Healdsburg Bar and Grill is consistent with decent food, poor service and good beer. For the last couple of years, it has been the best place to go for a pretty good burger. The ingredients are local: Alexander Valley pickles, {sometimes}Soda Rock Farms tomatoes, Cosetaux Bakery buns, farm fresh lettuce, beets, et cetera.

Each time I have dined here the service staff give a different answer for the same requests I have; when ordering my normal Manhattan, I ask for the “special brandied cherries” that the nice bartender with the glasses ALWAYS gives to me. The servers reply with, “sorry, we are all out” or my favorite, “Oh, no, we have not had those for over a year”. Well, I have been here about six times in a month and you’ve had them every time, but okay. I do not understand why they feel the need to lie. Another great fib I have encountered twice was regarding their tomatoes. They claim to only use Soda Rock Farms, last year they had that listed on their menu and clearly they were Chiles finest {from Safeway?} because Soda Rock was not ready yet…. It’s funny what you actually know when you live in Sonoma County. I could not for the longest time figure out why the staff at HBG lie or fib about everything, then it came to me: they do not care and they treat everyone like they are a tourist {except for the nice bartender with the glasses, the only hard worker there}.

As a manager, I would be disappointed in the incompetence of my staff. I look at the manager at HBG and I understand why he is not, because he himself is over the top incompetent. The last visit I had to HBG was my last. It is a shame there is such a great piece of space in downtown Healdsburg and the service is terrible, the wait for a table is an hour {even after being told to come right over and we would be seated} and the staff then ignores you for their mistake. We live in Wine Country and in case it was not known, this is a destination place and a bar and grill will most likely be busy on a Sunday afternoon on a holiday weekend. Perhaps it is necessary to over staff a little or at the very least, staff accordingly.

Here is what I will miss the most, because after a long day when all I can think about is a burger and I do not want to cook it myself, I would go here and it would satisfy the need, because it was decent {the burger anyway}.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Truth be told, I know food, I am passionate about it anyway. <3

 

*An interesting addition to this review: upon attempting to link my review back to the site, Healdsburg Bar and Grill, I receive a “WARNING, this site may harm your computer” message. A little ironic.