Townie

This is one of those restaurants that provides a good environment for happy/​social hour, along with superb meals & beverages. In addition, the dessert items that are advertised behind the glass from the moment you walk through the door appear to be of good quality as well.
I was fortunate to try a tuna entrée that was well-​priced (hello, this is Berkeley, so everything is high in price) for the portion size. Wash that down with an 8.5% draft IPA, and you are ready for a good time for the rest of the evening. Although my visit to this venue was on a Thursday evening, the place was exceptionally loud due to happy hour going on at a full bar. Due to the loudness, it may be somewhat challenging for the server to hear the specifics of your entrée/​drink order.
Nonetheless, Townie has a pretty hip and somewhat divey appeal with quality food & drinks. Definitely a place to return to when in Berkeley. Go Bears!

Reserved a table for 6 before our kid’s concert. Busy night because of the Warriors game so we were psyched to get a reservation. What do you know when we show up on time our table has «disappeared». «Honestly I had a table for you and it just disappeared» the hostess insisted. There was another table marked for 6:30 but they wouldn’t give it to us. Offered to shove a small café table against another table with nowhere near enough room. Terrible. Will never be back. Ruined our night.

I have been here multiple times with my siblings. Every time we come here the service seems to go down exponentially. The first time we had an awesome sever, who we didn’t see the next times. The last three times we have found ourselves waiting for our own self. Trying to get a menu, water and heck even ketchup because our server never asked us if we needed anything. We noticed that one other server was very on top of things and the few tables she was waiting on were receiving attention.
I don’t think we will be returning again. Given the place plenty of chances to get thier game together.

Townie was one of the first places I visited after first moving to Berkeley (what luck!) and has been my go-​to café and bar all year. The incredible people who work there, the great food and drinks, and the fun atmosphere have kept me coming back.
I have never met a better group of people working at a single place. Everyone who works at Townie is incredibly friendly and loves having fun and making sure you have as positive a time as possible. If you go to Townie even a few times, they will remember you and treat you as if you are part of the Townie family. This is a theme that I see over and over when going to Townie — people love spending time there (whether watching sports or doing work with a cup of coffee) because the people who work at Townie legitimately care about making sure you are enjoying yourself.
The food is also fantastic. The Townie Bowl is large and very filling (and if you want some protein with it, you can add friend chicken on top!) and the pizza is really delicious. I’m also a huge fan of the warm olives that you can as an appetizer, though my friends usually want to get the fries (I don’t mind that either, of course!). Townie recently put a new seasonal toast on the menu and it’s probably my new favorite dish available!
The drinks are also really great. Townie has a great revolving tap list (a recent new addition is the Evil Twin Red Ale from Brooklyn — an amazing beer) but also a few regulars, like the Fresh Squeezed IPA (probably the most sessionable IPA I’ve ever had). If you want a cocktail, the bar is well stocked and the bartenders are incredibly talented at making drinks. They are well trained, constantly working at improving their craft, and love also making fun drinks that you are curious to try!
Finally, the atmosphere at Townie is probably the most fun and positive that you can find on University Ave. As I said above, the regulars at Townie really are part of the Townie family — we’ve had so many drinks and watched so many warriors games together that I forget I have only known about Townie for one year! Finding Townie really has been one of the best things to happen to me this year. I am away for the summer and am already getting excited about going back to Townie when I return!

I’ve been to Townie a few times, once for drinks, once for brunch, and once for post-​studying «dinner»
They have good drinks and a well stocked bar. I’ve never had an issue once finding something that I liked at Townie, and they also keep a good amount of local beers on tap which I really like. Brunch was great, I had a breakfast burrito, coffee, and a mimosa. All of them were incredible and because it was so empty (sunday early brunch time) the service was really on top of everything (shout out to Eugene!)
Oh but «dinner.» Look, I don’t expect a mind blowing meal every time I go to a restaurant in berkeley, but I got a white bean soup that was edible but horribly under-​seasoned and a mac and cheese. The mac came in a mini cast iron pan which was a nice touch but it was ice cold. It also tasted like nothing. It had the texture of a macaroni noodle and texture of cheese *product* (Again, not really picky). But if you’re going to advertise «herb mac and cheese» there cant just be Panko with some random herbs on it sprinkled on the top. I honestly hate sending food back but I just couldn’t stomach it. The service was also really sub-​par in the evening/​night. But on the brightside the staff took the food back and took the mac and cheese off without even a bit of protest or anything.

