The food here is not even average. My girlfriend and I ordered some pizzas last night and they didn't get the order right. This isn't the first time. This has occurred for us almost every time we have ordered either pizzas or other menu items. It has made no difference whether we were taking it out or eating there. As for the prices, well, it is without a doubt one of the most expensive bar in Incline Village. 4 domestic draft one less than a pint beers cost us $15.00. Additionally, the food prices are also out of control. I am not opposed to paying a little more for something but I expect something in return for it. The pizzas in rookies used to be the best on this side of the lake but a management change has changed that and now you get hard flat bread that is attempting to resemble the former quality that existed when these pizza ovens opened last year. There is no attention to detail by the kitchen staff and the quality and quantity of the food delivered now has dropped considerably.
As for the family atmosphere, it does not exist. One the last occasion that I took my son into Rookies a very drunk patron (grown adult male) kept approaching and harassing my 10 year old. I told this drunk to leave him alone on three occasions and the Bar tender did nothing to change the situation. I was left to handle it myself and I had to contact the local Sheriff's Office to get this drunk to leave my son alone. Let me point out that the Bar tender allowed, contributed, and enabled this drunk. To date my son does not want to return to Rookies and I won't expose him to an atmosphere that is not safe for him.
My condensed opinion of Rookies is this. If money isn't a consideration, then please go there. If food quality and getting what you asked for isn't a requirement, then go there. If you are not worried about your child's well-being, then take them there. If you want to deal with very intoxicated patrons and very drunk owners/managers then please enjoy yourself and go there. We will be spending our money and time somewhere else.
Wow, three years since I've last been here.....
A 3.5 for this meal being bang for buck value.
Stopped by for lunch and saw they were offering an $8 special with rib-eye. Â I was starving (had bloodwork done that morning which required fasting for 12 hours previously) so I was ready to eat a small child. Â The plate came out quickly - a thin but nicely seasoned grilled 8 oz rib-eye with mashed potatoes, garlic toast and a side of Caesar's salad. Â Very similar to what I remember a Sizzler's steak dinner would have been like in 1978.
A standard-issue sports bar. Â The menu has been shortened dramatically in the last year. Â The burgers are solid, I like them better as chicken sandwiches. Â Consistent and safe. Â Wings are fair. Â Soft drinks have had a funky taste to them for years, can't put my finger on it. Â During football season, the place is an awesome bar. Â Love the steak and eggs special. Â With most games not shown on home TVs without a Sunday Ticket, the bar turns into an expatriat place like Rick's in Casablanca, with every game's vacationing fans gravitating to the various TVs. Â That's a don't miss.
Review Source:Came in with a large group. Food  for a few people wasn't even out by the time the rest of us were done eating.  We asked to talk to the manager he came over, was clearly drunk and very rude.
Food was not bad but definetely not worth going back for, management sucked.
Not going back.
If you are looking for a sports bar this is the place. Â In town from ATL for our honeymoon and the Cones had the unfortunate opportunity to play the 9ers in the NFC Championship. Â We were the only Falcons fans in the joint, but the patrons were all very friendly.
TV's everywhere, good food, great beer selection. Â I had the wings and my wife had the Pizza, both very good. Â Hope too see this place again soon,
The wait staff is horrible. They seem to be annoyed by having to actually work. Perhaps their employee handbook is missing the section on customer service. On two occasions I had to seek out someone to get a menu and it wasn't busy. Â Once our medium burger came well done and the waitress had the nerve to say it was the lighting. Â The one redeeming aspect is the gentleman behind the pizza counter. He is friendly and helpful. So if you must go to Rookies, go directly to the pizza counter order a pizza and take it home. Â If you are choosing between eating out at Rookies or staying home--stay home.
Review Source:If you are going to watch a game in Incline, this is the place to go! Â TV's are seriously set up for game watching and they have every game on you could want. Â I've spent a good part of my life here growing up in Incline. There is another place in town with better food (Crosby's), but the TV set up is not nearly as good. Â Can't go wrong with the wings. Â It's also the place where the party is at at night if there is a party going on.
