Anthony W.
Yelp
TL;DR: Great service, good drinks, but AVOID this place for food.
Let's start with the good to get that out of the way. Our wait staff was very attentive, polite and friendly. Our waitress did everything she could to give us a good experience, and it was going very well until our food came. The drinks were also good. There is a wide selection of beers and spirits to drink. My girlfriend tried multiple beers (with mixed reviews but everybody is different) and I had the Pear Rickey. My drink was very tasty, but I felt like it was a little light on the gin. That's far from a deal breaker, though. The atmosphere was also very nice, with a pretty typical brewery vibe.
But now on to the bad... If you read nothing else, just understand that the level of blase in which the kitchen staff treated our food was simply unprofessional and unacceptable.
I ordered the Portland Pyre Pile burger. My girlfriend ordered the Juicy Lucy.
For starters, it took approximately 75 minutes to receive our food after ordering. Maybe 30 or 45 minutes into the wait, our waitress let us know that the kitchen was backed up, so we could've (and in hindsight, should've) left if we did not want to wait.
When we did receive our food, it was cold. The burgers were lukewarm and the fries were mostly hard.
My Portland Pyre Pile burger was fine. Not as spicy as I expected, but the flavors were there and the burgers themselves, though cooked unevenly, were good enough not to ruin the meal. I would give it 3/5 stars, because it wasn't much beyond average.
The Juicy Lucy is where the problems were...
Upon receiving her Juicy Lucy, my girlfriend picked up the burger, and an appalling amount grease proceeded to drain off of the burger and through the bun. THROUGH the bun. I'm Minnesotan (home of the original Juicy Lucy), so I know that they can be greasier than an average burger. But the amounts of grease that ran off of my girlfriend's burger were flatly unappetizing and unappealing. Squeezing the bottom bun was like wringing out a wet towel... The puddle of grease pool at the bottom of her basket quickly became a pool. It was so bad that the guy at the table next to us winced in disgust and couldn't stop staring....
Our waitress was there to ask us of everything looked alright very soon after our food arrived, so we showed her the lake of grease and asked that it be returned to the kitchen. She agreed that it was very unappealing, and immediately brought it back.
When my girlfriend received her burger a few minutes later, it was sitting on a new bun, but in the same grease-covered basket that we sent it back in. We could tell that someone took less than a second to wipe some of the grease out of the bottom, where the burger was placed, but they decided not to bother with getting all of the grease, nor to even check to see if the fries were still in good condition (spoiler: anything at the bottom of the basket was soaked in dark brown grease.)
So when the burger was returned to us it was much less greasy, but still sitting on top of the old grease. The fries hadn't been fixed at all. To top it off, the Juicy Lucy was so hastily thrown back together that half of the toppings were on the burger and half had slumped onto the basket.
But we tried eating it. We shouldn't have, but we did. And it was the saddest Juicy Lucy I have ever seen. The cheese in the middle was completely solid, as of it had cooled almost to room temperature again. And the amount of cheese inside the burger was pathetic. I've seen McDonald's quarter pounders with more cheese than that "Juicy Lucy." My girlfriend ate what she could, and has regretted it since.
If a kitchen is unwilling to completely fix such an obvious error, it is either unprofessional, undisciplined, uncaring, or some combination of the three. I understand that kitchens have bad nights, but the least they could do after making us wait over an hour is get our food right the second time.
To anybody that has made it this far, I would highly recommend against eating at this establishment. If you come for the drinks, you will leave pleased. Had we visited without eating, I probably would've rated StormBreaker at least a 4/5 stars.
But the food and the kitchen staff ruined that. I would rate them negative stars if I could. It has been years since I've seen a meal so royally messed up, and I have NEVER seen a food issue "resolved" with such a lack of pride and effort.
I think it is a bit obvious to say that we will never be returning, and we both will be happy to share our experience with friends and family.
To the wait staff that helped us all night, this review is not a reflection on you. The service you provided was easily 5/5 stars. But a restaurant has to be judged on it's food above all else, and nothing could make up for the abysmal performance of the kitchen tonight.