Atomic Ale Brewpub & Eatery

I almost never leave reviews on anything, especially restaurants, since taste is very personal and subjective. That said, my husband and I went Atomic Ale for the first time. We both grew up in the Tri-​Cities, but had never stopped there for a meal, so we decided to try something different while in Richland on other business. We had the pizza (pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms, olives, etc) and I hate to say it, but it was the worst pizza I have ever had in a restaurant or bar. It was barely warm when it arrived to the table, tasted WAY too much like frozen store-​bought pizza, with bland sauce, pre-​prepared or frozen crust, and very little cheese that sat there kind of dried-​looking on the top. The toppings were plentiful, but not enough to save the overall opinion of the pizza.
We also tried the pretzel with the hot butter topping. That was an interesting original idea, but be prepared for a very hot and spicy, almost overwhelmingly hot aftertaste and burning tongue!
The best thing about the place was the people. Our server was very pleasant, the food (such as it was) arrived fast. The atomic theme was fun, but not fun enough to bring me back.

Great food and super service. We were in a time crunch and the waiter made it possible to enjoy our food and still get to the game on time. Wood fire pizza was wonderful!

Great atmosphere. Perfect for taking my mini out for dinner. grab a board game from the wall and play while you wait for food. The godfather pizza is delicious!
The homemade potatoes soup very hearty I couldn’t finish my dinner after one bowl.

Great summer stop for a quick lunch after antique looking.

Love, love, love beer and pretzels! The nuclear style pretzel with spicy nuclear butter and house-​made blue cheese dressing is about the best I’ve ever tasted. Atomic has a great atmosphere and friendly staff that never disappoints!

Manhattan Project Pizza is the absolute best! We crave it! Service and atmosphere is great too!

Great beer and great food. Love the ‘nuclear’ theme paying homage to the history of the Manhattan Project and the nuclear industry is the area. Service is always good. The Atomic Potato Soup is great comfort food. Pizzas are great and a variety to please everyone.
Accommodates families, business associates, friend and couples. If you like the beer you can grab a growler and a pint glass to take with you

So I went to this establishment last night for dinner. I really enjoyed the atmosphere and the food was fresh and really great. I ordered the chicken pesto sandwich which came with a side soup. I got the potato soup which was great and a large portion. The soup was perfectly seasoned for my taste and I would get it again. The sandwich was a nice size and on fresh bread and it came with chips. I enjoyed it and was perfectly seasoned for me. I will come to this establishment again on another trip out to the Richland area. I think this place is a great lunch spot for me not a dinner location for me.

Wonderful service, wide selection of beer and you have got to have some of their Potato Chowder. It’s worth a return trip.

The Beer was good and the pizza was great. I would give it a 5 but the parking lot is a pain, and to me that counts in the overall experience of the place. While we were there we saw one person back into the fence because there is barely any room for maneuverability (or maybe they had too much beer!!).

Get: Potato Soup (in the largest receptacle possible)
Atomic Ale is a neat venture for those exploring the nooks of Richland or showing visitors about town. Well-​branded with intriguing atomic-​era themes, I am 300% behind the stylistic intentions of this brewpub.
However, there is only one shining star on the menu. And damnably, it is so good, I would consider two-​leg tackling a senior citizen to get my hands on it. We’re talking the Potato Soup. It is an absolute treat. If you think you should leave this establishment without an order there and one to go, you’ve mistreated yourself.
As for the rest of the menu, I’ve had spotty luck. The pizza is fair but the sauce and crust aren’t titillating and thusly are expunged from my memory banks the moment I fill out the tip & total line on the check. Conversely, their topping concepts are admirable but can’t seem to save the final product.
The beer could use some help. Love the names and themes (consistent with all aspects of the venue) and I am not beyond spending a few clams on a pint glass. .. but really I don’t want to drink it. The malt end of the brews are heavy and don’t really inspire me. Further, being a fan of those little green danglies — I wish they provided something a bit more hop-​forward.
Positives: Great atmosphere, branding, and MAH GAWD — that potato soup!
Negatives: Rest of the menu underwhelms, beer is rough for my palate.

Where have you been all my life… (Well the 3 short months we’ve lived here) This is such great food. This was my first time eating here and I had no idea of what to order. The fantastic waitress, Carlie, made many suggestions. I had the Pork Capicola — twin pork tenderloins oven roasted with Italian seasoning. delish! The Atomic Spuds — Amazing, perfectly cooked veges on the side. Service is prompt and very professional. Highly recommend!

I wish we had somewhere like this in our hometown in Montana! The service was quick and kid-​friendly (we were coming off a long day of driving with a crabby, hungry, 10 month old baby), we were seated immediately and they brought us a high chair right away. They also took our drink orders right away. I ordered the Porter, my husband ordered the Imperial (baby stuck with water…)
The Porter really is excellent! A bit smoky, a bit chocolate-​y but NOT TOO SWEET. I don’t like sweet dark beers, so often they are cloying and rely on sweetness for flavor instead of other flavor nuances. Not this one, REALLY GOOD.
The Imperial was not as good, but not bad. It was solid. But, my husband didn’t order a second. He got the Porter for his second! COPYCAT. (Baby was still sticking to water at this point. He’s a real buzzkill when it comes to beer drinking!)
For dinner I ordered the teriyaki chicken dinner, husband ordered the grinder, and baby ordered a side of potatoes (is this kid Amish? Water and potatoes?). I’m going to be very clear — I USUALLY HATE RESTAURANT CHICKEN. So why did I order it? Well… because I felt like I needed a big hit of protein. But oh my goodness, it was EXCELLENT. It was moist, flavorful, really great teriyaki sauce… just top notch. So tender that Baby with his 8 teeth could eat little bits of it. The potatoes are so incredibly good, they are flavorful without being oversalted, and cooked to the point of caramelization (Baby liked them). My husband loved the grinder, he said it was like pizza on a sandwich. It came with just regular Lay’s chips, which maybe wasn’t super exciting to Husband, but oh well. He had the potato soup too, and it does live up to the hype.
Also, I have a food allergy, which they accommodated beautifully. They were also very nice to baby, prompt, and nice to us even though we showed up so late.
I really love this place, I wish we had one in town, the people there obviously care about the food and the brews. Stop reading Unilocal reviews and go visit! Have a Porter for me!

