Basement Mckenzie's Brewhouse - Malvern

This is a regular place for us to grab a good dinner, but we've also had private events in their lower level private dining room. For that event, the food was surprisingly amazing for the price, way better than we thought! Wings, dips, sandwiches were all excellent. And that room has lots of games. Bar staff here is always great. Plenty of seating.

Meh. I visit every brewery I can. Walked in assuming this was a typical brewery, but it 's definitely not. It 's a restaurant with a bar that has some of their beers. No atmosphere at all. Bartender took my order, never said a word, despite almost nobody there. I wasn 't looking to become best friends but a couple of sentences of beer banter wouldn 't have killed him. Finished my beer, decided to move on because it was so depressing inside. Had a few of their beers at other places, mostly meh as well.

We used to visit this place quite a bit because it was close to home. Years ago the food was consistently good and the beer had more experimental offerings. Anymore the food it is hit or miss. Sometimes it is good sometimes it is not. Take out is hit or miss. We ordered the stir fry chicken once and it was so salty we had to rinse the chicken. Other times it was ok. My go to is the buddha bowl with scallops. It's an $8.00 add on. In the restaurant there are usually about 6 broiled scallops in the bowl. My recent take home order was pretty lame. Only 3 and 1/2 scallops which were dry and rubbery. Wish they could be consistent particularly with take out.

Went with 2 others for lunch. Had the artichoke crab dip as an app. For mains we had a burger, the salmon and the Buddha bowl. All were good but not great. Service was attentive and friendly. Prices are appropriate.

My French dip was perfectly adequate. My husband ordered a Buddha bowl which he enjoyed, but said there was no point in my tasting because there was a bit of a kick to it. The brussels sprouts were served as we requested them to be (no bacon, sauce on the side), but I found them inedible. First, they weren 't warm as they were described on the menu, but were served rather hot. That doesn 't really matter, but what does is that there was nothing on the menu warning diners about the kick the brussels sprouts have. I have no idea what was on them just that whatever it was hurt enough that I considered asking if they were able to give me a glass of milk. I would love to try their short ribs stroganoff and shepherd 's pie, but I 'm afraid I might run into the same problem (despite there being no unpleasant surprises on my French dip). Service was adequate and pleasant. It was a little difficult to find the handicapped entrance, which is a side door. Once you enter the side door, you have to cross almost the whole width of the restaurant to get to the host station. It 's an attractive place that is probably a pretty cheery place to eat when there are more people than there were for our late lunch.