Pump House Grill

Service was very friendly. Food was decent but slightly overpriced. Overall good for a quick bite when walking around town.

Very unfortunate that this establishment had to close it’s doors. Fortunately we were able to come to this great restaurant a few times before they were forced to close down. Great food, if they re-​open give the shrimp fajitas or burger a try with cheese curds!
They have a great variety of infused liquors, like, lemon-​grass bombay gin or ginger vodka.
Hopefully this place re-​opens their doors!

Come for the salad and soup bar during lunch hours.
The lunch and dinner menu are average, and the atmosphere is average as well. There are much better options in the surrounding areas.

Absolutely horrible. Do not go here! The food is obviously all frozen — if I wanted a frozen meal, I could have gone to the local grocery store and gotten food faster. The service was slooooooow. It took an hour and a half for our food to actually come out, ridiculous! The bartender was also our waiter and continually forgot many of our orders and was never apologetic about it. Stay far away from this one.

Save your money. Perch was chewy, too crunchy and not worth the money. Kids chicken strips were worse than gas station chicken — fake chicken parts — gross! Steak sandwich was good which is the only reason for 2 stars.

Food was decent, good selection/​variety of burgers/​sandwiches and also dinner entrees. We went during lunch time, while the food was decent the services left much to be desired. Our server was also the bartender, who acted annoyed most of the time we were there. She was not friendly at all! Also, the management staff was not friendly at all. The place itself has a nice, upscale pup/​bar feel to it, but the service definitely needs a major overhaul.

Lunch, ¹⁰⁄₂₀₁₂: Just average. Got tired of looking for Unilocal-​user-​approved 4±star places and popped in here, knowing the risk. Average Unilocal score was right! Food was better than the service, but it isn’t unique or flavorful in anyway. Couple of fish options, which is always appreciated. But they stuck us in a back portion of the restaurant and then seemed to forget about us, during a SLOW lunch shift. Water for hot tea wasn’t hot enough. Only received green tea bags and no sugar or sweetener anywhere. I wouldn’t recommend this place to a friend.

We came to Pump House Grille as our «nice» dinner during a bachelorette weekend. We waited 20 minutes for our table, despite the reservation made over a month in advance (no big deal). Our waitress was great and seemed to be trying but everything was so SLOW. 45 minutes before the bread came out (they were apparently baking it «fresh»). It took an hour for our dinners to come out, even though they were mostly composed of salads. As a side note, they should consider changing the name of the Steak Salad which has no salad like quality to it other than being composed of cold veggies (mashed potatoes and beans) and small pieces of meat.
Pump House management could have somewhat salvaged our experience with an acknowledgement and apology but instead I get the impression that this is what you can expect.
Unless you have 2 hours for your bread roll, salad, and water you might want to consider dining elsewhere

YUM! Great service. Very tasty tiger shrimp app! Order by piece… we did 3 each and could’ve had more!
My friend (a NYC foodie) had the Halibut: flavorful, perfectly cooked, beautiful presentation… impressed!
Hubbie had the beef tenders: «it’s nice… mmmm bacon bordelaise!»
I had the arctic char special: very good.
GOOD VALUE FOR QUALITY!
Would not expect the quality of food in small town Michigan and we will be back!

Today I went to the Pumphouse for lunch with my girlfriend. I ordered the Pumphouse Burger and it was Excellent. One of the better Burgers I’ve had in the area. My girlfriend had the Portabella Mushroom sandwich and it was also very good. I had a side salad with my burger and it didn’t look very good but it did taste okay. Overall I had low expectations but the experience was still pretty good.

In brief: good service, some things executed well, some thing executed poorly, no sense of flavor.
Dodd V. pretty much hits the nail on the head: small town joint trying to be a bit more «big city.» I’ll get back to that in a jiffy.
A brief look at the evolution of the reviews over time shows fewer complaints about service and noise, which is good. We were at a table of six, and had attentive and competent service. Great for a bar or family restaurant.
As for the food, everything that could be associated with «bar food» was good. That is:
Pump House Perch: fish not too breaded, reasonably crispy, tasted like perch.
Tasty, crisp fries.
A decent burger.
Bread.
Anything that wasn’t bar food fell far short:
Side salad: diced iceberg lettuce, bits of red cabbage. Some had olives, some didn’t. Underwhelming.
Artichoke and brie fondue: Not a fondue, for one. More a bland spinach artichoke dip, with nice ham instead of spinach. Stil had a bit of a funky piggy-​flavor, which is avoided in most cultures’ cuisines. Also a little runny. The accompanying crostini was crisp and tasty, at least.
The Porchetta sandwich could have been really good: soft, rich pork, a cheese that went really well with it, on a soft but toothsome ciabatta. Unfortunately, the caramelized onions were so hard to find as to barely register, and being underseasoned it ended up just being bland and oily.
Compatriots had a blackened fish sandwich, which was tasty except that they took «blackened» too literally, a braised pork dish which was «quite good,»
The thing that most marked this place as «trying too hard» were the accompaniments to the fish and chips. The tartar sauce was made with sweet pickles, making it too sweet, and had cinnamon in it. Reaaaaaally funky taste combination, one that just doesn’t work, besides which it just drown out any of the taste of the fish. The cole slaw was made with bleu cheese — again, not harmonious. Bleu cheese’s unique funk does not work when the texture of the cloe slaw is gloppy. Gloppy. Dammit, it stopped looking like a real word.
Basically, it seems like the chef doesn’t have the instinct to make unique flavor combinations, and should concentrate on things they can fix more easily, like seasoning the food properly. Or they could get a new chef, but it seems like if they simplify and focus on executing what they have better, it’ll all work out.

