Waterfront Bar & Grill

The service was awful. They were out of half of the food on the menu and they could give a damn less. Not a great first impression.

2 stars for location and live music, only. The beer selection is nothing special. The food is criminally bad. I’m pretty sure the chicken wings were boiled and the fries tasted like fish.
Back in 2014, they allowed dogs on the patio, even brought them a water bowl. Apparently, they’ve changed their policy and dogs are no longer allowed. For me, that was a huge pull. So, I don’t plan to go back.

I don’t even want to give a star at all. The service was laughable and the food was terrible. The drinks were great but not worth the smell. I’m talking a smell that won’t go away. I’m doing laundry and my girlfriend’s washing her hair as we speak.

I had my graduation dinner here, and it worked out great! The food was delicious, the staff was friendly, and the beer was cheap! No complaints at all. Our waiter did an excellent job as well.

I love the location. Near the stadium. On the water. A good beer selection. Good food selection. Nice servers and bartenders. Love stopping by here on each of my trips to Lansing.

Enjoyed the beer selection and the view. Service was below par due to large crowds. But overall good experience.

This place reflects the general crappiness of the Lansinng City Market. I’m new here and I really wanted to like the place. Both the market and the restaurant. However it’s so unappealing it’s just depressing. OK so it’s Saturday, and it’s summer and there’s basically nobody here. But it’s no surprise because they’re blasting absolutely terrible 90s music on the patio. Like the worst kind. Haven’t you heard of spotify? Put a little effort into this. Or have some relaxing live music on the weekend (not playing lame covers please!!) I thought I would stop for a beer but I just really could not stand the music.
It was completely uninviting and if you are that out of touch with today’s world I’m gonna bet your food sucks too. The patio is also not even that nice … No plants… Maybe I’ll try the food and drinks someday but the atmosphere would need to improve substantially. Disappointed that it’s so lame. Id be happy to update this in the future if things are better.
I also realize it’s sort of BS to write a review without trying something but atmosphere is a lot.

Wonderful end to a early summer Sunday morning bike ride on the River Trail! We really enjoy the breakfast/​brunch buffet with a mimosa or bloody Mary! Great outdoor seats and view of the River! You might even bump elbows with the Major and his beautiful family!

Relaxed outdoor atmosphere, our service was excellent (wish I could remember her name), reasonable prices and surprisingly good food but limited menu. We will be back!

We’re traveling through town and this place was exactly what we had in mind the perfect blend of nature with a water front view and a $ 500K piece of art that is really lovely right around the corner I love the modern touches of the neighboring building a feast for the eyes. We soaked in the views and took advantage of live music playing on the patio, wood fired pizzas and $ 10 bottles of wine. I know, right, you’re think really… that sounds too good to be true. But it is the real deal. I believe its part of a Thursday night routine there. The staff was attentive and made sure all our needs were met. The wine selection albeit not extensive was decent and the pizza — nothing came home.

