Red Fox English Pub

Great place to hangout and watch my favorite team… Chelsea! John is great, the drinks are really good, and the food is also really good. Would for sure recommend this place to everyone!

The grub in this pub is primo. The service is great… and the beer is supreme. Been here five times and hasn’t disappointed. Great outdoor patio for spring, summer, fall with fires and heaters. True English sports pub.

I have been coming to Red Fox for a long time, particularly for trivia night. It’s a nice atmosphere and not an obnoxious Royal Oak Bar.
I think the food is solid, although I wish they still had the turkey burger on the menu, and they have a pretty good beer selection as well.
I will say that the service could use some improvement. I feel that it is generally a bit too slow and it can be hard to find our waiter/​waitress after awhile.
Recently, my trivia group and I made a reservation well in advance for a table, and my friend even confirmed the day of that our reservation was set. When we arrived, another party with the same amount of people were seated at our table. Come to find out, they did not actually make a reservation but were mistaken for us and went along with it.
The whole thing was a bit ridiculous, but the manager spoke to us and pulled in some tables from the outside so that we could be seated. My advice is to be careful when you make a reservation there (use your last initial or last name). We hope we won’t run into this again because we really enjoy coming in!

Love the location, view, and atmosphere.
Nice open room with great patio.
Small menu, but I’ve tried a lof of the food on it, and it’s all good. Full bar.
TV’s everywhere inside, good for watching sports.

Awesome beer selections and appetizers. Some nights they have a DJ in the corner that takes A LOT of requests which is great. The roomy atmosphere outside with the fires are great there too. Some nights I show up with people at like 11pm and we plan on bar hopping, only to stay there until they «kick us out» because they’re closing. Reading the reviews, everyone seems to be complaining about the prices of mixed drinks, but it’s sort of expected when a place specializes in beers, so that’s not even a negative whatsoever. Definitely in my top 5 bars!

The Red Fox is a solid find for our British food craving!
We started our meal with the beef poutine. Roast beef, cheese curds and gravy over proper chips (steak fries). I’m not sure why I ordered an entrée because that was totally filling. Next I tried to consume the meatloaf grilled cheese with a side of dirty fries. Very tasty and delicious.
The solid beer selection even had a couple of my British favorites available.
Next time I definitely want to try the fish and chips!

I love the outdoor rooftop here & the happy hour special was awesome…$ 3 for a craft draft! I didn’t eat anything though the apps my friends had looked really good. I don’t know if they have an elevator somewhere but if not they should… as someone with bad knees I’d come here more often if it weren’t for all of the stairs. I don’t know if I would come here off-​season though as the inside was really loud but the rooftop deck is perfect for an afternoon/​evening cocktail.

Wow the beer list has vastly improved. There is a separate menu that describes each draft beers’ style, brewery, alcohol content, type of glass it is served in and price. The list is helpful and it allowed me to quickly become more familiar with RF’s wide range of domestic and import beers. Brewed in Traverse City, I had a 16 ounce of the Night Hawk Owl.
The fish and chips are my favorite. R-​Fox knows they have a good thing with this dish. It is served with sides of cole slaw, hush puppies and mashed peas.
The outside seating is perfect for enjoying a fabulous meal in the sun or shade. The service is excellent and there is parking available in the parking lot behind the building or on the street.
RF is the perfect place for single customers or any size groups. The environment is casual/​business «ish» with plenty of comfortable seating. It is the best rooftop restaurant in R-​Oak. The indoor seating isn’t bad either with tv’s wrapped around the dining area.

I want to review this place better because of how awesome the rooftop patio is, but because of how overpriced the beers are and how terrible the service is, I cannot do that. I will give you examples.
I came with a group of 6 to get some beers and appetizers on a Friday at 8 pm. I get there and they say the wait is an hour. That’s fine. We grab drinks and walk out to the patio where «any high tops or couches are first come first served». Of course they are packed. So we stand. The beers are $ 7.50 for a beer which is high even for Royal Oak.
We put our name in on the electronic guest list where they will text you when your table is ready. As we are standing drinking our beer I notice that there are multiple 6 tops open outside for over 15 minutes. Which makes me curious why no one has been seated in an hour wait. So I ask the hostess if we could just grab a table and she says no they are given in order and we wait 7 minutes for each party to claim their table before going to the next party. This applies even if the table is a 6 top and the party is 2 people. How does that make any sense?
We ended up finishing our beers and leaving with the tables still not filled. The food here however is very good, I would give it 4 stars. If you’re ok with dealing with terrible service then the food is worth getting.
The patio outside itself is fantastic and is the only classy rooftop you can find in the city.

