Having seen Freeman Store and Museum, it's time to have a rest at this bar. Offering good nacho chips, pesto chicken and steak frites is the unique characteristic of Bear Branch Tavern. Many guests come to degust tasty Brezeln. This place is famous for delicious craft beer, bourbon or wine. Great ginger beer is worth a try here. The convenient location of this place makes it easy to reach by any transport. Cheerful employees meet you at this spot all year round. There is a calm atmosphere and beautiful decor at this bar. Based on the guests' feedback on Google, Bear Branch Tavern deserved 4.4.
My friends that live nearby brought me here because the food is good and they said it was great with their two young kids. They were so right!
The beer menu had some interesting things like their current seasonal sour. The French dip sandwich was huge and so flavorful, I really enjoyed it. The fries were great. I could have eaten about half the menu and been happy so hopefully one day I can go back and try something else.
This place was perfect for young kids, with an $8 kids menu. They brought out plastic cups with lids for the kids, as well as menus and crayons before we had even finished sitting down. The kids meals also came out quicker than ours and it kept them entertained. They've really thought of how to make this easy for parents.
I thought it was a great experience overall.
Service
Dine in
Meal type
Dinner
Price per person
$20–30
Food: 5
Service: 5
Atmosphere: 5
My friends that live nearby brought me here because the food is good and they said it was great with their two young kids. They were so right!
The beer menu had some interesting things like their current seasonal sour. The French dip sandwich was huge and so flavorful, I really enjoyed it. The fries were great. I could have eaten about half the menu and been happy so hopefully one day I can go back and try something else.
This place was perfect for young kids, with an $8 kids menu. They brought out plastic cups with lids for the kids, as well as menus and crayons before we had even finished sitting down. The kids meals also came out quicker than ours and it kept them entertained. They've really thought of how to make this easy for parents.
I thought it was a great experience overall.
Service
Dine in
Meal type
Dinner
Price per person
$20–30
Food: 5
Service: 5
Atmosphere: 5
Food is very mediocre. We tried a bunch of different things and nothing truly wowed us. Nothing was awful. Just truly the epitome of basic! Our waiter was so friendly and service overall was prompt. The dining area was open and clean. We would come back, but it wouldn’t be a first choice.
Service
Dine in
Meal type
Dinner
Price per person
$20–30
Food: 2
Service: 5
Atmosphere: 5
I have wanted to visit Bear Branch Tavern for years. I bike a fair amount and on long weekend rides, I've always looked longingly at all the happy, well-dressed, partially-drunk patrons sipping their ice cold drinks and generally enjoying their lives on the patio that overlooks the W&OD trail.
Desperately wanting to be one of those happy people, my wife and I decided to take our family here on a weeknight to see what all the fuss was about. Honestly, we're really not too sure.
We came at about 6pm which, admittedly, is the dinner hour so we expected things to be a little busier than usual...but it was also a Thursday night and who goes out to dinner on a Thursday night? Apparently a lot of people because when we rolled into the parking lot, it was basically the plot of Mad Max playing out in real life and we barely snagged a spot.
Once we walked inside we were greeted with noise that felt like we had walked into the actual Super Bowl, except instead of a field and players it was just a bunch of TV screens and a very full bar area; which I suppose could be considered a field with players, if you catch my drift haha.
Anyway, it was loud and a little overwhelming, but the restaurant is attached to some kind of office building so I assume most of those folks were there for a happy hour kind of thing, which made sense. We met with the hostess, shouted our party number to her and were seated basically immediately.
Our waiter showed up a few minutes later and dropped off some water. Little did we know that would be the last bit of liquid that we would receive for the rest of our time at the restaurant. If I had known, I wouldn't have been so flippant about sipping on it when we sat down.
About 10 minutes later, our waiter came back and took our appetizer order. We opted for the fried wings because you get to pick two sauces to go on your 8 wings and that sounded cool. We tried the DC Mambo and the mango habanero. The waiter basically told us that we shouldn't do the habanero because it was super hot but we went for it anyway.
Turns out, we would never find out if the mango habanero was hot because when the food-delivery man brought out our wings, they were covered in buffalo sauce. We would have sent them back, but we literally didn't see our waiter again for another 15 minutes and by that point our girls were getting hungry and fussy; so we had to make a call.
Finally, our waiter came back and took our food orders. I ordered their chili burger thing and my wife ordered the fish tacos. Then the wait for our food commenced, honestly about 45 minutes after we had sat down.
20 minutes later our food came out. The portions were plentiful and both dishes had TONS of fries, which was pretty great. The food itself was okay...the burger was nothing to write home about and the chili salsa stuff on it really just tasted more like onion and looked like this green spray that was put on the buns. I didn't look too closely at it. The fish tacos didn't get my wife sick, so that was a plus, and she ate all of them.
At this point, our waiter finally came back and, I'm not joking asked us about 4 times, "how is everything so far?" I wish she had asked, "how about a little more water?" but that never happened, unfortunately.
We finished our meals and sat for a little bit, expecting the waiter to come with our check. About 10 or 15 minutes passed and our girls were finally out of runway. They were getting squirmy and it was time for us to go home. Our waiter stopped by and asked how everything was going so far and we said we were ready for the check. Our two meals and appetizer set us back over $50, which was a lot for a mediocre meal and experience. We might come back and try the patio at some point too see if that's a different experience, but I guess a few drinks really do cover a multitude of sins.
Service
Dine in
Meal type
Dinner
Price per person
$10–20
Food: 2
Service: 2
Atmosphere: 2