The first sunny, warm weekend of 2015 in Lansing — what could be better on Saturday afternoon than looking at the river and enjoying a couple of beers? My husband and I enjoyed several nice afternoons on the wonderful patio at the Waterfront last year. We love that we can bring our dog along with us, the tap list is decent, cocktails are ok but not great, and food is hit or miss (pizza is fantastic but rest of menu is not great). In the past we’ve had pretty good service there, but I felt really compelled to make sure that someone had warned people about how atrocious the service was recently. They were kind of busy (maybe ½ to ¾ of tables full at any given time), and I’m sure it was a lot busier than it has been during the colder months, but there were some pretty inexcusable problems:
–I got there first and was waiting for two other people to join me. Had the dog with me so didn’t want to bring her inside with me to order a drink at the bar. Sat at the table for 20 minutes trying to make eye contact or wave at someone who worked there so I could order a drink and was ignored or not seen by both members of the waitstaff who seemed to have tables around mine (this was not just me — people around me were having the same problem and had resorted to ordering at the bar, getting their own plates from the server station, etc).
–Finally got the attention of the waiter as he was bussing the table next to me. Asked if they do table service for drinks (at that point I was not sure!) and if I could order, he said he would come back. He never came back. 10 mins later he takes a food order at the table next to me after they had gone over to find him. I flag him down and ask again to place an order. Order a bloody mary and a water.
–10 minutes later my husband and our friend show up and I’ve been there for 40 mins and still don’t have a drink. My husband goes inside to order a drink at the bar and finds my bloody mary sitting there looking abandoned, confirms it’s mine, and brings it out to me. We give up and only order drinks at the bar from that point forward. Bar staff busy but friendly and prompt.
–Frankie’s pizza is there, which, btw, is amazing. Similar in quality to the pizzas at Cosmos/​Zoobies but more traditional toppings. It’s nearly impossible to get in touch with a server, so I go over and ask the pizza guy (Frankie himself?) if I can directly order from him. He says no, but points me to the servers stand and says there are order forms there. We fill it out and I get up and take it over to the waiter and tell him we want to order the pizza.
–Pizza is ready and the pizza man brings it over. he says the plates, etc are the responsibility of the waitstaff. Waiter nowhere in sight, so I go over to the server station area and ask another waitress if we could get some plates and cutlery, she is helpful and I bring our plates and napkins back to the table. Several other tables did this, and one table near us just never got plates and ate the pizza off the cardboard circle on the middle of their table.
–Friend goes to get the waiter when we want to close the tab for the pizza. Waiter has no memory or record of what we ordered, but we tell him which pizza we had. He brings tab, friend immediately gives him his credit card as we were worried about whether we would ever see him again. Brings tab back with no pen to sign credit card receipt and disappears.
I know this is a long ass rant, but this is literally the WORST service I have ever had in a bar or restaurant IN MY LIFE. Usually when places are busy you can tell that the waitstaff is in a crunch and a bit stressed out, and if they leave you hanging for 40 minutes and never actually bring out the drink that you ordered, they at least know it is a bad day and give some relatively sincere comment along the lines of «sorry we’re so slammed, thanks for your patience.» That’s about all it takes for me to like you and leave a 20% tip even if the service wasn’t good. The waiter we had at the Waterfront seemed to have no concept whatsoever that everyone in his seating area was just sitting there wondering if we even had a waiter at all?
I really want to like this place (and I do love the atmosphere for a summertime hangout), but I hope that the management reads these and can work out the service issues mentioned here and in the other reviews. I don’t really mind if the service is a bit slow when I’m having a lazy afternoon on a nice patio, but it would be great if they could: 1) try to check on tables when they sit down and once every 20 – 30 mins to see if they need to order any drinks/​food and 2) bring plates and forks when pizza is ordered (it takes a while to cook a freaking pizza, so there is plenty of time for this even if you are busy!) Next time, I’ll be prepared to just order at the bar.

In full disclosure, my son works here. I really like this place. Great location and one of the best patio’s in the Lansing area with views of the river. When they have their service running at full steam it is great. Because of the location, they tend to slow down in the winter months and then ramp up quickly when the weather warms. It can take a few weeks for the staffing and knowledge of the serving staff to catch up so be aware of this in late April and May when the weather starts to turn and patio days/​nights become more prevalent.
They have some great sandwiches and food overall. Frankie’s wood-​fired pizza is amazing.

Never had the food here but I have enjoyed the drinks and environment. Always a nice selection of beers and solid mixed drinks. The tavern offers a unique drinking environment that doesn’t exist in downtown Lansing. Only reason I didn’t give it 5 stars is because I don’t know how the food is.

Really the best patio in Lansing. Right on the water and at the City Market. Highly recommend the Sunday Brunch and getting whatever the specials are. They have a good beer list and have something for everyone.

Service is HORRIBLE, Anna was our waitress and it takes forever to get food. $ 5 for a small kettle of chips… burger horrible too. drinks are just juice. Waited 10 minutes for pretzels only to be told we are out.

First off the patio is great, it looks onto downtown lansing and the river which is so fun on a great summer day.
The beer selection is full of good choices. I had a local beer and a Bloody Mary. The Bloody Mary was good but not spicy if you’re looking for that.
The food menu is small however offers some delicious food including great BBQ and salads. I feel as though you don’t need a large food selection if all your good is great. They even grill and BBQ outside which is cool. I also recommended the guacamole which was delicious.
The inside atmosphere is small and a little noisy since it’s inside the city market but overall I really enjoyed the place. Even my picky husband enjoyed himself and he hates patios (who hates patios??)

How can you not love sitting on the patio, on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, having drinks? Love the patio here. It wasn’t too crowded. Got a table and enjoyed happy hour. I can’t complain about the drinks. I saw a sign that said «when the tigers are playing Bud Light and Labatts are only $ 2.00» you can’t beat it. They wide variety of beer.
I had the pretzel bun brat. It had a sweet taste to it, which kept thrown me off. The kettle chips were great. I will definitely will be coming back for more patio time.

