Bethlehem Brew Works - Freemansburg

It is a brew works, so of course they have beer, and a large assortment at that. My boyfriend tried the sampler and had a tremendous amount of beer served to him for only $8. He seemed to like most of them. Now he has had samplers at other breweries and I will have to say the only down side to the sampler at BBW was that there was no card saying what each beer was. I stuck with martinis, priced about right with good taste! Now our reason for stopping was we had an hour to kill before our dinner reservations and we wanted a quick bite with some drinks…BOY, did we make a mistake with our order! We decided to go simple and get the sipnach artichoke dip with our drinks to snack on while we waited…and it was DISGUSTING! DO NOT ORDER IT! I have heard that other items on their menu are ok, but this was just inedible. I am not sure what they were thinking.

Despite having been to the Bethlehem Brew Works on numerous occasions, I don’t recall much of the food. It has ranged from average (their own make veggie burger) to horrifying (spinach artichoke dip – absolutely inediable). Several items on the menu sound very good from the descriptions, but so far everything I or my dining companions have ordered has been disappointing. What the Brew Works has going for it is their award wining brews and fun atmosphere. The interior décor is industrial and well done with pipes and screws framing booths and copper beer vats lining windows. Come for the bar, especially with friends for the happy hour specials. The menu offers sampler items of their custom beers and also of their scotch selection.

Planned on heading to the Depot for a nice dinner durning Restaurant week. However, contrary to the times posted on their website, they are only server food until 8pm on Tuesday Nights. Trying to salvage the night we headed over to the Brew Works for a “safe” meal. In retrospect it was a bad move. An hour later and $60 less rich, we left VERY disapointed. Okay, so the brew works was never really known for its cullenary magic, but they have had some things that were pretty fine. To name a few; Cheese Soup, Chili, Chicken BBQ Sandwich, Kobe Burger, etc. However, their dinners and salads are really poor. Started with Chili. That was actually very good. The spinach dip just doesn’t move me. First off it is served with chips, second it is weak. The special Ravioli in the vodka sauce would have lost a battle to canned Chef Boyardee. It was truely bad. The buffalo chicken salad was also really week. Poor choice on my part, but I was expecting something slightly better than low grade chicken fingers drenched in overly spicy and not so tasty sauce. The salad was straight from a bag of mixed iceberg, carrot shreads, and cabbage. Just not so good. Okay maybe they can turn it around with desert, right? No. Definitly not. It sounded great, but wasn’t. Apple Crisp, but they ran out of Ice Cream. Even if they would have had the ice cream it would have been poor. The Cranberry Apple Bread Pudding seemed like a sure win. Once again, no. It was semi dry and flavorless. Stick to the sandwiches and the beers. The kobe burger is great even for $15.

Rating is for Beer only. Far too many high calorie fried food offerings for my tastes. Definitely lower class unhealthy bar food in my estimation. I go here to have their premises brewed beer, period! If I am going to do something “unhealthy and highly caloric” let it be the beer…!

Although their staff makes me want to say horrible, the food is average and the beer really is good. What makes me frustrated is I really want to like this place. It’s so close to everything that goes on, and really is a staple to the area. Time after time, STARTING from the hostesses we get bad service. The staff seems “snobby” to be honest and the lack of adult supervision shows. The hostesses have no idea what’s going on, they are simply rude and snippy. We always hope to get past them and get a good server. It never happens. My wife and I were both servers when we were younger. We aren’t those demanding people, in fact I usually never go online and write bad reviews. Normally I’d call and let a manager know, but I have to be honest, if I called right now, I don’t think anyone would care. My hopes is that the ownership reads this. We tip big, we usually just expect decent service and we simply never get it here. It’s always a let down. This visit will be our last.