Boathouse BBQ

Great service and great food! The service is probably the best in the mid Ohio valley!

Nachos are amazing! Visited several times now and never ordered anything I did not like. Outside seating has great views.

Food isn’t too bad, although some ribs and wings tasted like hot dogs. May have been three stars if the tables weren’t so dirty and the air conditioner vents weren’t dripping water on my head! Maybe that’s meant to distract me from all the flies. If the dining and bathrooms are that dirty, what does the kitchen look like?!

Absolutely WORST service I have ever experienced. If there’s a wait, DON’T DO IT. No joke. Appetizer was hard & most likely microwaved. Bar tender was rude to our family. & waited 3 hours to be told if we still wanted to stay & order it would be another 45 minutes till our food even came. Which would most likely taste like crap. Nah.

Recommended as a casual place to eat along the river. Relaxing atmosphere with great food. Although service was fair. Had to ask multiple times for things. Her attitude was nor overly positive at times. Would come back again to enjoy the BBQ.

Great service abbey was a Rockstar, food was great, very nice place, atmosphere great comfortable, I’ve eaten several kinds of bbq this was very good, bring the kids, eat great food, relax, drink a cold beer, seafood, grilled shrimp cooked perfectly.

I’m not sure how the meal would have been. We waited an hour an a half but were never served. When we asked the waitress for our drink check and to cancel out order, she acted like we were wrong for not wanting to wait «a few more more minutes». No apology or anything just a bad attitude. We paid our bill and moved on, marking this up as a not worth revisiting establishment.

Two years ago this was the best place in the area. Since last summer the service suffered however my wife and I continued to visit for the cold beer good view and great food. Now the food isn’t even worth eating. We will not return until there is a major makeover.

I am only giving this place one star because I can’t do zero stars. We arrived on Monday 8÷4÷14. Not a rush situation. Right when we walked in we were not sure if we were supposed to seat ourselves so we hovered in the doorway for a few secs before a very nice lady (who I presumed worked there) said we could seat ourselves. After that we made our way outside to the patio. Half of the tables were dirty and it was not busy so I am assuming that nobody cared to clean off the tables. It was really annoying. Because we really wanted to sit by the river we cleaned roughly 18 empty Bud Lite bottles from the table and sat down. … And waited. … And waited. We waited until a young waitress came out onto the patio and she breezed right past us to wait on a group of people who seated themselves after us. Thinking she might come to our table we waited some more. She never came, so my father went into the restaurant to get us a round of brews. We were there for at least 2 hours and were never waited on. It was really awful. Especially because it was not busy. I was already annoyed that my dad had to walk into the place to get a beer, but there was a point in the duration of time that we were on the patio and two waitresses finally decided to clean off the tables and complained about the clientele. There was a girl wearing a dark blue shirt complaining very loudly about a table that left her a crappy tip. Then the younger waitress in the red shirt that I am pretty sure was supposed to be waiting on our section said «Yeah. These people went to the bar and then sat outside so I am not even getting a tip.» I was so upset at her saying this while I was trying to enjoy my vacation with my family. The fact that we waited for so long before getting a beer on our own in the bar, then had a waitress insult my family while we were trying to enjoy ourselves… I was not happy. We finished our first round of drinks and my parents wanted another round. I didn’t want them to have to go back inside to wait for a drink and it was obvious that we were not getting waited on any day soon, so I offered to go in and get the next round. The girl doing the bar service inside was really nice. I gave her a good tip for the round of drinks. While I was standing there waiting for my drinks at the bar I saw the red shirted girl who ignored us outside sitting in an old man’s lap at the bar giggling and working it for tips. It was completely disgusting.
It is really sad because you can tell it would be a great place to visit by the river if the staff wasn’t so awful. I would give them a pass if I was visiting during a rush time on a weekend, but on a Monday. There is no excuse for that sort of service.

The food was very good. I had a «create your own» burger with bacon, bbq sauce, and ghost pepper jack cheese (which wasn’t as hot as I’d hoped). Others with me had wings, ribs, and the seafood pasta. Everyone enjoyed their dishes. We also had the BBQ nachos for an appetizer and they were very delicious. They have a good beverage selection and live music as well.
My main gripe is the confusion in getting seated. We walked in and there were 3 – 4 other groups of people waiting for a seat. The host asked us how many and if we wanted to be seated inside or out. I said outside if possible. She then told me it would be an hour and twenty minutes to be seated outside, 45 minutes inside. We had her put a name down and started to wait.
The thing is, there were many, many open tables. She pointed to a booth and said we could sit there to wait and have a drink from the bar. We did. About 15 minutes later (and not 45), we were called for our seat. They sat us in a booth DIRECTLY ACROSS THE ROOM from where we already were, not 50 feet away. There was no discernible reason that we couldn’t have just been seated there and served in the first place. The entire time, we saw many other people come in, ask to be seated, and express the exact same confusion. By the time we left, every open table had been seated but we were outside enjoying the music and the view of the river at that point.
Once we were seated, things were great. The server was friendly, prompt, and got our order exactly right. We will definitely return but hopefully they’ll have cleared up their seating process by then.

Great ribs and we ate outside with a wonderful view of the Ohio River. Saw a stern wheel paddle boat go by while we ate dinner. Great food and great atmosphere.

Love the ribs– and the homemade ranch! I usually do take out because it can take a while to get your food. But when I do dine in– I dine outside for the view– and enjoy the Coldest beer in town!

Best view in this town. When we come, we always get the fish and the crab dip. To be honest, the fish is amazing.
Always busy on weekends. Would highly recommend. In fact, we often get it «to go!»

Went here for the all you can eat ribs on Wednesday. The ribs we’re vary good and the service was great. Ate 2 ½ racks of ribs and enjoyed every bit of it.

I am local and have eaten here twice. Disappointed both times. On Saturday, ¹²⁄₂₁ we stopped for lunch and ordered the brisket sandwich. The meat was leftover and reheated on a grill. Hardly good BBQ. Tough and fatty I doused it with sauce to eat it. Service was also spotty. Too much for too little.

you dont get a better view or better bbq than this place has to offer, my wife and i were here for a weekend getaway, we are from cincinnati, took a motorcycle trip and ran into a couple in zanesville ohio who told us that we gotta try this place, so glad i listened it was awesome, and our service was great also, we will be back you can count on it !!!

Great Atmosphere. Love their Sauce selection. Brisket was good, service was great. Will come back.