Brooklyns

I came here with a friend after church for lunch. The place (as you’d expect on a Sunday afternoon) was dead.
But we came in, somehow found a seat — thanks to a rude waitress who joked about how easy the task should have been, and found the menu to be awesomely varied.
Everything looked good, but I went with the Gorgonzola burger. Best choice.
I think my friend was especially saddened by the fact that their white chile was gone. As the waitress told us why (it was costing them money to make it because not enough people were ordering it) I realized she wasn’t rude. She was just eccentric.
And that’s why I will come back with my wife for a date night. Lots of other things are nice. Ambience needs work. The tables and chairs are low-​end for a bar… But other foods need to be tried and they’re not going to eat themselves!
I hear the place is bumping most nights, but either way — you should check it out.
UPDATE: So we returned on a Friday night to find that it was indeed bumping.
But even though our service was way better, the food was not good. I told our server it was «literally the worst steak I’d ever had.» I shouldn’t have eaten it. Poorly seasoned. Overcooked. Bad cut. It just didn’t taste right, like it had been left out somewhere along the way. But with enough salt, I can down most anything, so as I finished, I was like: why did I do that?
Server apologized profusely (I insisted that they didn’t refund me anything — I ate the whole thing, awful though it was).
But yeah. Not likely to return for a bit, and if I do, I don’t know if I’ll be having a steak.

Good beer prices, friendly service, and decent food. Pool table, dart board, and patio makes it a good place to drink a beer with friends.

I’ll be honest, I only come here for the white chicken chili. Haven’t had one anywhere else that compares to Brooklyn’s. Beers are basic, bartenders are nice. Like someone else said, it resembles Cheers.

Yikes.
Reading reviews from over four years ago that almost precisely describe our experience is SO bizarre, but the simple fact of the matter is that this place clearly does not care about customer feedback.
I attended my uncle’s funeral tonight and afterwards, we had a party of 8 adults and one infant who showed up at this bar at 9:30PM. I was relieved that they didn’t give me any crap about bringing my baby… I was too tired from my gloomy and overstimulating day to try to arrange for a babysitter, especially since my go-​to people were there at dinner with me. In fact, the waitress and hostess were very kind and went out of their way to accommodate my son. They brought me a high chair to prop his car seat in and moved tables and chairs so that we could set it up off to the side of my seat. Thumbs up there… obviously I had no expectation that a grimy Downriver bar would make those accommodations for me. If the circumstances were different I would have not brought him along.
Moving on…
The atmosphere in this place, like TJ said, is kinda disgusting. They go for some Cheers type of décor, but it’s all just plastered over a filthy bar that has been there for decades and hasn’t been updated at all. The dining area isn’t all that bad especially that late at night… but as TJ mentioned, it has a funky odor. It’s probably the 50 year old carpeting in that bad lad!
Me and my mom both made the terrible mistake of ordering the French Onion soup. The one that showed up before me was burnt to hell. My mom thought it looked better than her seemingly perfectly baked one, so we traded. It didn’t matter because the soup itself was vile. It was bitter and disgusting because of the burnt onions in it and like Allison mentioned, was like at least 10% oil. It could not even be from the cheese… they just did not properly strain their broth. Gross. I didn’t even finish it.
I also ordered their sampler platter. It was ok… though I had several «fried mushrooms» that had no mushrooms in them… leads one to believe that they were bought frozen. The breading on all of the different breaded things was different… so that also points strongly to being frozen crap that they fry. The stuff was all piping hot out of the fryer, though.
My boyfriend ordered a medium burger with bleu cheese. He ate half and told me to try it. I described it as tasting like hose water and he thought that was pretty accurate. TJ mentioned it being pasty and gummy and overcooked, which held true in this case. Also, bleu cheese has a pretty strong taste on a burger and I couldn’t taste it at all. It was horrible.
In short:
Pros:
Friendly, accommodating, competent staff
Decent fries and «ok» sampler platter (probably because they didn’t actually make anything on it, they just fried premade frozen crap)
Cobb salad seemed to be okay since my dad cleaned his plate
Cons:
Drinks tasted like «dirty nozzle» as if they haven’t cleaned the dispenser
Service was a little bit slow
Most of the food was burnt or cooked poorly
Crappy and stinky décor
It seems like most of the good reviews are about this bar’s bar qualities versus their food qualities… and if it were just a bar I would be okay with that… but they have a full menu and our party sampled many things from it and only few of the things we received were even edible. Yuck. I won’t be going back here ever again.