What a let down! I have been going to Pump house for a a few years now, and they have completely changed their menu in an attempt to become more upscale. $ 20 for Perch that looked like it came out of the freezer, $ 15 for tacos… what a disappointment! The food was completely lackluster and underwhelming! They got rid of all the favorites which differentiated themselves from everyone else in town, fried pickles, pulled pork sandwiches, and all my favorite sides!!! (mashed sweet potatoes) Unfortunately, I will not being going here anymore in the near future. Looks like your neighbors have stolen your business!

Extended family live in this area so we come here on occasion. Menu items are pricey and simple for being SW Michigan, but we like the staff and the cooks. Try the Sunday brunch which is worth the $ 16.99 pricetag. Most entrees are $ 20 so the brunch is a deal and a decent variety of choices. Lots of love and care goes into their cooking. Great downtown location.

This seems to be the go to for crew dinners when we race to St Joe from Chicago.
Between the three of us we had the Southwest Chicken Wrap, White Fish special, and a Patty Melt for the main course with a split Black Berry cobbler. All delicious and satisfying.
Service was great. Even the manager came by and helped the server clear when there was a big crush of guests. Only negative was hearing the bus boys complain they didn’t make enough money last night… not my business keep it in the back of the house.

This is the place to go if you want standard bar food. This is NOT the place to go if you want a steak (disclaimer:maybe I – and the other group near me – just had a bad steak day, and that this was a once-​in-​a-​lifetime occurrence, but for the sake of this review, I’m reviewing the steak I had THAT day).
I’m sorry, but is it too much of a leap in logic to ask, say, a place with the word «grill» in its name, should be a place that serves meats worthy of GRILLING?
We started with the appetizer sampler and it was good. Fried stuff was nice and crispy. Ribs were delicious.
Then came the entrees, what we actually came here for.
Dun-​dun-​dunnnnn.
My rib-​eye steak was as chewy as a tire. I ordered it medium-​rare. And it came out medium-​rare.
What could possibly have happened to a medium-​rare, rib eye steak, to make it so CHEWY? It was chewier than laffy taffy! Chewier than chew! It was, if I may, AS CHEWY AS… CORK! I even had a steak knife and it took me a few minutes to saw a piece off! I thought it was me, or my knife, until…
The party next to me complained and ordered something else. I came there for steak. I was not about to complain so I could get chicken. By then, I’d had enough. I was not interested in trading in one chewy steak for another chewy steak.
I think the experience must’ve traumatized me some, because I caught myself wondering about that poor cow I was trying to consume weeks later (and now I have to release my experience into ethers so that it may rest in «piece»). But that is another time, another place. Until then, I’ll still continue searching for the best steak in Berrien County.

Not as bad as a lot of the reviews say. Decent barbecue for Michigan. A lot of people and pretty crowded.

A little surprised this place was rated so low. I wasn’t blown away by any stretch, but it was a fairly average dining experience.
This is a decent place to stop and get a burger downtown, if you’re not a super foodie you’ll be satisfied. It’s on par with most of bar food in Chicago. The Service was excellent and the manager even came to ask us how everything was.
The place is kind of loud and filled with kiddies, great if you have a family, not so great for a quiet dinner with your wife. I wish restaurants (and many do this) would do a better job of placing families with a ton of kids away from couples and/​or people that are clearly looking to have quiet conversation, as we couldn’t hear each other over screaming babies. Except for the noise I was satisfied with the experience.

This place is TERRIBLE. My girlfriend and I decided to stop in St. Joseph for dinner on our way from Detroit to Chicago. Despite some of the bad reviews we decided to try this place out… BIG MISTAKE!
First off the matradee seemed like he could care less that we, really anybody, was there to eat. Our waiter was okay at times and terrible at others.
I got chicken fajitas and they were okay, but the red beans and rice were not so great.
My girlfriend ordered the Steak and Bleu Chop Salad and they forgot to put the bleu cheese and eggs on it that was supposed to come with it. I mean how do you forget one of the toppings (bleu cheese) that is in the name of the dish. Once she got the eggs and blue cheese she bit into her steak which was ice cold. They took it back and brought her a whole new salad, so they say. They probably just nuked the steak.
One other thing we saw was someone from the kitchen sticking his hand in a salad to remove some items that weren’t suppose to be there, but the waiter did make him take it back to the kitchen to hopefully get a whole new plate that didn’t have someone’s hand in it.
Overall this place was terrible and the only thing that was good about it was that it was right across the street from Kilwin’s, which has great ice cream and candy. DO NOT GO HERE!

Have eaten at the Pump House Three times now and 3 strikes and your out. Have tried each time I have heared they had a new cheif or manager. love the bar. kind of noisy. But for a downtown restarant they need to invest in a true chief. they need a fresh menu which they are lacking. I love the location and I want this place to be better then it is.

Average food at best and very very very LOUD. Clearly this is a case of a small town joint trying to be a bit more «big city». If they want to improve, they need to work on the quality and also try to quiet the place down a bit. I have had a burger there and have also tried the ribs, both of which were just ok. Not a bad place, but if you choose to stop in, I would strongly suggest going at off peak hours or else you will walk out with a head ache.
I have had a difficult finding good food in St. Joseph and this place seems to be on par with what most in the area consider «good».