Bad Dog Tavern & Grill

I can’t believe this place closed. I liked coming in for the avocado sandwich. The fries and hot wings are also good.

I went here with my sister and mom for lunch on a Monday. Being dog people, we loved the deco — the whole place had a neat vibe in my opinion.
There was a bit of a lunch rush and only on server who was apparently doing everything. She was the hostess, the server, the bartender and the food runner. I felt bad because she clearly was trying to do her best, but she was only one person.
Food was pretty good, too! We just did sandwiches, but I really enjoyed them. And those parmesan fries are to delicious!
I would definitely venture this way at night to see the atmosphere in the evening.

I am a fan because Bad Dog is one of the only North Side taverns that carries SHINER CHEER when it’s in season!
THANK YOU FOR COMPLETING MY WINTER BEER WANTS, BAD DOG.
I also love that there’s a fireplace.

I don’t know why this place is rated as high as it is. By draft cider was flat, the fries had a grainy texture (they’re battered parmesan fries, but I’m specifically referring to the potato), there was far too much onion on our burgers, mine smelled like bad breath, the onion rings were greasy and surprisingly flavorless, and the sound system is far too loud for an empty bar, when I was there. Being empty should have been my sign to high tail it out of there. Trust your instincts!
They portion well.
And god damn, waitress, I’m watching you; get off your phone and give me my check!
Just a disappointment all around.

Worst service EVER!!! Visiting from out of town and went to meet a friend for lunch. As soon as we sat down the kids had received their food someone who was NOT our server came up to our table and TOLD us we needed to move, they had a larger party and needed our booth, even though my friend waited 30 min for that booth. No one offered to help move our drinks or the kids food that they had already started eating.
Being a waitress myself I couldn’t believe how rude and unhelpful everyone was. Finally after we ordered our food when it came out it was horrible. Worst food I’ve had since my visit here as well as service. None of my food was prepared as I asked.
Out of nowhere another server came to check on us as she was running by, but our own server never came back. I had to call a server over to ask for our waitress who then proceeded to tell me she didn’t feel good and was sick. Ok, that’s gross. Then why do we see her running food to other tables?! Double gross.
So many different wonderful places in this town, don’t waste your time here unless you like being moved around, ignored and crappy food.

Extremely rude server. We were here late night just for drinks, no food, but were unknowingly forced to start a table tab with a party of 9 because we moved from the bar inside to an outdoor patio table. We later realized that gratuity is automatically added to parties of 8 or more, hence the forced table tab. What «bar» has this policy late night, anyway? Any bar I have gone to has had no problem splitting tabs, creating separate tabs, or even taking my cash table side.
So, imagine our surprise when all we wanted to do was pay cash up front and separately for our drinks (like you can do at other normal bars). After she rudely said «no, it just goes toward the tab», it was suggested that we go to the bar to pay cash separately for two drinks. Her response was «Well then, I don’t want you sitting in my section». You don’t tell a customer, with a table full of friends, to leave your section just because you would lose out on a guaranteed tip amount.
Clearly she was only working for her guaranteed tips, and not trying to get greater tips with better customer service.
On top of that, my Alagash White draft tasted horrible… they clearly hadn’t cleaned any of the taps or lines in quite some time.
Will never be returning to this place… and suggest you do not waste your time here, either.

Love the dog theme, and the dog-​heavy patio was great. The food was not as great. We came here recently on a Saturday afternoon, starving, and sat outside in the large patio area betwixt a big fat bulldog, and a beautiful doberman pinscher. So far, so good…
They had a nice beer menu so we ordered a few and then ordered some burgers. My turkey burger was not that great. It had a thin patty similar to a large breakfast sausage, and tasted kind of rubbery and odd. I wished I had tried the veggie burger instead. The fries were very good.
Waitstaff seemed a bit unorganized because we were brought duplicate orders of beers about ten minutes apart, and a food request (no cheese) was ignored, so one of our plates had to be sent back.
I’d stop back to Bad Dog, but more so for the (good) dogs, and the beer, rather than the food (at least the burgers).

Stopped in for happy hour with some girlfriends and they had a $ 6 burger special. Great service, great food and beautiful patio. The cheese queso we had as an appetizer left a bit to be desired with its weird consistency, but otherwise the food was good.
We also noted all of the dogs on the patio, wish I had a dog to enjoy a glass of wine with on their patio!