Review Source:My great friends were looking for a good place to watch the first Raiders game of the season with me. Â They had heard about Rookies, so we thought we'd give them a try. Â Sadly, this place is a huge let down. Â It was like eating dinner in a poorly lit, dirty basement. Â Yes, there were numerous old TVs around to watch the game but it was hard to look past the poor service and dirty decor.
The service was less than par. Â Our waitress seemed annoyed to be at work and rushed us to order food and drinks. Â Not the relaxed environment that we'd hoped for.
The beer was cold, the wings were mediocre and the service was sub-par. Â The place is not very clean and is very outdated, so I'd recommend finding some place else.
We fled at halftime.
I really LIKE Rookies. Â It's a bar, so we order bar food and if we are here, we are not in a hurry, Â Every time i've been to Rookies, the food has been good, surprisingly good, enough so that I go out of my way to eat here. Â I always get the chicken wings and chips and salsa which are the best things on the menu in my opinion.
In looking at their menu, I realize I have only eaten their appetizers, all of them good, but not anything off the other part of the menu.
They have enough TV's to satisfy everyone's sporting needs, ours happens to be hockey, which they happily turn on, with sound, without hesitaion.
Waitstaff are perfectly fine, the food and drink to table wait time is acceptable, even on a crowded Sunday afternoon.
I really don't have anything negative to say about Rookies, I think it's a great place.
People must come here to watch one of the  several TVs, or play at the pool tables or air hockey tables.  The food certainly isn't the reason to dine here.
We went to watch the Olympics and eat dinner. Â The sign out front said "ribs for $12."
There was only one rack of ribs left. Â Turned out that was a good thing. Â They were just plain rubbery and awful.
It was also super HOT inside the restaurant because there's a pizza oven and the ceilings are pretty low. Â
The volume on all 48 of the TVs was turned off, and no captions. Â So on NBC, Michael Phelps is being interviewed at length, and after about 10 minutes of not being able to figure out what he's saying, we just got to talking with each other (imagine that!).
The food was awful: The burger tasted like cardboard, the wings were greasy and tasted microwaved.
We left as quickly as we could so we could go home and really enjoy ourselves.
Save your money, go 100 yards over to Raley's and buy yourself a frozen dinner, a six pack, go home and watch the game.
Breakfast is good and you get a lot for your money. Drinks are great at $1.50 for High Lifes. Burgers and wings are very good. My biggest complaint is how they man-handle all of the food. I am not someone who is easily grossed out, but watching a guy touch everything with his uncovered hands was a little much. I saw him scoop salsa out of a bin with his bare hand for nachos. Owners need to provide gloves, basic utensils, and instruction for the workers as the current situation is not sanitary. If that gets fixed I would give it 4 stars.
Review Source:We stopped at Rookie's this weekend to have a quick lunch before going to Stateline. We were seated pretty quickly, however, that was the only "quick" thing about our visit here. Three tables were sat after we were and each of them had their orders taken and had their food BEFORE our order was even taken. We asked the waitress if the wings came with "buffalo" sauce. She said they didn't have buffalo sauce. (What kind of sports bar doesn't have buffalo sauce??) We asked her what flavor of sauce came and the wings, and she just said hot sauce? WTF? So I ordered chicken fingers with a side of (mysterious) medium sauce, and my husband ordered a chicken sandwich. When he ordered it, he asked if the roll it came on came toasted, she told him no. We also ordered onion rings as an appetizer. We sat there starving (me 6 months prego, so super starving) for almost 30 minutes waiting for our food. We never did get our appetizer until AFTER our food was brought to our table. And guess what flavor the sauce was on our food? BUFFALO! Even though we were told they didn't have buffalo sauce. The roll that didn't come toasted, was toasted. If that wasn't bad enough, I had to ask for silverware and napkins, because even though I finally got my food, I had nothing to eat it with. The food wasn't great, typical bar food, the onion rings were terrible. We didn't even bother waiting for the waitress to bring our check, so we went inside to get the check and pay. The owner asked us how everything was and we told him that we didn't even get our appetizer until after our meal, he said he would take it off the bill, but also added that "customer service comes second to the food." Bad motto in my opinion if you want to stay in business, and if your food isn't even good. On top of everything, we were charged for the sides of sauce that we ordered and for the ranch for our onion rings!!! RIDICULOUS. Terrible service, not so great food. Was a horrible start to our trip.