I am not impressed by the beer. I had an amber, and it was difficult to drink. I ended up drinking more unsweetened iced tea, which was actually very good.
I appreciate the ambience, honoring and celebrating the atomic workers at Hanford site. In fact I am curious if any of the artifacts are radioactive lol. Curie-​ous? Ok atomic puns aside, this place deserves to be better given the history. Make a better amber that is less syrupy tasting and more crisp.

We ate here after reading the great reviews. We were NOT disappointed at all!
We ordered pizza and salads. Our order came out quickly. The pizza was loaded with toppings and had a nice thin crust. It reminded me of the old style pizzas we use to get in the 70’s and 80’s.
Their beer was fantastic! Living in the Pacific Northwest, micro brewery central, we’ve become beer snobs of sorts. Their beer tastes fresh, clean and very well balanced. Our hats off to the Brew Masters there!
It’s a family friendly Brewpub with a comfortable atmosphere thats very clean and well maintained.
We will be back the next time we are in the area.

Great place for food and brews; and only mildly radioactive. We had the chicken satay for an app; a change from normal pub fare. But they have traditional pub apps as well; and great pizza. And a great mix of ages from babies to retirees. And lest we forget; great beer! Try the Mighty Columbia Imperial IPA.

This is a pretty cool place. We had pretzels and pizzas. The pretzels were cleverly formed into fun shapes, but not particularly tasty.
Pizza was good, not great. For me it was way to garlic-​y.
They do have good beer. Tasted a couple, the hefe was really good.
Service was perfectly fine, gal was nice and fairly responsive.
All in all, above average but not worth a special trip.

On our last night in Richland, we happened upon Atomic Ale Brewpub and Eatery on a recommendation from a local. Reactor Core pizza (Genoa salami, sausage, onions, mushrooms, jalapeños, blue cheese crumbles, and their special spicy nuclear butter) was superb and eating outside was delightful.
We were not able to buy a sampler that evening, but the server still allowed us to taste a few types before buying a pint. I drank an «Atomic Amber» and my husband drank the «International Proton Pale Ale.» We both enjoyed our drinks. We wish we lived closer to go again!

My girlfriend and I visited Richland last weekend. We heard that the Fox and Bear Pub was a great place to get dinner, but it was a Sunday night and it (along with several other places in town) was closed. We looked on Unilocal and saw that Atomic Ale had really high reviews and was close by, so we decided to check it out.
After entering the restaurant, we waited for about ten minutes at the entrance. They don’t have any designated host to seat guests so the servers do this. However, the restaurant was pretty busy when we got there. I understand that the servers were in a rush to deal with a large party, but they seemed to be intentionally averting their eyes from the entrance so they wouldn’t have to deal with any more customers. I could see that they were busy and I didn’t expect them to drop everything and seat us, but it would have been nice if they had at least acknowledged the large group building up at the door way and said something like «We’ll be with y’all in a minute.» Even just an exasperated look and a shrug would have been fine. It was like we didn’t exist at all to them. Right when we were about to leave, the party in front of us was seated at a table. My girlfriend and I still hadn’t been acknowledged yet, but we noticed that another table was available. We seated ourselves, and someone came to bring us menus a few minutes later. Not a good start to a meal. It was also annoying because the restaurant really wasn’t that crowded. There was three servers and about four tables for each of them. It just seemed like the place was really disorganized.
To start with, we each ordered a beer. I had the Oppenheimer Oatmeal Stout and my girlfriend had the Atomic Amber Ale. This was the high point of the meal for us. Both beers were awesome. The oatmeal stout had lots of flavor and wasn’t overly sweet.
To eat, we started by sharing a bowl of their «world famous» (their words) potato soup. The soup was rich and creamy, and I enjoyed the large chunks of potato in it. I don’t know about «world famous», but it was really good.
The main courses were disappointing to say the least. We ordered the chef’s salad with their special ‘atomic’ vinaigrette sauce, which tasted like they just added a lot of sugar to a balsamic vinaigrette sauce. It was cloying to such a degree that even the smallest amount of it rendered most of the salad inedible. Also, the sliced turkey breast in the salad was definitely just slices of lunch meat from the grocery store that they just plopped on top of the salad.
We also ordered the pasta special which for that day was fettucine with sausage, olives, and mushrooms in a spicy garlic cream sauce. This dish tasted like they just cooked some pasta, and added frozen sausage, mushroom and olives from a can, alfredo sauce from the store, a few pats of butter for good measure, and just mixed it all together. The flavors didn’t seem to work well at all, and the sauce was way too rich.
This would be a fun place to have a few beers, but I wouldn’t recommend eating here.

After a long drive from the westside of the state, Atomic ale Brewpub was just what we needed. Food options were great and there was many items that vegetarians could enjoy.
I enjoyed the beer and the service was good. It is a place we would go again!

Interessanterweise kann man hier gut vegetarisch Essen. Wie bei so vielen Läden hier wird das Thema Radioaktivität und Atombombe hochgehalten. Ein bisserl abgedroschen aber dem Essen hat es nicht geschadet.