the garage

ok food, zero service. my wife got a gift card for the garage, so we headed out from okc to give it a try. we arrived with our 18-month old daughter, placed our orders, and went to find a seat. the restaurant part has booths down one wall, and the rest of the tables are bistro-style tables and chairs, with the table surface about four feet from the ground, and tall chairs, as well. this was not going to work well with a baby, and i did not feel comfortable having her seated that far off the ground. one of the waitstaff stopped by and offered to get a high chair for her, and stacked two high chairs, which made me even more uncomfortable. i decided we'd bide our time and wait for a booth to open up.

i noticed my plastic cup filled with diet coke was cracked almost all the way to the bottom, so i took it to the bar instead of trying to get through the crowd at the front of the house where the main soda machine is. i asked the bartender if she could help me, and she gave me an empty glass. i would have thought she could at the very least fill the cup with ice and diet coke. i had to go to the front anyway to get my refill.

when a booth finally opened up, i quickly moved to it to save it for my family, as there were a lot of patrons looking for tables. the table was still full of food from the prior customers, and i waited for one of the wait staff to come bus the table. instead, i watched the wait staff wander the dining room aimlessly, not bothering to come by. so i took the prior customer's food and placed it on our previous table. one of the wait staff came by to clean off that table, and, thinking he'd get the hint, i pushed the rest of the trash to the edge of the table for him to clear off. he didn't even come by the table.

so i moved the rest of the cups to the old table, stood up, grabbed some paper towels and started wiping the crumbs and trash onto the floor. still absolutely no response from the wait staff, one of whom was standing five feet away, watching me clean off our table. additionally, the paper towel roll on our table was empty, so i also had to switch that for another table's roll.

someone delivered our food, and we ate it. theburgerwas fine, but with so many goodburgeroptions in oklahoma city, i have no reason to drive out to edmond for it. additionally, they use the cheapest paper towels, so when you grab towels from the roll, they tear in half before it comes off the roll.

nobody ever stopped by our table to ask how anything was, or if we needed refills, but there were always 2-3 people wandering around the dining room looking for things to do.

as we left, i stopped to fill up a to go cup. both diet coke guns at the front of the house were dispensing carbonated water and no syrup. i gave up and left.

i will certainly not bother with giving the garage another shot, despite the fact the food wasn't the problem.

if you enjoy a greaseburgerthis is your place. there is so much grease the bun falls apart in your hands. tasty sweet potato fries. nice atmosphere. customer service is lacking and idiots pretending to work bar area. mcdonalds doesn’t have to be concerned.

i went to the one on may and brittion rd at noon , overlooked the mayo on the menu , got myburgertook 3 bites to hit the mayo and put it down, the bartender said he would make it right , never did and stayed on the other side of the bar the whole time , finally come over to throw myburgeraway while saying " you really hate mayo don't you " and walked away , needless to say i was charged for theburgerand left the place hungry, costumer service is a big fail at this business.

yummy! excellent quality meat. i'm a sucker for aioli and they had several choices. my mushroom and swissburgercame with garlic aioli. the homes rule fries were great as well.

this is my kids favoriteburgerplace. i like the fish tacos, but i do not prefer the grease that they use with the burgers. i don't like the taste of the oil.

nutty rooster is good. this was my second visit to the garage. the first time was at the nw location. i got the nutty rooster because i was looking for something different. i have been wary about putting peanut butter on hamburgers ever since i saw the king on s & b's menu. thisburgerhas peanut butter on it, but it is not the king. both burgers make the peanut butter work because there is just enough for you to taste it without it overpowering the other flavors. i found the mix of beef, peanut butter, and siracha to be a worthy flavor combination. this is an example of the whole tasting better than the sum of the parts. i even added some extra siracha to create a stronger counterpoint to the peanut butter. if you don't like spicy foods, you can leave it be and still get the whole experience.

usually like this place a lot, but not last night. ordered aburgerand fries and got a whole bunch of grease!! sent fries back twice and got the same grease back twice! horrible heartburn afterwards! service was really good though! will be quite a while before i return!