The café during the day used to be great while the dinnertime was pretty lackluster. Now they’ve both gone downhill. I live in the neighborhood, so I come by fairly often. Like others have said:
–The seating. For fuck’s sake, just put up a sign, clarify the situation.
–The service. Hell, even the acknowledgement of my presence. I’ve gone up to the counter to order coffee, stood two feet away from two employees, and been ignored while they work out… whatever they’re talking about. Schedules, ordering, everything but the customers.
–I’ve sat down at a table in the empty afternoon and not gotten service for 10 – 15 minutes. Finally, after eating, I literally waited another 25 minutes for a check. I didn’t mind at first because I was working, but when I started to look around for my server, I saw nothing. After like 30 minutes I just went up to the counter to pay and leave because I was so fed up.
There’s only about three employees I know as being consistently friendly and helpful. Andrew, a server/​barista guy, who’s prompt and checks in. Zachary (I think is his name?), a cool bartender who I hope still works there because he’s been great at making drinks and chatting. Another guy I only saw once, whose name I don’t remember, but he looked like Calvin Harris. Also a bartender, also very helpful. At this point, if I don’t see any of them working, I kind of avoid the place. What should take a few minutes ends in frustration and hanger – honestly, I’m at the counter, just let me order some damn coffee.
The food itself is fine. The fried chicken sandwich is reliably tasty, and I love their townie bowl salad. The rest of the items are kind of misses for me. I’ve had the mac and cheese and it wasn’t great (and small), and the shepherd’s pie was overwhelmed by seasoning (and also small).
Brunch is another shitshow. It’s the same poor service in a packed restaurant.
It really bums me out, I loved this place for a bit, and it’s super convenient. Other things: a while back they switched their coffee and meat suppliers, which really put a dent in my favorite reasons for going. They used to have Mindful Meats burgers, which made the price tag worth it, now, not so much.
Honestly, guys, the space is great. Just clarify some stuff and train your staff :(

Not for the food, nor even the service, no… for their horrible attitude, and bald faced dishonesty. That is, if these people don’t like the tip you select, they will input their own, and put it through.
And guys, I left you that paltry tip because of how unprofessional you behaved when your friends showed up at the bar.
Altering the tip is just unethical.

It breaks my heart to have to change my review of this place, but the truth is that I would no longer recommend this spot to anyone.
Townie was a great bar when it first opened. But on my last few visits, I the experience of dining here was terrible. The food is still good, the cocktails are still good… But both come so slowly. The service is abysmal, and getting someone to pay attention to you takes forever.
The service is definitely the deal breaker here.
The worst experience I’ve had here was a few months ago when I came in for coffee. I’d been to Townie a number of times for lunch, dinner & drinks, but I wanted to try the café. I came in in the morning, went straight to the counter to place my order, and waited.
Worst of all, the staff will absolutely ignore you if they’re busy. During the aforementioned coffee incident, the staff saw me waiting at the counter twice, for an extended period of time, when there were no other customers to attend to. They didn’t acknowledge me, didn’t smile at me, didn’t say «Hi, we’ll be with you in a minute.» I must have waited about 5 minutes each time, and that’s just too long to not acknowledge a customer with 2 – 3 people behind the counter. The same has happened to me when waiting to place an order at a nearly-​empty bar, and when waiting for service in the seated area. I have waited from 5 – 20 minutes just to get an order taken, even when the place looks deserted. It’s like none of these people have worked in food service before, and the owner doesn’t care enough to check on the place and maintain standards. (The one redeeming quality is that there is one server who I almost always see there, who I think has been there since the opening. He’s usually in the dining room area. He’s good at remembering orders, bringing you your food promptly, and checking up on you to see if there’s anything else you need. But there’s only one of him, and that’s a problem!)
The seating is also a little hard to navigate. You order at the counter if you’re getting coffee or pastries. You wait to be seated if you’re ordering drinks or food. There’s no signage, and also no host at the door to direct you, so people are often confused about this when they walk in. Simple solution? Put up a sign! «Restaurant & Bar: Please wait to be seated» and «Café orders: Order at counter.» I see so many people confused about this when they come in, I’m surprised that the owners & staff haven’t recognized it as a pain point and solved it yet.
Also, they’ve added giant TVs, there’s one in every corner now. The place gets packed on game days, so maybe it’s a good way to bring in business… But it’s not for me. Definitely ruins the beautiful atmosphere, makes the place more of a should-​be-​cheap sports bar than an upscale spot to get drinks and food. It’s also distracting when I’m talking to people.
I really hope the owners are reading this review, because I’d like to see Townie come back to the five star spot it was when it first opened. Please, be confident with your service, be polite, be prompt, and don’t understaff the place!