We came here for brunch one sunny Saturday with our two fur children, and were happy to find a dog-​friendly place!
For starters we tried the pub pretzel, which was delicious. Something about that pretzel dough, so delicious, fresh, and warm. Veggie burgers here were also pretty decent, the patty itself held together nicely and had a good flavor. We also tried their bloody mary special — YUM!
Overall, great service, good food, and dog-​friendly! We’ll be back!

It’s a Vols bar, so they are pretty much great :)
Solid place for a great burger and a beer while you watch any game. I like the sliders and the pretzels are a good app.
Great window in the front that they open the summer and a fireplace for the winter. They also have an good outdoor area («good» because there is nothing overly special about it but it’s big which is nice on crowded 70 nights).
Gets a little loud in the front of the restaurant on a Saturday… but it is a bar so that should be expected.

Pretty average, sorry to say. It’s great that they were open on this beautiful Memorial Day. It’s great that they have a big patio off to the side, where you don’t have to smell bus fumes. It’s great that they have a big menu. Now if only the food was better.
I ordered the grilled cheese. The menu gave me the impression it was something of a trio — almost like a flight of grilled cheese. What I got was one barely warm cheese sandwich, with a slice of tomato and a slice of avocado. Extremely underwhelming. You have a choice of several sides, and I went with the fries. The fries looked great, giving me the impression that they had some quick and flavor. While they were cooked just right, there wasn’t much flavor. I still needed ketchup.
My dining companion had the pulled pork sandwich. He said it was okay. He ate almost the whole thing, so that is an endorsement. He liked the fries better than I did.
Bottomless iced tea is good, too.
I was very underwhelmed. I’d give Bad Dog Tavern another chance, but I’d definitely go with a different choice. The boy and I both thought the best sounding food was the winter menu, but, at 80 degrees, the truffle mac ‘n’ cheese and the chicken pot pie will have to wait for the inevitable return of winter.

I went here today.
There was no redeeming qualities i can write about.
Atmosphere– beat up– kinda dirty feeling
Service– mediocre at best One waitress came and took all the silverware off my table for another table. I asked what was i going to do when my food gets here?
She smiled and walked away.
Then another waitress came and took my beer menu away for another table.
So i never ordered a beer, just drank water.
Food– eh. Could have made a better turkey BLT at home.
Super uneventful place– felt overall weird
The oddest waitstaff I’ve seen in a restaurant in a long time…
Now i can just drive by it.

I really love their wings, but I am so disappointed in the service I received the other day. It was around 2pm and they decided to clump everyone in one part of the restaurant. We got seated next to the bar and was told they were getting deliveries in that day so we couldn’t sit there and he wasn’t sure where we could go. Um, we didn’t choose to sit there. Let your host know. We got moved to another table. After that we just sat there awkwardly contemplating leaving. It was just weird.
We got our food and it wasn’t that great. If I’m going to deal with crappy service I need to have awesome food. Not the case here.
I used to come here several times a month, but I think I might try to find a new favorite bar in the area.

This is our go-​to place for most Friday/​Saturday nights. The staff is friendly, and they have a decent selection of beer and food. I wish they had harp though. Also, they have some really good specials throughout the week.
I usually get their wings, the girlfriend gets the routine. Both come out quickly, and are decently sized portions. They also have really good burgers and pizza.
During the summer they have a nice patio, and in the winter they have a great fireplace. Also the pictures of dogs throughout the bar are really cool.

Blah, this place is OK. We come here for trivia only, but it gets pretty busy, so arrive early. It’s really hard to tell which weeks will be busy and which won’t; we still can’t seem to figure out what is happening in the area to make the bar super busy some Thursday nights and empty others.
The hostess here is not nice and generally unhelpful, so prepare for that. She’s definitely gotten better over the months, but she usually seems clueless and unaware of what is happening at the tables she’s supposed to be seating.
Service can be unbelievably slow. There seem to be a few waitresses in here every Thursday and they usually start out by coming by the table a bunch at the beginning of the night and then they’re no where to be found as the evening wears on. It boggles my mind since I know they’re all still IN the restaurant somewhere, they’re just not out on the floor helping anyone with anything. It is especially maddening when we’ve all been waiting for 15 minutes just to tell the waitress that we want a refill on beer. ANNOYING.
Trivia here is always pretty awesome since it’s proctored by THE Dan, but that’s about all this place has going for it. The menu is fairly large and some of the food is excellent (like the elotes) but some is just meh. I guess that’s pretty standard for a bar. Bad Dog is a place that I normally wouldn’t decide to go unless trivia was happening because this is just an average-​ly not great bar.
Best part of the entire place: THE PICTURES OF DOGS ON THE WALLS! They are precious and cute. Don’t expect to park in that lot next door after 6 p.m. ANY night of the week and street parking is hard to find on the same block as the bar.

