Bulldog Tavern

Hey, good surprise here for a college Rathskeller. Got the Hoya burger with Fries and a beer on a Tuesday afternoon. All good all around.

I went there when I wanted to eat something and take a rest. It is just located near the Potomac River side of the university. Great location. You can see the great view on the patio of the tavern. I sat inside by myself. I ordered a hamburger and it was a lot. I had to take it home. Good service. Great place to talk with your friends.

The food is good, if you have time for it. We waited more than 45 minutes for our lunches, and when they finally arrived, the food was cold, and the order was wrong.

I went here two times already, one with a colleague and one more recently with a friend. The most recent time was last week and compared to my first time here, the service was slightly improved given the fact that the first time it was not crowded and it just took along time for our food as opposed this time it was super crowded and wait time was decent. Anyhow, we ordered some chicken wings to share and I ordered a bowl of chili.
The service is better and wait times are better. However, we were waiting on the check and I had to ask the hostess for the bill.

Long story short: food is great but the service stinks. Drinks took like 20 minutes to arrive and the waiter came by to re-​ask for our order twice. Come here if you’re not in a rush and if you can pass the time by chatting with a bunch of friends. The space itself is pretty nice and in a good location. My friend is still waiting for her Hoya Burger as I write this…

On Sundays, they only have meat burgers (not vegan) until 3. Pretty sure the vegan burgers are just frozen patties so kind of seems weird. Otherwise, the vegan burgers are usually pretty ok.

Just sending a quick update from my last review which was over a year ago on Bulldog Tavern.
Service — The service seems fine to me. It’s definitely the same type service I would get at any other Georgetown area restaurant, which it is a full service, freshly made-​to-​order locale. Yes, sometimes I feel that my water could be refilled a little faster, but overall I’m not going to let them fall bc of that. One time my burger was incorrectly made as medium rare (rather than medium well), but they quickly replaced it within a few minutes. Lots of nice friendly faces these days in there and they added a host stand during busy times (just like other Georgetown area restaurants) to help manage seating. Having Georgetown students there adds a nice little addition to the Hoya-​centric feel to the place!
Food — The food is very good. I have trouble ordering burgers elsewhere in DC at a restaurant. The Farm Burger is by far my favorite bc of the peppery arugula and the smoked bacon. It is really top notch for the price. Unless you want to spend over $ 12 – 15 bucks or more for a Mortons burger, then yes… maybe that can top this, but for the $ 9 cost for the farm burger and fries, it’s really affordable. I have to also promote their Cobb salad with chicken. It is amazing for the price ($ 11). I would rather spend my money on this salad than for the cost than most places as well.
A couple of new things that add to my additional stars are their online app through Tapingo is very helpful when you’re on the go and want to place an order for a wings or chicken tenders and don’t have the time to wait. It has never failed me. the specials aren’t on the tapingo app though, so if you’re a fan of food specials (which I’m not particularly, but I know some people that are…), then you have to go another route.
The Unilocal reservation system looks good. I just saw it for the first time on here and I’m hoping that it will help with table management at peak times! I’ll have to try it for Sunday football and see what happens!

Still coming to bulldog and still loving it. They’ve added a ton of items to the menu, including pizzas and different flavored wing options!

The most appalling service I have ever encountered anywhere. I have been four times now, and each time, the servers are unpleasant to the point where you wonder if there is something wrong with them, not just unhelpful but actually nasty, slow whether it’s busy or not, the kitchen produces average food, not worth the wait/​prices, and something is always different from what you ordered. None of them seem to have a clue what they are there for — which, on a college campus is surprising (many college kids have worked in these roles before). The management is completely useless and unresponsive. If you want bad coffee, regular when you order decaff, drinks that taste diluted in glasses that are dirty, food that doesn’t contain the ingredients listed on the menu, all in an atmosphere that is uncomfortable from when you walk in the door (seat yourself? order with server or bar? our first visit, we were lectured by the waiter for seating ourselves, after waiting by the door for ten minutes while he chatted on his phone. Second visit lectured by the bartender for misunderstanding the food ordering process. Read the other reviews. Avoid.

Love the idea of this place but they need major work! I’m giving 2 stars instead of 1 because no one was rude…
I waited 15 minutes for an iced decaf coffee. I had a feeling they gave me regular caf so I asked and then said they could make a decaf iced Americano. Yikes. It was absolutely horrible. It was basically translucent if that tells you anything. They need some barista training!