HOLY MOSES this place sucks. Let me rephrase: There is SO MUCH POTENTIAL for this place but the management of their staff is beyond repair. Scoop out the current managers (who spent the entire evening on their ear pieces but talking to each other face to face) and get a team in who can delegate sections, train a hostess to seat people versus stare into outer space when she should be greeting people, and help their staff get organized into sections for an actual manageable work flow.
Please do not misread: Our server, when she was present, was good. She was pleasant, knowledgable about the menu, and I would definitely want to be in her section again… That said, the bad of her service was that her tables were spread out over the entire dining space. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had tables in the downstairs restaurant for as often as we didn’t see her. We spoke to the bus boys more than our server, as they were constantly busy and were often present to clean dish/​glassware off our patio tables. We had to ask the bus boys three times for our server as we hadn’t seen her three times when our drinks were completely empty. Unfortunately we only got to buy one drink from our actual server, we ended up going to order from the bar for a second and then our third and final drink.
They have some promising features for their layout — so Red Fox Owners (NOT Managers — tall bald guy wearing all white long sleeved button down with shorts, and thin long haired girl also wearing all white (is this your manager uniform?) wearing a supremely droopy sweater that you managed more often that night than you managed your team– don’t read, as you both need some serious retraining) if you’re reading:
1. Hire a management team you can trust to RUN your bar. Happy customers make your servers and inevitably your bar/​restaurant lots of money — and provide much better opinions of your place for out of town folks and locals alike and thus gives us desire to review the positives and return.
2. In addition, you should look into reorganizing the height of your fire pits. The pits are so tall it makes for awkward conversations and incomplete groupings if people were to sit around them and attempt to talk across the pits with a giant chimney in the center of the squares. That’s great they’re there, but they’re so oddly enormous it’s distracting from a more pleasant environment.
The atmosphere of the patio and outdoor space plus tons of TVs is what saved this place from a 1 star review. If you were to buy a management scooper and scoop out the bad and bring in the better, you could have such a banging place that’s constantly overflowing with customers.
Would I go back? Let me know when you’ve retrained your team — organization is hot. xo

This has been one of my favorite restaurants in the area, for the past few years. I stopped in tonight, after maybe a year away. I was a little disappointed to find that the menu had changed quite a bit. No longer do they offer French Onion soup (my favorite thing on this planet), or rotating fish & chip/​English specials. Though the fabulous beer selection hasn’t diminished, the menu appears to be half of what it was a year ago. Fortunately, some of my favorites still remain (French Dip, Bangers & Mash, traditional Fish & Chips). Most importantly, Poutine is still on the menu (with expanded selections), though it may or may not have changed a bit since I last had it here. Never-​the-​less, it’s the best Poutine I’ve ever had in Michigan. Unfortunately, some of the items we tried to order were sold out – roast beef, so no beef poutine or French Dip, and fish tacos. We settled for the Butter Chicken (delicious), and the Red Fox burger, and an order of duck poutine.
Now I’d like to rave about the service. Not only was our server on his MF-​ing game tonight – total Johnny on the spot – but the manager took several opportunities to stop by and apologize for not having the items we originally wanted, and to check in on our meals. He even made sure our poutine was on the house!
If we can just get that French Onion soup, and hey, maybe even that steak and proper chips salad back on the menu, this place will get 5 stars, all the way! Either way, we’ll be back for beef!!!

Went here last night. Was pretty busy because it was a nice night. They ran into a bit of a chair issue for larger parties and they were pulling them from anywhere possible. Got a flight of beer which is nice to try multiple times. Also got the poutine for a snack. Oh and if you check in from Unilocal you get a free app!

Pros:
+ Patio is one of the nicest in royal oak.
+ draft and bottled beer list is pretty good
Cons:
— It’s NOT an English pub. It’s a Royal Oak bar with 5 or so knock offs of actual English pub food. The rest of the menu is Royal Oak bar fare.
— the food has sucked since they changed the menu from the menu they originally opened up with. Today I had the shepherd’s pie, which tasted like cheap ground beef (loads of fat pooling) and brown gravy mix.
— Very few vegetarian options (sides and salads only)
— the service is never good. The servers barely earn the 15% from me and that’s saying a lot considering I used to be a server. I consider 15% the bare minimum, but it’s hard to justify when your server is a ghost during your whole visit.
— since the patio is nice, you’ll likely be waiting 20−30min in order to sit (even on a Monday night).
Conclusion:
Unless you’re only coming for overpriced beer and the patio — there are better places to spend your money on food and drink in Royal Oak.

