Lyndon Just

Review of Old Republic Bar

I was completely embarrassed by this place. It is ...

I was completely embarrassed by this place. It is New Year's Eve. It is not even a Holiday. New Year's Day is a holiday. My girl and I were determining a place to go and eat. We were trying to decide between the new TJ's Bar and Grill or the place we wanted to be our new go to place, Republic Kitchen and Bar. I had been here several times and thought the food was okay for what I had sampled during those visits I had made. So I jumped onto both of their websites. Both said that the hours may be affected by the fact that New Year's was tomorrow, but neither said if it would be affected to be later, or earlier. So I told my girl that we may want to make it an early dinner wherever we went. As we were looking at the menus we found things at either place that we would like to have. But then I checked the specials for Monday at Republic and it stated that the Monday special was 1/2 price burgers. This was great since we both wanted a burger dinner. We got there and even though there was a lot of of open booths we were seated at a very wobbly table that I really did not care for. But what the heck, we really didn't care much looking forward to our burger dinners and being 1/2 price night. We each ordered a preliminary drink and when the server brought the drinks I mentioned we were each going to get a burger meal, being Monday and 1/2 price burger day as posted on the website. It was at this time he informed us that the special was not available and that the manager opted out from that particular special being it was a holiday. I informed him that this is not a holiday. That in fact tomorrow was. He told me he had nothing to do with that decision and that it was above his pay grade. So I insisted that he send that manager over. The manager eventually came over with his Madonna "I'm in charge here" attitude, I had to, once again, inform him that today is not a holiday, tomorrow is. I told him that I was hoping this to be our new go to place and that I found the lack of informing people that the regular specials were not available on this day was unacceptable. He proceeded to tell me that he did post it and I said, "Where? Facebook?" Then he looked at me all stupid and I informed him that I do not do Facebook and there was no indication on their website of this situation. I really don't care what the guy did on facebook, but I worked this visit out with my girl and I was totally embarrassed that I was being taken because of a holiday that was not even yet present. So I then informed him that this was unacceptable and that I was going to leave and go to TJ's, the other establishment we were deciding on earlier. He apparently figured that it didn't matter to him if we did and expressed as much. I then assured him I would post a review of this situation on Google Reviews. He again told me that he was not concerned about that fact. He in fact did not post any notification of the change in specials policy for this day on the website. He only concerned himself with Facebook. This is not good management practices. There wasn't even anything posted at the door that these Monday specials did not apply on this day. I was completely embarrassed in front of my girl. So much so that I decided we would leave immediately and go to TJ's Bar and Grill, which had fantastic food, a great atmosphere, fantastic music, comparable prices and a much better managerial attitude. Too bad for Republic. I guess the General Manager made a mistake choosing a "social media" manager for this position rather than a real one. Total fail on their behalf. It appears that if the customer has an issue, they just don't give a damn. Oh well. I hope I posted this early enough to kill their potential patron visitation for this night.