I’m between 3 and 4 stars, but since the restaurant is new, I’d rather offer benefit of the doubt and go 4.
The new Healy Student Center on Georgetown’s campus is beautiful. To accompany it is Bulldog Tavern, with a collegiate feel while still trying to be more upscale. It’s sort of like they put the Tombs on campus.
We went on a beautiful day and sat outside on the deck. The view is amazing. Sure, you can hear traffic on key bridge and Canal, but the water is gorgeous and the sky turned an amazing blue-​pink.
On Wednesdays they serve different types of sangria in huge glasses. I actually couldn’t finish mine because I was driving, but my friends had no issues helping me finish it. Two people in my party ordered regular red sangria, and I had the kind with a splash of champagne added. To be honest, none of us tasted a difference, and I probably paid more than the other two did.
My entrée was the Salmon. It came with a soup or salad, and I chose salad. I liked the variety in the salad, since most sides will only give you cheap fixins. I liked the broccoli in my dish best. The salmon was a tad overcooked and very oily, which made the orzo kind of slimy. It didn’t taste terrible, but it didn’t taste $ 15.99 worth it to me.
I’ve been told that the pub mac n cheese and the farm burger are also good. I thought I’d try to be healthy by getting the Salmon, but if I’m at a Tavern, maybe I should throw that caution to the wind in favor of options that might taste better. I’d give this place another try, since again, they’re new and I’m told they’re switching up their menu constantly.

Worst service I’ve ever experienced. Food is good but takes forever to come out. Also the pitchers are an awful deal. Comes out to three beers for $ 28 vs $ 21 if you ordered by the glass.

I made a Unilocal account just for this restaurant after multiple disappointing nights. This is the worst run restaurant I have ever been to. Just because it is in a college does not mean that it has an excuse to be atrociously bad. I have never had worse service than here. The waiters take anywhere from 10 – 20 minutes to come to your table once you sit down (even when it is completely empty). They are usually the most rude and unqualified waiters. I have had bartenders being on their phones and refusing to take my order just because he did not feel like it, a waitress refused to take our drink order and kept asking us to pay for our tab even though last call was in an hour and we had only had two drinks, they lost my friends ID at one point, the waitress opened the tab to check her tip in front of us, and the wait for food is usually 45 minutes in an empty night for an expensive mediocre meal. I was really excited about the tavern and I really hoped it would be good but I rather walk to M Street and pay more than have to deal with the service and crummy quality at the tavern. I had better service in Russia and that is saying something.

I’ve been here twice now — the first time for just a beer or two and the second for dinner. Neither was a bad experience but this place could be a bit better.
First, I love that there’s a bar right in the middle of campus. Back in my undergrad days on the Hilltop (all of three years ago), there was always talk about putting something like this in somewhere but I always doubted that it would come to fruition. Bravo to all of the parties involved in making it happen!
The service here is very friendly and I really enjoyed my waiter (he might have also been the manager?) on my second visit here. He was very friendly and had a great sense of humor but also very professional. I also can’t complain about the «Hoya Burger,» which was cooked nice and rare and topped off with a generous serving of delicious carmamelized onions. Also, for $ 9, it was a very generous patty of meat — I’d say around half a pound.
The negatives here? They use the same kind of mass-​produced fries that I’ve had at other places (fwiw, I randomly recognized them from the Senate and House cafeterias). They’re just plain bad and I hope they consider switching to better quality fries in the future. Also, the servers rarely came around to fill up our water… I was parched for most of my meal.
I’m a fan of the atmosphere, although I wish it was a bit bigger. My visits weren’t crowded but the bar area is pretty small and I could see it getting absolutely packed on busy nights. Otherwise, this place has great potential and is off to a pretty good start. I hope it succeeds!

Ordered the chili bread bowl and cheesy fries. Bread bowl was good, cheesy fries were inedible (and I am not very picky). It took 15 minutes to get the fries out, despite the fact that they were just fries with grainy shredded cheese melted on top. The waitress only ever came over when we waved her over, and sometimes not even then. It took well over an hour to get our food and another half an hour to get the check. The restaurant was not busy during this time. A frustrating visit at a restaurant I really wanted to like.