Red Fox– We love this place as I am big fan on English Premier League and I enjoy watching soccer game here.
I will say they have definitely one of the best artichoke dip in this area. Definitely try it…
If you are a soccer fan in royal oak area, you should visit this place at least for one game!

Great facility — great patio. Ability to combine tables for large groups. TVs are great for sports.
As long as slow service and pretty bad food is ok with you, it’s a great place.

Quick summary: cool vibe, terrible service.
My friends and I decided to check this place out on a Thursday evening after hearing some good things about their beer selection. We found a seat on their patio next to a fire pit. Despite being almost empty for a Thursday night, the pub still had a cool, relaxed vibe to it. It wasn’t anything like an English pub, to my dismay, but it at least had a hip Royal Oak vibe to it that we didn’t mind.
Already enjoying the atmosphere, we excitedly await our waitress. And then we wait a little more. After about 15 minutes, we were about to give up and order from the bar when our waitress shows. We ask for drink menus. Another waiting game. Ten minutes later, menus arrive and we hurriedly place our orders, fearing we’d lose our waitress to wherever she’s disappearing to again. So we busy ourselves in more conversation and await our drinks.
I really wish I could give a quality review of their beers, but unfortunately they never made it to us. So 15 minutes go by and no drinks. I spot our waitress and see her heading for the bar and assume she’s getting our drinks. Nope. Another 15 minutes go by, no drinks. Desperate, we finally go up to the bar to place our order but literally see no one. At this point we’ve already waited over 30 minutes for our waitress to pour three draft beers in an almost empty bar. I’d completely understand if they were busy or even short staffed, but unfortunately for Red Fox, that wasn’t the case. Bollocks.
My recommendation: get a seat at the bar if you’d like your drink to arrive.

Red Fox… was so curious and wanted it to open. Took so long, but have been there about 13 times since it has opened.
Food is so-​so, staff and bartenders are great, drink are so yummy and if you as a question they push the samples on you. You can’t beat the staff and them trying to keep you happy. Fair prices too.
I will give it a thumbs up for the drinks and staff !!!
Let me know if you are there and I would definitely be there !!!

I wish I could leave less stars for this place. Went with friends to a Trivia night, and the service was horrendous. Our server brought our first round of drinks and then never even glanced at us the rest of the night, even though he passed by several times.
I was prepared to buy more drinks and food as well, but was never given the opportunity. At some point in the night, our server came to us and said «do you want your bills? We’re cashing out for the night.» Well, yeah… if you’re not planning on letting us have anything else, of course I want my bill.
So I get my bill, and I was going to leave cash but he stood there waiting for us to hand him whatever, and I handed him my card instead. My bill was $ 3.50, and there was no mention of an automatic gratuity for a large group on the bill. I am not one to not leave a tip, but the service was that bad, that I felt it warranted not leaving one. So when he brought back our statements, I signed it for a total of $ 3.50, and a clear $ 0 on the tip line.
I checked my statement this morning, because one of my friend’s told me I should because she was also charged more than she signed for, and sure enough, they decided to take $ 1.50 for gratuity. Not only is this more than a standard 18% gratuity for large parties (20% would have only been $.70), but it is HIGHLY ILLEGAL.
I will never come back to this place and will be calling the necessary parties to report a fraudulent charge to my card.

Went to Red Fox again. I found a couple things annoying so I did bump down my old review by one star.
One, the setup is a little cluttered. I don’t know why they have a fire pit on the outside patio… AND DON’T USE IT! Why have it in the first place then?! It’s a pain just to walk across the room when it’s packed because you have to weave around people and furniture. Also, put beer prices up somewhere! I was ordering an IPA that turned out to cost $ 7.50. When I got my bill I felt jipped a little bit, especially since the beer I was ordering is usually $ 2 cheaper at most other places.

To clarify this review is based off two beers and their combo board. It may have been based off of more if we weren’t served the worst cheese/​meat board we’ve ever had.
Beer selection was decent, service was a bit awkward, but their idea of a meat/​cheese board was just sad. It was supposed to be a combo of the meat and the cheese, but there was only one type of meat, which I’m pretty sure I could have picked up at Meijer. There was 3 different types of cheese, the pieces were small and had very little taste, not even deli counter level. Finished off with some crackers, candied pecans, «house made» jam and mustard. So for $ 15, we were really disappointed.
Since this was the example of their culinary offerings, we left.