-----08 dec, 2012-----

update 9/17/2014:
i returned to this restaurant a few days ago and the food is so much better now than when they first opened! i really liked the fried onionburgerand the fries ordered well done (recommended by the cashier). the well done fries are the best!! the atmosphere is still the same, meaning it is still very, very loud in there. hard to carry on much of a conversation. i wish they would do something about that, but the food is really good now. i will return soon! this won't be a place i go often, because of the noise, but it has really good food!

it was just ok. the hamburger was dry, but had a good flavor. the fries, both sweet potato and french fries, were ok. not crispy and not greasy. catsup actually helped both the fries and the burgers. very, very loud. not a place to carry on a conversation. i will try this again in a few months.

hectic, chaotic, just a hot sick mess. attention: this is a far cry from it's predecessor in norman.

theburgerwas extremely messy and was just okay. my son's children'sburgerwas charred. the fries were alright. how they managed to turn a former put-put golf building into a restaurant is beyond me, but they didn't do a good job. the layout is terrible. everyone is crammed into the area where you order, then you hunt down a table. it is very narrow, loud, and it's really just not all comfortable. maybe this is a case of the environment having a bad impression on how the food tastes because by the time the food was delivered we were really just sort of ready to go.

i can't say that the service was lousy, because we really didn't have any server interaction. we were extremely hurried when ordering, and the person just dumped our food on the table when it was ready and took our number -- didn't even ask if it looked right or anything. it was just not a pleasant visit, enough of a turn-off to not return.

had the slawburgerand it was good. i will come back to try the other burgers. next time i will get the buffalo meat. the atmosphere is awesome and the staff are all very friendly and not bad to look at. it's a clean place and if your looking to have some beers and watch a game this is the place.

do not order the fish tacos. i know this is aburgerjoint, but if an item is on the menu, it should be of similar quality as the burgers. good place for burgers.

not just anotherburgerjoint. i was in edmond on my lunch break and very confused on what to eat. i decided to try aburgerfrom the garage. i walk in and find that the menu had many choices of foods, not just burgers. the bartender was very nice and handsome and made great suggestions for me to try the next time. zac did advise me as well as the manager that i could have chosen myburgerto be veggie, turkey, buffalo or beef. i wished the lady that took my order would have explained that a little better. i like having options. i did let her know that it was my first time. what confused me was theburgerwith peanut butter and bacon. i think i want to keep my peanut butter for the peanut butter and jelly white bread sandwich or peanut butter and crackers and not on a hot steamy burger. i order a cheeseburger with mustard. the meat patty was well seasoned with a great char on it. i only wished that my bottom bun couldn’t have been toasted a little bit longer because from the steam of the meat, the mustard and tomatoes, the bottom bun was soggy. i will be back to try many things on the menu the next time along with the fruit beers during happy hour from 3-6pm daily.

food - good service - awful!. food was good, not great, but much better than most restaurants in edmond. normally i will put up with bad service for good food, as normally the situation is there are too few people working, and generally this is where there is a problem. however there were plenty of workers here, they just didn't seem to be trained or know what they should be doing. it was almost like this was their first week of business.

layout is also confusing, as if they don't know if they want to be a bar or aburgerjoint. too many big screens, all on the same channel and noise level was way too high for lunchtime, even for a bar. it's almost as if they are owned by two people, one wants to have it be a bar, and the other wants it to be a family restaurant and the result is it is neither.

the day i was there the coke dispenser didn't do the proper mix and was spitting out mostly carbonated water with just a slight bit of mix. i should have known something was wrong with the mountain of ice in the dispenser when people dumped their drinks to try another flavor. also they had a tea dispenser labeled "unsweetened". it was the only one, so not sure if there should have also been a sweet tea dispenser also.

plastic cups were wet as they handed them out at the register, and with all the other problems it made me wonder if they were actually clean. also what is with the plastic knife? if you have reusable plastic cups,why disposable knives?

i want to like this place as it has potential, but it just appears to be managed so poorly and the staff although friendly just appear to be clueless as to what they should be doing, again pointing back to poor or inexperienced management. fortunately the kitchen staff seems to know what they are doing, and that can make up for a lot of issues with the people up front.

probably will be back as other than the layout of the place, i'm hoping they were just having an off day, as the place really does have potential with it's simple yet expansive menu.

average. the garage is bittersweet for me. as an ex-service industry worker, i'm always dismayed at the extremely unfriendly floor staff and as a vegetarian, the veggieburgeris just okay, although i enjoy their garlic-parmesan fries. the bingo night on thursday is usually pretty fun, though, and if you're with a bigger group of people - i can tune the service out.

avacado baconburgerwas good, decent service, nice clean place. i like it

love all the choices!. went on sunday afternoon & the line was so long but glad we waited it went fast. i had myburgerbetween lettuce & it was great the flavor was wonderful. i love all the choices too.