Karondas

Ahh Yes... Karondas Sports Bar and Grill.  I eat here regularly, probably once or twice a week. To be honest I only do so because of the limited variety of restaurants around the area.

The menu is limited to mostly American bar food, but what they do have is generally tasty.  I have tried almost everything on the menu and my favorite item is probably the build your own burger.  When they first opened you could build your own burger for 6.50 and have all the free toppings you wanted (including bacon, chili, slaw, grilled onions and mushrooms).  I think they caught on to the deal they were giving and have since then raised the base price and charge a fee per premium topping.  Don't get me wrong the burgers are great, and in my opinion the turkey burger is AWESOME!  

Other menu options to notice are the GIANT Cheese Sticks!! These Cheese Logs, as they are known at my workplace, are delicious and are their best appetizer with their spinach and pita dip coming in a close second.  If your looking for a "healthier" meal option, the closest thing I can come up with are their sandwiches / wraps.  Their BLT is good but their best sandwich is by far their four meat club (roast beef, turkey, ham and bacon!).  Their side items are the standard steak fries, hot chips, veggie of the day (which is almost always broccoli), sweet potato fries, slaw, and macaroni salad.  

So the food is pretty good, and since they opened Karonda's had made a serious effort to bring in customers.  I have yet to experience any live music there but I have heard they are offering trivia and poker nights weekly along with daily drink specials to bring in the late night crowd.  The problem I see with this is that the bar is far to small to create any sort of bar like atmosphere where people can gather together and have a good time.  I give them a B for effort however for trying different things in this small rural community off of  US 29.  

I have one serious problem with this place.  That is the TERRIBLE service.  You will read that the people here are friendly but it depends on who's working.  Generally speaking I get lunches to go because of the close vicinity to my workplace, but I have dined in a handful of times. All of which took at lest 30 minutes to an hour to have my food ready.  The service for the most part is friendly but there are a few badddd apples in the the bunch that sometimes ruins my experience (especially at the bar).  Even ordering takeout can be a hassle sometimes, where they won't let us get the menu items we want (like ordering from the children's menu or getting their lunch specials which are posted outside but not in the actual menu).

So to sum everything all up the food is good here and its relatively inexpensive.  Try it out and see how you like it! The service might be sub par but if you bring good friends or family to talk to I'm sure that can be overlooked.

When it comes to bad service in a restaurant I'll occasionally give a place the benefit of the doubt and return. Usually it's an off night or they're short staffed. I did this for Karondas, and the second time the service was even worse. The first time I went here was with a party of five. We waited about an hour for our food. Some of the order had to be sent back, the bread was burnt and most of the food was cold. The menu is pretty sparse, which was surprising. I'm told that they have good prime rib, but the burger I had was way overcooked and the rest of the food was pretty mediocre. The second time I ate there with my husband recently and we ordered a couple of burgers, only to leave after forty-five minutes and still no food. To their credit, when we got up to pay for our drinks and they said they were on the house and apologized. Our waitress never returned, and was actually behind the bar serving drinks most of the time. There won't be a third chance for me and Karondas. It's a shame really, because this place really had some great potential to be a cool sports bar that was near the house. We'll stick with Cooper's and Kick Back Jack's this upcoming football season!