Hudson Austin

Review of Bistro on Bridge

The renovation and reinvigorated Bistro on Bridge ...

The renovation and reinvigorated Bistro on Bridge should be a welcome addition to the Phoenixville scene. The first floor is open and inviting and the former "night club" space upstairs has been turned into a open air roof top beer garden. The design elements are very well done and attract a much more upscale crowd than the previous incarnation.

The food was full of imaginative takes of bar food with its like Duck Nachos, a delicious rib dish and beer battered french fries.

The service was fairly solid, but our server was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of trips she would need to make to handle drinks for about 16 people. Clearing was an issue as our table became a sea of empty glasses at the end of the evening. But, she worked really hard, was very pleasant and should have had a fellow server help her to clear the debris field we had created which was her only miss-step.

I would have given 5 stars but for the exception of the clearing and one last issue... As we had a large party, the food was all covered along with a sparkling toast with Prosecco. The host had elected to have everyone on the own for bar tabs other than the above, which is completely fine and understandable. Where the restaurant errored in my opinion was automatically adding a service charge to all the individual tabs. I can understand the desire to protect the server from being stiffed by groups but this was a tad beyond the pale especially because they had the opportunity to work out covering the server ahead of our arrival as the event had been planned as well as charging service on the large food and sparkling toast tab and in addition I gave the server $50 cash during the night to mitigate against having any shortfalls for her as she was working really hard. To which, by the way, I had service charged in addition on my tab for one... It was a mistake in my opinion by the management, not a huge deal, but it was certainly a factor in our our overall experience and those two issues kept this from being a five star experience. So, go there and have a great time! It's worth it.