Review Source:Great for a quick bite and a drink when driving around lake. Brought the parental units here as a stop, had only been here once before to wet the whistle. The food selection is good at resonable price, waitress was nice/attentive/bubbly, atmosphere would be great if we were into watching sports. I am not going to ding it for being loud cause it was appropriate for the place, just not my taste. I would recommend it for what it is, a sports bar and grill. Will def stop by again next time im driving around the lake and need a quick snack and beer!
Review Source:It's an interesting bar. Â The servers walk around in daisy duke's and tank tops. Â The road that it's on is heavily patrolled by CHP/NHP and almost all the locals that I have talked to there have gotten at least 1 DUI after leaving Rookies.
I ended up at Rookies because I wanted to watch a UFC fight and I was staying in Tahoe. Â Therefore it was the closest place showing it. Â It was a $25 dollar cover but that money could also go to drinks and food. Â It wasn't that hard to eat and drink $50 worth and the food was average bar fair at best. Â Overall though we had a good time and it was snowing when we left, meaning there would be fresh pow on the mountain in the morning.
Not good! I do find the name very telling, because they are CLEARLY "rookies" at serving decent food at a fair price all while providing good service. Maybe next season.
We came here for an apres hike libation and snack - we should have kept driving. We sat outside - they have a fairly nice outdoor space. This is the best part of the entire experience, so enjoy this tidbit for a moment.
We ordered beers first, food second. The beer was Corona with a wedge of lime - perfect. (OK, the beer was really the best part, but I cannot give them a lot of credit for not screwing up a bottle of Corona)The food? I got a small side salad with blue cheese dressing - on the side, as well as some cheese fries. The salad was nothing special - typical with really bad blue cheese dressing - not an actual chunk of blue cheese anywhere to be found. It was kind of weird that they put shredded cheese on top of a side salad, but whatever... this is the least fo my worries. The fries... boring. Standard issue frozen french fries with some cheese melted on top - nothing special. So this incredibly mediocre if not disappointing meal - it wasn't good, but it wasn't horrible. Wondering why the one star? I'll tell you why... the pricing! One of my hiking friends got a glass of Coke - $2. Refill of that same glass of Coke - $1. And. AND... when the waitress took the glass from him to refill it, it wasn't even empty! So he paid $1 for a PARTIAL refill. He paid $3 for what MAY have been 16 oz of Coke. That's ridiculous. Soda is so cheap. I asked for a little bit of the sauce they dip their wings in because the fries were so damn boring and they charged me .59 for a couple of tablespoons of hot sauce. REALLY? If your fries didn't suck so much to begin with, I wouldn't have to get creative to give them some flavor. Interesting being charged to improve the food. The cost for my 2 beers, french fries, small salad and hot sauce? $22. It was about $10 too much of you ask me. Although I guess I should be grateful that they did not charge me for the lime for my Corona or for the glass of water that our server never brought me.
The service was also nothing special. It seemed like we waited for quite a while to get stuff and had to ask several times for the same things... and sometimes didn't get them at all... see aforementioned water.
Botomline: skip it. There's got to be 10 better places to eat within 100' of this place.
Went to Incline Village for a youth softball tournament this weekend...went to Rookies twice...first time was for lunch with a total of 2 adults and 6 girls...ate the teriyaki grilled wrap...not very good....service was good.
Decided as a team to go back for dinner...4 or the 6 girls who went for lunch said their lunch was horrible and didn't want to go back....
There were about 30 of us...asked the waitress to do family checks....she acted like it was a TOTAL  inconvenience  her....she decided it would be easier to take everyone's order and split it up by families later.....bad idea...refills are $1.00 and if you ask for extra dipping sauces or dressing...be prepared to be charged....however they don't tell you that ahead of time....so some of our tabs had extra stuff on it that we didn't even order...I ordered an $8.00 Cesar salad....the whole salad was made up of "the ends of the lettuce" big, huge chunks...HORRIBLE. paid my bill, gave a tip and left.....
