic fries were amazing!! The bacon was okay and the patty tasted frozen.

Wow, looks like about 3 years since my last review here. Time of an update! I was up here at the Lake for lunch the other day and we decided to come here. I love the outdoor dining in the summer! Yes, this place is usually crowded in the summer, even mid week, so what I do is show up 2:30 to 4pm and there is NO wait. I read some of the bad reviews here complaining of the service. You know, I've never had a problem here, it just may be the customer! I figure the more people that don't come back, the easier it is for me to get a seat! Our server was all young and bubbly and took our orders no problem. Beers arrived in a timely manner. I ordered the Bacon Cheese burger as did my BF. ($8.45ea)The burgers don't come with fries, and are $1.95 extra. If you are here with someone else, instead of getting the fries added to the burgers, just get the side basket of fries for $3.95 and you get a lot more to share.The waffle fries are the best I've had! try them! The food arrives and is tasty as ever. They do a damn good burger here! I have really no idea what people can complain about here. Food is great as is service, at least it always has been for me, don't know what 's the prob with other people!

You pay for the location, definitely not the service or the product.  That's all one really needs to know but I have time on my hands and it is cathartic for me to write about it. Here we go...

Been here before and accepted its touristy setting where one should expect elevated prices to pay for the location. Accepting that, my visit this afternoon was still awful. I felt like we were subject to an experiment of high-schoolers running a bar/restaurant for a Junior Achievement class with a lovely touch of that adolescent f*ck-you-tourists attitude that comes from those contrarian types who don't understand culture, economics, being a grown up... and well life in general.

We had the dog with us and were going to try the back patio but there was a sign that said no dogs. The guy up front sold us on sitting by the rail and hitching the pooch just outside. When I asked to be seated, 3 young skater/boarder/biker guys looked at each other with an earnest look of not wanting to lift a finger. It was like a battle of lack of wills. Fifteen awkward seconds later and one fella was leading me to a table. Our server promptly greeted us and she asked for our drink orders.

"What do you have on draft?"

"I think (insert list of shitty InBev beers here), Laganitas, and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale"

"What about bottles?"

"I think (insert another list of shitty InBev beers here). The list of everything is right here. Oh you don't have it on your table. Well, that's what I think we have."

Great effort! What a lazy ass.

"Uhhh okay, we'll have a Blue Moon (forgive us Beer Gods) and a Sierra Nevada."

All the while, we were trying to figure out how to hitch our dog to the rail and keep her out of the walking path next to the patio. After giving our drink order, I got the dog on top of a rock, outside the rope border. Her head was at table height but she was outside the rope.

The server came back with our beers in cheap blue plastic beer glasses and proceeded to ask us to move the pooch back a couple of feet from the border and mentioned something about the state shutting them down if she is in the eating area. All the while, there are birds all around scavenging the ground and whatnot... oh, and did I mention the handful of fat squirrels running everywhere inside the patio area. Sanitary? Probably not.

In the meantime, another family with a pooch sits next to us in a booth next to the rail. They proceeded to hitch their 50-60 lb dog right next to the rope. Yet, our 40 lb dog had to be 2-3 feet back from the rope, which was a pain in the ass to manage because she was on a slope in the dirt and trying to stay out of the walking path. The server for the table next to us was talking to the folks there in his skater-brogue, "Nah, it's okay. You can keep your dog right there. Jus' make sure it's outside the rope."

Listening to the contradictory policy as we were trying to figure out how to manage the pooch, we noticed a nice nastiness on our cheap plastic, blue pint glasses. There was lipstick all around the edges of both. The glasses hadn't been washed, much less bathed in water. It wasn't the ghost print of lipstick that was washed but held on for dear life. The glasses were clearly not washed. At least the lipstick was not still wet. It had dried from the sun. At that time I noticed everyone else had actual glass pints. Not sure why we got the toddler glasses.

We waited about ten minutes for the server to come by and nothing. During that time, the table next to us moved their dog inside the ropes and under their table at their feet. Nothing was said to them. So we gave up on seeing the server and took the glasses up to the bar. I wanted to get out of their but the wife needed her beer. There was an apology but not an expected "round on the house" for the nasty glasses or maybe a visit from a non-existent manager.

The wife even ordered mozzarella sticks but I didn't even touch them, worried about what the staff might do to them. That was brave of her.

That was it for our lovely tourist experience at the place. Not again for me.