During a recent trip to Utah, and after passing by several times during our visit, my girlfriend and I decided to grab a late-night dinner at Lokals. Â The atmosphere was as can be expected at a sports bar so nothing special but definitely fits with what they're doing. Â The server/owner (Melinda) was super friendly and helpful and went out of her way to guide us through both food and alcohol options. Â The wing sauces are great and there are plenty of choices and they have a great selection of beers on tap as well. Â We both decided on wings (traditional... they have boneless too but those are for sissies) and also ordered a side of "spuds," which are their version of fries. Â The wing sauces were great but they do bake the wings instead of frying them. Â While this is certainly a healthier option, I would prefer them fried... I don't go to a sports bar for wings in an attempt to be healthy... still pretty good wings! Â The spuds were great. We got the mixed batch (plain and spicy) along with some dipping sauce and they really were enjoyable.
All in all, Lokals was a great experience and we will definitely be back next time we're in town. Â As for the negative reviews on here, the place just opened a few months ago so I'm sure there were some bugs to be worked out so hopefully people will give them another chance.
The food wasn't TERRIBLE -- it was average -- but we had to wait for 50 minutes for it. Â The server and manager came by to apologize for the wait ("unfortunately, you came after a REALLY big party"...which was 8 people, and the ONLY other table in the restaurant), but they didn't even think to offer appetizers or anything else to make our wait more bearable. Â Our beers were warm and shallow by the time our food got to us. Â This place...tsk tsk tsk...had potential, but we're not going to bother to see it.
Review Source:I went to Lokals after seeing it a few times when shopping at Smiths or driving in the area. My wife and I decided to check it at as it is one of the closest restaurants to our house and they serve beer in Utah county.
Atmosphere: This place is a sports bar, they have a big screen and other flat screens spread throughout the restaurant. Overall, nothing special.
Service: When we came in the front door there was a guy at the counter where it says please wait to be seated and he looked down at the seating chart and said "go over and sit down somewhere over there"....OK...so we walked over and then the waitress walked by us a few times and went to other tables that were seated after us. After my wife asked for menus the waitress finally came over to ask us if we were ready (1 minute after we got the menus). Overall our waitress was nice, but forgot things and had to be asked multiple times for certain items.
Menu: Very lousy layout (I went to Culinary school and took a course on Menu design and layout so I have some knowledge here). It was hard to determine what was on the menu, the font is horrible, and the options are quite lousy. Very much bar food, not really going to last in highland/Alpine/Lehi area. If they are going to survive in this particular area, they need to understand their demographics. You can't just put a restaurant in the area and expect it to work.
Food: Well after we had to wait a very long-time for our food to come to the table (and there were other people that had to wait even longer than we did). Everything is baked in a pizza like oven, which leads to many problems (1) timing, it takes forever to cook just about everything other than pizza in such an oven (2) you are limited to the style of the food. The potato "Fry's" were soggy and cold, the sandwich and chicken were good but nothing special. The best thing was the blue cheese salad dressing. overall the food was not worth the wait, which is a major problem for this restaurant.
Recommendations for Management: You restaurants has good potential as you can cater to a specific demographic and you are the only sit down restaurant in the area that is not fast food or fast casual. Your biggest issue is your cooking system, WAY TO SLOW. You can get crispy, no friend food much faster if you installed "AirFryer", so you can offer health food that is not friend. Your pizza cooking technique might have seemed cool, but it is going to kill your restaurant. If you read your reviews on here, you will see the same problem from almost all of your customers. Your service needs to be improved, its not bad, but needs some improvement. Your menu needs to be simplified and the font needs to be something that is easier to read. You do not need to have a "cool" menu, people just need to find something they are interested in and order and then they hand the wait staff the menu. Your restaurant is clean, has a good location and can cater to people looking to watch the game or fight and get a beer in the Alpine/Highland area. Make some slight changes and you will do well, if not, it will be yet another vacant spot in that shopping mall.
We live very close to Lokal's and after finding a KSL deal for 1/2 off we decided to try it. We arrived at 7:15 on a Friday night during March Madness, and the restaurant was about 80% full - we didn't have to wait for a table, so it wasn't too crazy busy. When we arrived the woman who seated us told us that it was pretty busy because of the NCAA tournament, and that the kitchen was a little slow--she said it would be about 30 minutes after ordering when we would get our food. I thought 30 minutes sounded reasonable on a busy night, so we said that was fine.