Back again for those martinis. I didn’t have dinner this time. But what struck me about the ambiance here is that there are first of all the competing TV screens with different games on, and then there’s the music, It started out with lots of 80’s tunes, and them slipped back into the 70’s., so you’re watching the Bears and Bulls, while the music makes you want to put on a white suit and line dance. So Bad Dog has lots of distractions, but little in the way of decent human interaction. From that standpoint, it has always been kind of dispassionate and unconnected, like the neighborood it occupies. The food and drink is fine. The rest just leaves you cold.

I’ve been here a few times, and everytime has been wonderful!
The first time I went here at night and sat out on the patio. Bad Dog has a wonderful patio, lots of trees and plenty of space between the tables.
Alas, it’s too chilly now to sit on the patio (I’m a wuss, I admit it). Instead we sat in a cozy corner booth. Our waitress was very friendly and attentive. It wasn’t very crowded. Since it was Saturday night (after 9pm) appetizers were half off! Yum! We decided to munch on the poutine and the wings.
The wings were crispy and covered in sauce. They were great, but nothing too amazing. The poutine however, was wonderful. Parmesan fries covered in cheese curds and slow-​cooked pot roast. The meat melted in my mouth! I wish I could have ordered another for just myself…
Bad Dog has a very decent beer menu and a bunch of TVs.
They also have a really cool entryway, where any dog owner can bring in a picture of their dog and Bad Dog will frame it and put in on the wall! Very neat!
Overall, this place is great. I look foward to going back in the future!

I’ll always have love for this place because of the dog-​friendly patio, but my love is not including the food so much anymore.
We came here, with a Good Dog for beers. Then, oh. .. hungry!
I got a turkey burger, channeling the juicy deliciousness of Epic Burger. This is no epic burger. At $ 10.99, I expected more. It was pretty dry, and overcooked, and I think it may have began life as a frozen turkey burger. Pretty tasteless, and I wouldn’t order it again.
My brother got a burger, and it was only meh. Just not that good. Another dish at our table was a salad, and while that looked pretty good, it wasn’t OMG CRAZY DELICIOUS GOOD.
This place is definitely worth going to if you want to hang out on the patio with your pup and quaff a few beers. It just isn’t worth going to for the food. Beer and dogs (really, what more do you need?), yes. Food, mmmm. .. probably not, if that is all you’re looking for.

Wifey and I had a late lunch here after an evening of classes at the Old Town School of Folk music. I must say I’m a fan and really enjoyed it.
The place is bigger than it looks and has a nice outdoor area to sit. It’s a fun atmosphere and very friendly staff. They were very accommodating with seating as well.
The food was tastey. Had a short rib and cheese sandwich with some tastey Parmesan fries. very good. hey have an excellent selection of brew and wine.
What made our thursday evening a little more fun was the free trivia they have. Every thursday they do a very interactive free trivia that pretty much gets the entire bar involved. They asked us to play and we obliged. 5 hours later we finally left. It was really fun and cant wait to go back: D hopefully we can bring some more players and get some more points than last time.
def. recommend the Bad Dog Tavern… oh and dont forget to check out the cool dog pictures on the walls, you’ll get a nice chuckle!

Lychee juice in a martini? Sign me up!
My friends and I popped in on a Saturday and I was just scanning the drink list to see if anything caught my eye. The speciality drinks were anywhere between $ 9 and $ 12, so if I decided to order anyting off this menu, it had to kinda unique, ya know?
One of the drinks had lychee juice and whole lychee in it, and if you know, I LOVE anything lychee. It actually had Absolut Pear vodka, pomegranate juice and lychee juice. All in all, it was pretty refreshing… a nice summer drink!
The music that night was a bit schizophrenic, but that was actually a nice treat. The bar itself is roomy, the bartenders were pretty friendly and there are alot of tv’s around. I’ll be back for more lychee martini goodness!