Hmmm it’s okay. I was looking forward to trying this place but my expectations fell short. There has been little to no marketing about this place to begin with but I was curious.
I ordered the Hoya burger and a friend ordered the quesadilla and wings. Food was average but nothing to rave about… I asked someone for help with something and she looked at me and kept walking by (weird?!)
The décor is cool except the random white wall in the back that is empty.

People should give this place a chance and not judge it based on the opening days/​weeks. At first I thought $ 7 for a draft was too much, but then I learned it was local craft beer and you get a huge amount. So that’s great. At any other place in the city you can pay $ 7 or more for a pint or less. The burgers are freaking delicious and I love the spinach salad too. Callie and john Chi are great servers. I like the $ 5 happy hour flights, I don’t like that most of the happy hour is bottles of crap.

Summary: a very poorly executed restaurant.
When we walked in, it wasn’t clear whether we should be sitting ourselves or not. They should have a sign up regarding that. We seated ourselves after asking a server about it. The menu isn’t very extensive, about what you’d find at a simple bar. One person ordered the meatball sub, but they stated they were out of that. Most of the other items on the menu were burgers (hey, I love a burger) but when you don’t have much variety in the first place, reducing the options really hurts.
My group ordered a mixture of items. The wait for our food was way longer than it should have been. One person ordered the most basic burger on the menu. All of our food came out together, except his. It was at least 8 minutes before it finally came out separately (about how long it would have taken to make it). Clearly the staff had messed up on it, but the staff wasn’t very concerned about it. Neither was it comped on the bill (it’s not a fine dining establishment, but having it comped would have made up for them not showing much concern over it)
I had the «farmhouse» burger. And it was actually pretty good due to the flavors of the ingredients. The patty, however, the same as all of the hamburger patties, was clearly pre-​formed. Again I stress that most of the menu is hamburgers, and they aren’t even making those in house? The bun was served to me upside down. Does this matter that much while I’m chowing down? No, not really. Does it show poor execution? definitely.
On the menu, it clearly states that the burgers come with onions. None of our burgers (at least three were ordered) came with them. When someone in my group asked whether the burger came with onions, the server avoided the question and asked «would you like onions?» instead. The server then brought that person onions and we shared them among us.
One of the burgers ordered was the Hoya Burger. The server said it was larger than the others. When it came out, it looked exactly the same as the others. I’m pretty sure it was.
Another person ordered the Buffalo Chicken Salad. This consisted of fried chicken fingers, chopped up, overtop lettuce and the most basic vegetables, with a side of a buffalo-​flavored salad dressing. And I think it cost around $ 9. I think the terrible value outweighed the tastelessness.
The person whose hamburger took longer than everyone else’s got lots of refills on his drink. I didn’t, however. In fact I got no refill and our server wasn’t around enough for me to flag him down for it.
Then there’s the beer. $ 7 for 20 oz servings of their «premium» selection. That’s way too much for this place as there’s no atmosphere to make up for the price. But what really insulted me was that they offered «flights» of their beer selection; a tasting of each of the four premium offerings. Two of these offerings were Fat Tire and Yuengling lager. A flight featuring Yuengling and Fat Tire? Perhaps they’ll next offer a charcuterie plate featuring spam and bologna. Yuengling and Fat Tire are not awful beers but they do not belong in a flight unless it’s being served on a different continent as an American Import sampling.
As we walked out, there was a sign outside of the front of the restaurant extolling it as being «locally sourced» and «farm to table». Maybe they didn’t use these words exactly, but that was the idea they were trying to get across. This seemed in stark contrast to the pre-​formed burger patties and chicken fingers that they were serving. To the point that it just seemed misleading and dishonest. There was some sort of chain brand name at the bottom of the board, I meant to look into them, but I didn’t.
This place seems like a corporately controlled restaurant that got in by being the lowest bidder and now that they have the contract signed, they’re putting in as little effort, while getting the most profit, possible. If it’s not, then I would really like to understand their excuse.

They are not ready yet. Service is incredibly slow. First time we went there we were there for over two hours before we got any food. They’re getting better but still not great. Good food though once you get it

Don’t go there yet…
This place just opened and is not ready yet. The cocktails are so weak that it’s like drinking fruit juice, the burger patty was tasteless, the buffalo chicken salad tasted like pure Tabasco sauce and the waitress (a GU student) had probably never done this job before.