While we waited patiently for the food, we were hoping to watch some of the NCAA first round games, but while there were about 15 TVs in the place (including 2 huge projector screens), they only had 2 games on--and one of them was an NBA game. We asked our server about 4 times if he could change one of the TVs to a more exciting NCAA tournament game, and each time he said yes, but it took about 45 minutes (and 4 times of asking our server, plus 1 time asking another server in the restaurant) before the channel actually got changed.
60 minutes later we finally received our appetizer of nachos, which as other reviews mentioned were basically just a run-of-the-mill nacho dish, nothing special. The salsa tastes like it came straight out of a can, and the rest of the toppings were definitely things I could have made at home, black beans, chicken, sour cream, and some cheese. Not sure why this would take 60 minutes to make--we could have done it at home in about 5 minutes.
When he finally delivered the appetizer, the server said our food would be "right up", but we waited another 30 minutes (now we've been here an hour and a half, and it's almost 9:00) before we told him we just wanted our check for the drinks and nachos and we were leaving. Around the time we got our appetizer we did hear the table next to us complain that they had also been waiting 1 1/2 hours and their food was not yet served. We should have listened to their complaints and left sooner while we still had time to get to another restaurant and get a decent meal.
By the time we left, the restaurant was very nearly empty, so the slow kitchen was certainly not the result of being busy from March Madness--and we've been to plenty of other restaurants where there is a long wait, but by the time you sit and order, it's no more than about 15-25 minutes to get your food. The server was very nice, apologizing to us about the wait and even giving us the drinks and nachos for free, but after this experience we won't be back.
I can't review any of their other food because we didn't have the patience to wait for it, but since their menu is exactly the same as WingNutz (which has a location nearby in Draper that's been there for quite a few years now and has fantastic baked wings, veggies, wraps, and salads with great sauces), we are going to go there. Even with just one or two servers and one cook at WIngNutz, they still manage to get us in and out in an hour or less, no matter what major sporting event is on TV.
If they can't get their act together and figure out how to get people served in less than 90+ minutes, I don't see this restaurant lasting very long.
Went to lunch at Lokals today and thought I would put up a quick review.
Nacho's: These were about average. Normal cheap bulk chips with pretty standard toppings. Waitress suggested adding the Pulled Pork so we did. When we got the nacho's the pulled pork flavor simply wasn't what we expected and I would personally suggest skipping this option. The waitress did ask how they were and offered to do whatever it took to fix them for us. So while I didn't particularly enjoy the Nacho's the offer to do whatever it took to fix them was certainly appreciated.
For lunch I ordered their Booyah Burger. The burger was actually quite good and obviously using high quality ingredients from the bacon to the bun. I would rate the burger a 5/5.
With the burger came the potato rounds, which are their version of fries. You can get these plain, spicy, or mixed. While I liked the spicy they did have a bit of a kick to them which worked out very well if you get the mixed rounds so the spice doesn't overpower you.
While we did not try the wings, we did try several of their sauces (honey bbq, southwestern Chipotle BBQ, General Tso's). All of the sauces had pretty good flavors that fit within the expected definition, so there shouldn't be any real surprises here.
Overall I found the Atmosphere to be the expected sports bar type, with a variety of TV's spread around the room. The service was great and the waitress was very friendly. The burger was very good, the fries(rounds) were pretty good but the nacho's fell pretty flat. I would definitely go back for the burger, and the sauces were good enough that I'm interested in trying out their wings.
I'm guessing they call this place Lokal's because by the time you get your food you are one. I actually wouldn't know how long it takes to get your food because I left after an hour of waiting. Our waiter was completely oblivious when he was actually there, which wasn't often. We did get some free chips and salsa. I didn't taste it but the wife said it wasn't good. Maybe tainted by the bitterness of getting told "it'll just be another couple minutes" at least 5 times in a 30 minute time span, all by different waiters. I wish I could tell you how the over priced burger and wings tasted, but the truth is I'll probably never know.
Review Source:I took my wife to the new location by Smiths in AF. We both ordered the Booyah burger, also the only hamburger they had on the menu. We also ordered two different flavors of wings.
The burger was good but not worth the price and the wings were not very good at all. I did really like their spud rounds though. Maybe I have been spoiled by BWW. I was actually hoping they would have a similar type wing but I assure you it is not. At least the two flavors we ordered were not. I think we ordered a standard wing flavor and a garlic flavor. Both not so good. We won't be going back. I was really hoping to like it because there isn't much close here in Highland.
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