Checking my Visa statement on line this morning....only to find out that the waitress gave herself a $5.00 extra tip..not sure how she did it, but she added $5.00 to what I had signed for.....immediatly called Rookies and of course, there is no manager on site for about a week....they will look into it and get back to me.....
Unbelievably horrible food sums this place up. Pretty dirty to.
Nothing on the menu looked that great so I ordered a $11 turkey sandwich with cesar salad. It was inedible. Rancid lunch meat turkey, stale bread, tasteless out of a bag salad topped with horrible (probably expired) cesar salad dressing. One bite of sandwich and a few of the salad and I was done.
I think the only thing keeping this place in business is location, drunk and/or hungover people and the hot eastern European waitresses in cheer leading outfits (no complaints there).
I left rookies and headed over to the Raley's super market for a panini sandwich at half the price and a billion times the quality.
Rookies is a poor man's Hooters. In every sense of the term, it lives up to it's name. Â It doesn't know what it wants to be: a sports-bar w/ it's waitresses dressed as cheerleaders, a strip club w/ its sadly unused pole in the corner, or a big boy's Chuck E. Cheese w/ all it's (super cool) video games. Â
One thing I know it is not: it ain't Applebee's! Â At least at Applebee's your food is served on a plate with a real fork and knife. Â Not disposable flatware and baskets. Â Another kudos for Applebee's, I can pay less for a better meal and free refills of decent, unwatered down coke. Â What it all boils down to is Rookies is overpriced bar food served in confusing surroundings.
(Disclaimer: Please understand, I don't even like Applebee's  So consider how much I must hate Rookies to compare it to a restaurant I don't even like and have that restaurant come out as the better one.  Therefore, compared to Rookies I must like Applebee's.  Congrats Applebee's!)
Drove around the lake today and decided to catch dinner at Rookies. It wasn't the plan, but my fiance was intent on going.
Service:
Very bad! The waitress took our order, and just left and didn't even check up on us at all. She was the only waitress working there! It wasn't even busy, there were literally 4 people there besides us. I ordered a beer, showed my ID and she complained because it wasn't a Nevada state ID. I carry a military ID, it's recognized nationwide, no reason for her to complain about it.
Food:
My fiance and I both got burgers and both were very dry! I drank a glass of water and a beer to help me swallow the burger. My onion rings had a chlorine like after taste to it, and my fiancé's "Cajun" fries were very salty, but not flavorful at all!
Definitely not recommended. We will never go back to Rookies.
A lot of negative reviews for this place and i disagree. Although I am a very optimistic yelper so its all up to your standards. You must keep in mind this is a bar and grill and not a gourmet joint. Anyway the food was pretty good, the wings were good, and the beer special was very good. $1.50 millers and PBR. Lots of high def televisions surrounding the place to watch sports. They have a lot of arcade games, pool, wii, and air hockey. If youre looking for a bar with good bar food this is a good choice. Â Staff could have been butter...but nothing major.
Review Source:Went in for a quick beer after some grocery shopping. Â Staff was nice, and the food was hearty. Â We sat at the bar near the grill and watched the efficient help cook up some excellent gut-bombs (burgers). Â The bartender was chatty and was fun to talk to.
Oh, and I won 15 bucks on the video black jack to boot.
I love Rookies.
I am not a local. I come to Incline Village every August and if I'm stir crazy and aching for a taste of nightlife I go to Rookies (being from San Francisco, I get the urge to dance or be around nightlife now and then).
Rookies is a pretty decent scene for the area, come 10pm and later on Thursdays (Karaoke), Friday (live music (boooo) or DJ/dancing), Saturday (DJ/Dancing) and Sunday (Karaoke).
There's a mix of locals and visitors to the area, mainly of the 21-40 age group. There are definitely more dudes than ladies. There's beer pong outside sometimes, there's arcade games, air hockey, pool, many video poker stations at the bar, and tv for sports and such (it's a sports bar primarily, with a decent nighttime scene).