Food is solid, but the service is weak.
Kitchen made a mistake and brought us the wrong order. We accepted the order because we didn’t want to receive plates at different times and we were super hungry. Plus, we don’t want to see food go to waste. Overall, not a big deal.
When the server brought us the bill he let us know that the meal they brought us by mistake costs more than the meal we originally ordered, but that we wouldn’t be charged extra. He was implying that he could charge us extra if he wanted, but decided not to. So I guess the «hook-​up» was not charging us extra for something we never ordered.
My frustration is that the staff didn’t really put any effort towards acknowledging that we were pretty chill and accommodating about the mistake. I own cafes and whenever we make a mistake we use it as an opportunity to turn it into a positive by being super friendly, apologetic, and we never charge for a mistake. Having a returning customer is more important to me than losing some money on one transaction.
I didn’t feel the love. I don’t think I’ll be back. There’s plenty of other options in Berkeley.

Brunch was solid. I had the breakfast burrito with bacon with some coffee on the side. I like that they have fresh squeezed mimosas too.
The space is beautiful and they have a mini arcade in the back, plus a full bar. Not sure why this place gets a bad rap, but I would definitely go back.

I was looking for a place where a friend and I could work on some projects together and have a few drinks and snacks, so I was super excited about Townie. It has free wifi, a coffee bar, full alcohol bar, and food. In other words, everything I was looking for, and I was joking on my way there that I might just move in.
However, there was a loud party for the mayor of Berkeley being held in the middle of the afternoon that overwhelmed the place. And as soon as that cleared out, there were enthusiastic sports fans cheering their heads off at the game on TV. So in addition to the things I was looking for, Townie was also the perfect event venue and sports bar. In trying to be everything, it was both too much and not enough.
Food was also disappointing. House wine/​beer and happy hour prices were great, but food was mediocre at best. Fried fish from my fish & chips platter was the best thing we tried, but the fish portion was small and the «chips» were just shoestring fries piled high on the plate. The deviled eggs were flavorless and my friend’s chicken sandwich was unremarkable.
So, I’m not moving in and it may also be a while before I even return. But, the space and the service were awesome, so I’ll probably give it another chance sometime and will update my review then.

Cute bar, coffee shop and restaurant… All rolled into one. Found this place by chance… Making the walk between The Butchers Son and Vegan Republic. Came in for a drink. The wine was so so but the place was cute, the service was friendly and the prices were decent.

I am still trying decide whether or not their wait staff is always high or extremely stupid. I would give more stars but I would have to get a menu first. I went in to get food with my girlfriend, and we were told by the busser /​food runner to pick any table and that he’d follow us with the menus. After sitting down, lo and behold, he was no where to be found. We waited for fifteen minutes and no one had approached us, the guy had avoided eye contact with us and the one waitress they had on kept asking customers who ordered what and where food was supposed to go? Sorry Wtf? I didn’t know in order to eat here I also had to be the host busser and waiter.
A couple weeks before this experience we were getting some drinks at the bar and ordered some chili cheese fries to snack on. The same food runner asked if we would like some silverware and we said yes. 20 minutes later I had to get up and steal a set from an empty table. Can we just eat for free if we have to wait on ourselves? What the shit.

I’ve been to Townie a few times and have recommended it as a solid brunch place that’s far away enough from the hustle and bustle of downtown Berkeley but still close to the major spots. I like Townie’s vibe: it’s spacious, there’s a lot of sunlight from the windows, the bar is beautiful, and there are TVs if you want to watch games. It’s also «hip»: they have some quirky practices like serving water in Bulleit bottles and playing black and white movies on the back wall.
I want to give Townie 5 stars since I haven’t had a bad experience here but their service can be a bit slow at times and every time I’ve been back, they haven’t expanded or changed their menu. It’d be nice to see a couple new items every so often but I’m not sure what’s the deal there. I find the pastry and coffee counter really great though; even after a huge brunch I bought a couple pastries to go and they were wonderful!
If you want to find a good brunch place in Berkeley where you don’t want to suffer over long lines then give this place a try. They also do dinner which I’ll have to try at some point!

My meatball sandwich was pretty decent, though it’s one of the world’s great «this is pretty hard to mess up» foods. It’s one of the cheaper things on the menu and pretty effective at sopping up booze in the belly. It comes with a pretty large amount of fries as well. The fries with the sando don’t come with the delicious aioli that comes with a regular side order of fries.
Interesting question: How different, conceptually, would a burger with pizza sauce and mozz be from a meatball sandwich? It’s really just a matter of form, not substance right? Particularly if the patty maybe had some pork in it. If this is so, then why isn’t the pizza burger a more common thing?