Nothing special here, typical bar food. Stopped in and tried some food. Had the potatoes skins, which were good, and the white chicken chili. The chili has to be some of the blandest that I have ever had. It tasted like cream of potatoe soup with some chicken and beans in it. No kick or spice to it at all.

Food? If you wanna waste the gallon of Pabst Blue Ribbon you’re gonna drink. This is a bar to get drunk. Order the Brooklyn Zoo and see…

I have been to Brookyn’s many times and found the food to very good. I have had many of their specials and always been pleased. I too am happy it is no smoking because of the layout it could be problem. They have a good beer selection and have a great bartender when cindy is their during the day and Pat at night.

If I had to describe this place in one word, that word would be «ass».
Like Allison A, I tried their French Onion soup. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to make French Onion soup, you brown up some onions with a little garlic, toss in some beef broth and coat the thing with cheese. You don’t char the onions and you don’t use government mozzarella on top. My soup was served Detroit-​style — bland and under-​seasoned, which you kind of expect at a Detroit-​area establishment. Sadly, when you try to add salt to soup after the fact, it doesn’t work out because the broth just doesn’t absorb the salt like it should.
The burger was crap. I don’t understand why they even bother asking you how you want it cooked, when everything comes out of the kitchen medium-​well to well. Everyone knows that the optimal way to eat a burger is medium-​rare, but even if you like it cooked a different way, it’d be nice if these mouth-​breathers could figure out a way to cook it how you order it. And despite being medium-​well, the burger was pasty and gummy like oatmeal.
My waitress was aggravating, and I can only assume that she suffered from the same closed-​head injury that the cooks have. The service was slow, and I knew that trying to explain to my waitress just exactly what was wrong with my food would be as frustrating as trying to teach simple multiplication to a Red Wings fan.
I’m not one to comment on atmosphere, and the food and service were certainly bad enough to warrant the one-​star by themselves, but I did want to touch on the unique stench that this place has. I really don’t understand how you get a place like to smell like that, but the only way I can describe the smell is to have you picture two sweaty midgets having a pillow fight with bags of hot garbage while kicking around a couple of used urinal pucks. Actually, that’s probably exactly how they got that place to smell that way.
When I finished my «meal,» my first thought was that I was being punked. I kept waiting for some no-​talent cougar hunter to come out with a camera and laugh at me. But when I saw the manager’s blank stare and the visible patina of dried drool in the corners of his mouth, I realized that this is just how they think food is supposed to be served.

Jake and I both had the French onion soup. It looked disgusting because the onions were black. The broth was low quality and had way too much oil in it, probably from the cheese. It was the worst restaurant French onion soup I’ve ever had, that’s for sure.
I ordered ribs and chicken. Their ribs were the lowest quality I’ve ever had. They had little meat and were too chewy and hard. Not high or even MEDIUM quality. They were served lukewarm. They tasted like something from a no-​name brand grocery store freezer. They were disgusting. I wouldn’t even give them to a dog.
Chicken was served pink on the inside. Even when another piece came back cooked correctly, I didn’t want to eat it. I was just DONE. It didn’t have any flavor, anyway. I assume it was a cheap frozen chicken breast because it was small and flat. Wherever it came from, I didn’t want it in my belly.
My boyfriend got a burger that had no seasoning whatsoever. He took about two bites and was just so turned off by my food and his lack of flavor.
The best thing about our visit was the french fries, which weren’t even good. They were just bearable.
Their food SUCKED horribly and was not reasonably priced to reflect that. I’ll never ever ever ever ever go back. Oh, not like it’ll matter in a couple of months, but it was smokey too.
Oh, the service was good. We were offered 10% off. The waitress assured us «we really do have good food. You should come back and try it again!» Um, yea. No thanks.

Brooklyns at first glance, is easy to drive by. The best part of Brooklyns however is the Patio located behind… from early spring to the last nice fall day, make your way to the back. Cheery umbrellas shade you while you eat! They’ve recently gone through a menu upgrade, but the «Hook em Horns» platter is the best value, tasty, with ribs, steak bites, beans, cornbread, garlic mushrooms, 3 huge chicken fingers (real ones — honest!!) and GREAT chicken wings. My husband swears by the white chili, and the 2 of us will sometimes split a platter, get a couple of beers and a chili and with tip be out for less than $ 20…the service is great!!!