Rookies food is about as good as you can expect when you walk in and look around.
Watch out to all you hard drinkers:
Cops do patrol around there waiting for you to drunk drive, so be smart.
I've been going to Rookie's for as long as I've lived in town. It's your standard, run of the mill sports bar. A real local favorite. I've fallen out of the bar scene since I frequented Rookie's some years ago. Now whenever I go it seems the same old bar flies are there (that's good-some, familiar faces) and it's filled with seasonal J-1's. Rookie's has changed a lot over the years... Try it if you like dancing, listening to bad karaoke (i do!) and watching tons of sports on all of their awesomely big TV's. Don't go if you can't stand watching drunk girls (and sometimes guys) try their hand at grinding on the stripper pole. The crude or often surly waitresses in too small mini skirts makes me think Rookie's could be the Hooters of Incline Villages, though the waitresses aren't nearly as hot.
For lunch and dinner the menu is decent, though stay away from the rubbery French Dip or Philly Cheese-steak sandwiches. Rookie's "Double-Dipped" wings are killer and so are the cheesy fries. Both make for a great drunk snack. The bar never (really) closes which makes it a great late night bar spot. Drinks can add up surprisingly quick and Rookie's ups their drink prices on busier nights (Thurs, Fri, Sat). Beware of the cops that circle the parking lot, not worth getting a DUI in this small of a town.
Your run-of-the-mill bar food, decent service in a decent location. A few pool tables, and TONS of televisions for you to feast your eyes on and get your fix on just about any sport you could think of.
I've been going to Rookies for years, and always had pleasant experiences, but its just nothing to rave over.
I went to college in Incline and Rookies is the "go to" spot. Their food is typical bar food, with the exception of the wings; fantastic! The best "hot" sauce - habanero - ever!! My parents take home a batch every time they visit. Made fresh in house by one of the owners. Their Mexican Benedict is awesome too! They are very friendly, just try chatting them up ; )
Review Source:I cruised into Rookies by myself. Â
Had a really strong Kettle One / Cran.
Â
Watched some Olympics on their several tv screens. Â
Chatted with a local named Abe.. 70somthing year old who smelled like he marinated in cigarettes since the early 50's. Â AND Â who's bottom dentures were not sealed well, Â and kept jutting out at me while he talked.... Â heard a really cool story about his grandfather... in Greece 1860. Â
Rookies... a place to go if you don't know where else to go. Â
all in all, Â not a bad 'on foot' Â getaway from the Summer Time Share Condo place I was trapped in. Â (the condo was ok, it was the people I had to share with, that made it feel trapped.)
Rookies (or "Rooks" as the locals call it) generally attracts 18 to 23 year olds and older alcoholics. Â They also get a lot of business from the post-softball crowd. Â If you know people in town, it can be a fun place, but from an outsiders perspective it would be a hard place to feel welcome. Â Be very careful with the cops in town as Incline has an incredibly high ratio of cops to citizens and they love to circle the rookies parking lot like flies around dung. Â I've been to far more fun bars, but for Tahoe Rooks is pretty standard, and even better than many.
Review Source:24 hour a day drinking, foosball, pool, videogames, sports TV, and a few video gambling machines in a strip shopping mall on the side of a mountain. Â There's an empty wooden dance floor, and two lonely disco light machines pulsing to the loud music.
Patrons from another bar across the creek turned me on to the place, said you can avoid the cops thanks to the back streets and extensive web of interconnected parking lots. Â I hoofed it because I didn't want to risk my first DUI to a bar full of drunk locals who've clearly had several arrests each. Â I got there only to decide I don't really want a drink. Â
So I'm sober and on foot with my laptop, sitting on a boulder in a mountain resport parking lot, picking up stray wifi signals from the neighborhood and typing a Yelp review. Â The cops just stopped someone as I'm typing this. Â Ack!
It's the only bar I've found in Tahoe that doesn't look like a ski chalet. Â More like a strip club minus the strippers.
Doesn't get better than that, does it?
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