I love their Fritto misto specially because it also has fennel, I can just overload my self with 2 orders of fruit mist and a nice cold beer. I was so glad my sister recommended me this place last year, she told me that it is perfect to come eat enjoy a drink and watch sports, and she was right! The pizza is also delicious, and man I love that they are fast in the kitchen, we didn’t have to wait long to get our food and it was hot, tasty and delicious.
Las Sunday I came in the morning for coffee and the gentleman I believe is the manager, was very polite, professional and fast. I love going to places where the staff is attentive and make sure that the customer has always been helped.
If you haven’t tried this place, I recommend you do!

This was our first time here and we were excited to try it out. The décor and bar are awesome and they seemed to have a nice mix of cocktail creations. The food we ordered was good and I enjoyed the atmosphere. The service was where I’m not impressed. The waitstaff just looked annoyed and they took away a plate of mine while I was still using it. The person ran off to the kitchen before I could stop
them. We finished our drinks and we were not offered an opportunity to order more from our waiter. We decided to leave and at least 10 minutes had passed with empty drinks and all our food obviously gone and no waiter. I did see him behind the bar doing shots and so my husband got up and asked for the bill. I doubt we will be going back. It was close to the end of dinner and I just got a sense that they were focused on cleaning up and getting out the door and not on the customer.

The ambiance of this place is pretty great. There is a lot of open seating, I don’t quite remember if they have music, but they do have TVs spread out enough that you can see them from wherever you are sitting. They also have a pretty extensive beer menu, and I’m not into wine or liquor, but they have it.
I was really excited when this place first opened up!
They had this awesome $ 9 chicken sandwich which was very, very comparable to Bakesale Betty. I even posited a few times that it might be better because it came with fries. However, it was painfully obvious that the popularity of the sandwich likely caused a surge in the price. It’s now 12 bucks. Throw in a 3 or $ 4 tip, and now you’re talking about $ 16 for a sandwich. And I suppose it’s still good. I mean I enjoy it. But it is 12 bucks, and sometimes the bread is really, really stale. The coleslaw which complements the sandwich is really good, but they could definitely afford to provide some more sometimes. The fries are delicious and very generous.
The Townie Bowl is on point. It’s this giant punch bowl of delicious greens and ripe avocado. They have other sandwiches and entrees that are pretty good, but the price increases a great deal so those are my two favorites. (12 for the sandwich, & I believe its 10 for the salad.
I think my only real main concern of this place is the service. The bartenders are great, the people the front counter are great, but the servers and very, very often are difficult to find, generally do not check in often. Plus getting a check simply takes forever. I mean forever. Virtually every time I can think of where I have gone in there, there is 20 minute wait after the meal and finally signing my check.
Usually I have to walk to the front, or bother one of the bartenders to cash out my check. I initially circumvented this by paying for my meal up front at the front counter, but now they’ve stopped that, and politely argue that they no longer accommodate customers in this fashion.
So will I go back? Probably… Yeah.
But I gotta say, while I used to go once a week, that has virtually change to maybe once a month, and even that is with hesitation because of the waiting factor. That, coupled with the fact that prices have been bumped up a bit.
I don’t know, it’s good, the food’s good, but it got a little pricey and I really dislike waiting beyond a reasonable level. I say reasonable because hey, shit happens. But come on 20 minutes or so to pay the check is a pretty long time.

This place is large and lofty and there was no wait to get a table on a Sunday evening. However, service was lacking despite there not being that many customers. One of my friends didn’t get her drink until we were midway done with our meal, and it seemed like after taking the initial drink and food orders our waitress was nowhere to be seen. We waited for a while trying to get her attention, and finally I managed to flag her down to get our check.
The food we ordered was just ok.
— Townie Bowl — nicely portioned basic salad, but nothing special
— Mac & Cheese — standard
— Mussels — several were undercooked (bleh!)
— Shepherd’s Pie — probably the only think I really liked that we ordered
I’d come back in a pinch, but not likely to revisit.

I visited months ago, and then again very recently. My first visit was OK — I had a beer, some salad and the roast chicken dish. I had just gotten off a plane and felt that my simple meal was restorative.
My second visit really led me to think that Townie is going downhill. On a Saturday evening, the place was nearly empty. This seemed like a really bad sign. Looking around, I felt cheered by Townie’s great appearance and excited by the excellent beer list. Unfortunately, the food was a walk on the «meh» side:
Thinking that I’d be having dinner, I ordered a soup of the day to be followed by a plate of fish and chips. Neither was all that great: the soup was a bean soup that tasted like it came out of a giant can, and the fish and chips were not especially delicious. (For reference, the fish at the Stella Nona Friday fish fry is about 50 times better tasting than the fish in the Townie fish and chips.) The really bad part was the pacing — what I intended to be my main dish was pretty much dumped in my lap while I was still «working» on my soup.
While Townie seemed really promising when it opened, it showcases drinks without giving enough thought to the eats. Can Townie turn itself around? The clock is ticking.