The Smoke Room - Grand Rapids

Walked in here on a random Saturday and found out that there was a wait unless you had some type of a reservation. Therefore, you could not get to a table, but you could sit at the bar at the other room if there were seats available. Luckily there were seats available for a group of six. Pretty standard a little bit limited, considering that it is. Meaning that I expected to see multiple options of fries beyond just poutine fries. I also expected to see more options for the sandwiches, the handheld and entrées as well, considering that I looked around the room it wasn't just meant for partying as there were lots of families and children there Pretty impressive as far as the scale, the building the ambience, the indoor outdoor seating as well. So this is definitely a must stop. I'm not sure about the parking here as we walked here and there is a bus station directly across the street OK, however I probably probably expected more considering that Grand Rapids seems to be a burgeoning tourist town

Food was alright. Standard pub fare and nothing especially noteworthy... pretty good fries if I remember correctly though. It's a brewery though so you come for the beer!! I came for the Oatmeal Breakfast Stout on nitro which was absolutely fantastic and still one of my favorite beers! Soooo much better freshly pulled than in the bottle (which so still love). We are from VA so there were a few beers on tap that I had never heard of or found locally which were great to try: I really enjoyed the MI Pilsner and the Red's Rye IPA I think those might only be available in Michigan so definitely give them a try!

I hadn 't been to Founders in over two years, which is really wild because I used to go there biweekly with my old coworkers and have seen lots of live music there over the past decade+. A friend wanted to meet there for lunch, so I was interested to see how things are now. They have changed things up in the past few years and now they have a host that seats you for table service. I personally prefer this model, as I can 't count how many times we 'd have to awkwardly hover around a table that looked like they were getting ready to cash out. They 've also changed their menu quite a bit, and got rid of my favorite items (RIP, Godfather, Detroit ham and cheese, French bread pizzas, blushing monk salad, etc. . New menu additions include larger plate entrees (like a honey glazed salmon for $28 and a few dessert options. I wasn 't super blown away by any of the options so I went with the BLAT with a side salad instead of fries. Our server was really nice and paid attention to refills etc. and knew the menu pretty well. The sandwich was fine, certainly not the best I 've had, but the bacon was thick. Overall, my impression of the new Founders was good, but nothing really made the visit stand out so much that I want to go back right away.

Excellent Beer. Decent good. Good ambience. Legendary in brewing. Don't mind the servers whispering about the coworkers they hate.

The beer was good, but the food was fairly average. Although the place is spacious with many open tables, we were seated outside despite the cool weather, and the heaters were not functioning. Our server was preoccupied with sweeping and not very attentive, so it took a while to get another drink.