Four stars for the prices and pours… maybe just three for the food. Bartenders are very generous on giving a potable drink, instead of watering it down like most other places. I really enjoy that.
However, walking in for the first time, you generally get a townie bar vibe and feel out of place. We’ve had the same waitress every time, so you think she would treat us like she at least waited on us before… but we seem like strangers every time. I guess you have to be in with «their» crowd to get treated like they really want you there. That’s a big reason we stopped going so much. Great prices and drinks, but we always feel somehow out of place.
The food is so so. It’s better when they grill on the patio… pulled pork is yummy. Regular food isn’t great. When it’s summer… it’s a lot of fun to sit out there and listen to live music tho!

I dont know why this place has 2 Unilocal listings, but here’s my review once again.
In hopes of ownership or management reading this review, I’ll start by saying that I believe that this place has a lot of potential — Especially inside of the market. With that said…
Service was atrocious. Two tables (my party included) were all that had to be tended to and I saw one single waitress twice. Once to take my order and another to take my plate away. Being a bar that advertises plentiful Michigan taps, especially with a sign in plain sight that touts Michigan taps — The server just didn’t cut it and had absolutely NO KNOWLEDGE about beer or what was available. A simple solution that I would have much appreciated when I let the server know I was in out of town in hopes of sampling local brew would have been to say:
«You know what, I don’t know much about beer, but let me ask the bartender for a recommendation for you» In fact, after having to go up to the bar to settle my check because the server was nowhere in sight, I WISH she had. The bartender was personable, tentative and obviously knew what I was talking about when I struck up conversation.
Food was well… I’ll say it left me wanting more:
I ordered the Veggie and Spinach Sandwich. Now, Spinach was featured in the name of the dish — But there were a total of 3 (yes I counted them, THREE) baby spinach leaves among my 1 leaf worth of shredded romaine. Served as is I recommend re-​naming this dish Shredded Cheddar sandwich (omit mentioning veggies). Now, I understand Michigan is a meat and potatoes kind of town (no offense intended) but, really? I ordered a veggie sandwich and expected as much. I was literally handed 5 cents worth of vegetables, and compressed fist full of cheese in a tortilla.
For emphasis I added a paragraph break — I had ONE diced cube of bellpepper in my sandwich, (which I honestly believe ended up in it by accident) and 5 ¼″ squares of cucumber. Even if you had served me my veggie sandwich PACKED with vegetable as I would have loved it – Cost to the restaurant? less than a dollar for a $ 7, yes SEVEN DOLLAR SANDWICH. Thats 700% markup to cost. +.1 point for the server recommending it as a wrap for ease of eating.
PLEASE see my photos…
My sister ordered the «Grilled» Cheese sandwich, which was basically my veggie wrap served as a panini with a single slice each of cheddar, pepper jack and (maybe) swiss or monterey jack. This restaurant must think that Grilled Cheese means that it can be named as such after merely TOUCHING the grill (or in this case, panini press).
Now, when I make a grilled cheese (even if its microwaved) I know its not done cooking until the cheese is melted, wouldnt you agree? How about COLD cheese Panini for a name revision? I suggest turning down the temperature of the panini press OR grill to ensure melting the cheese but not burning the bread — I’m just sayin’.
—— Enough negativity, on to the positive!
The bartender was warm, friendly, and personable. When paying for my bill i noticed a bottle fridge down below and saw a DogFish 90min next to what I knew to be a 60min IPA that I was WISHING was a 120min IPA. Why the excitement? I’m from California. I asked to confirm and told him that I was from California and that if it was indeed 120min I would have cleaned him out to take bottles home. His reply, «Smart man.» and continued to inform me of the taps and how they like to rotate beer. I WISH I WOULD HAVE KNOWN, SERVER! (please just ask the bartender next time!).
All in all, I hope that whomever from this establishment and reads this recognizes that the tune of this review was to be entertaining, not offensive and that the feedback is taken seriously.
Cheers Mr. Bartender — I’d come back to buy you a drink, any day. 1 extra star just for the bartender. (slender older gentleman)

Like times 3.
I like there food. (It tastes good and is reasonably priced.)
I like the outdoor and indoor seating.
I like their beer selection.
The service has been good every time I’ve stopped in. (Including on St. Patty’s Day) The food is consistently tasty.