Big Al’s

Today was hot… talking steaming. I had the kids while my wife has a girls day out and I thought.“Hmmm, I think bowling sounds like a good idea.” So the kids and I hopped in the car and headed to Big Al’s. Kids had a blast. This is definitely the best bowling center in the Portland area. Great lanes, good service, and great music. Oh yeah, and the whole kids bowl free summer program is pretty sweet. 2 free games per kid per day the whole summer? Best offer in town for family fun. The kids bowled about 1 and ¾ games then they needed food. They both had kids meals and then we got an unexpected surprise. They both got a $ 5 game card for the arcade, which by the way, is better, and better priced then Great Wolf Lodge. They both alternated games, and my 2 year old son won a ticket jackpot on one of the games. They just kept coming. This is gonna be a fun summer.

Boring food and drinks, but a lot to do. Good place to watch games, bit nothing more.

the games are not cheap no quarter games thats for sure. great for football games love their t.v. screen it’s …huge!!!

We had an amazing lunch here! Sean H took such good care of us. I was so impressed. I haven’t had such great service in a long time. I would definitely recommend coming here for lunch or dinner! And added bonus they have very affordable delicious beers. And great games to play! Thanks Big Als!

We held a large group event here a couple of weeks ago and had a great experience. They provide plenty of wait staff who are friendly and attentive, and the food was good. Everyone enjoyed it.

This place has a lot of fun activities but the teenage staff are fairly rude and really terrible with customer service.
We showed up a few weeks ago on a Saturday. The group of ¾ kids behind the counter were all huddled up chatting and it seemed to bother them to have to get us shoes for bowling. The boy who wound up helping us literally sighed when we asked a few questions. Really?
If you’re coming with a big group this looks like it would be a fun place. We’ve done drinks upstairs near the simulator and that was fun.
Management: teach the kids about customer service. They need the help.

Upscale ChuckECheese.
Bowling with big screens behind the pins
Arcade gaming upstairs
Golf Simulator
Wall of TVs
I go here for watching multiple games at once.
Food is par.
Arcade games need a huge upgrade to 2016.
Create a gaming experience for kids and adults
Will be back for Olympics /​NFL /​Playoffs — They still have my business.

Dollar night is where it is at. I might skip the dollar Rainers and just hit the Growlerie afterwards. A great place to spend the night bowling with friends.

My guy and I went last night for the Ninkasi event that was held at the Caddyshack bar.
We were greatly disappointed in our treatment from Missy the bartender. She was rude to both my boyfriend and I.
When we approached the bar on our arrival, she took our drink order, but continually ignored us when we wanted to place our food order.
We hadn’t finished our complete order at that point. She was vaguely present with us, but not entirely because I was in mid sentence asking her a question about the menu, she looked at me as if to acknowledge me and yet completely ignored me and proceeded to help another gal that was farther down the bar. How rude Missy!
We enjoyed the free pool and the Ninkasi folks.
My boyfriend went back to the bar and tried to order another round for us and he was completely ignored by Missy. In fact, she skipped over him and helped a guy behind him. Very unprofessional and rude of Missy again. It was like we weren’t «cool» enough for her and her «smart» attitude towards us is inexcusable. It was our first and will be our last time to the Caddyshack.
We will never be going to the Caddyshack again because of Missy.

Overall the idea of this place is awesome — two areas for bowling, a large arcade area (great for kids but even entertaining for 20−30s crowd), and a huge TV for all the big sporting events (in addition to another bar area upstairs with additional TVs). Unfortunately, every time I go here, the service is worse and worse, to the point that I won’t be rushing back here any time soon unless my friends plan an event here. We’ve always had to wait before being acknowledged at the bar for drinks, slow table service, and discrepancies in pricing (we asked 3 employees the price of their beer tubes and got 3 completely different answers). If you can focus on your time with friends/​family and don’t care much about service, this can be a really great place to hang out. Just don’t go in with high expectations.

Went to this place tonight around 10:15 tonight. There was four of us and we all paid for one game. The girl at the counter told us we had enough time to play one game. During frame 6 the game ended and they said they were closing and we could not continue our game that we paid for.
I went up to the counter to speak with the employee and she was extremely rude and had a horrible attitude. As I was trying to speak to her a gentleman, maybe 20 year old kid, came over and told me he was the manager. He argued with me about them closing and told me I should have listen to the music prompts that they would be closing soon. I tried to explain to him that we were told we had enough time to play a full game. Why would we pay to play if they were going to turn off our game in the middle of it?
The people here are rude and unprofessional. I will never go back.
Since writing this review Jon, the GM, was super helpful and listened to my concerns. I appreciate him taking the time and speaking with me. He made every effort to make the situation better.

I’ve been here a good amount of times (for watching sports mainly), and only been in the game area/​arcade once. I tend to stay away from those areas because they tend to be expensive.
The rest of the place can be hit or miss for service, as it’s so busy during sports seasons. It depends on where you are, I think. Lately it’s been more of «hits» for me though (: The last time I was here was for a Duck’s game and we started out upstairs because if you don’t come early to grab a table/​seat downstairs where the two giant TVs are, they’re too full to seat anyone else. Towards half time, we went down and sat at the bar and had GREAT service. The bartender let me try some pumpkin shanty before getting a glass, was attentive, and informative. When it was almost last call, he let us know to make sure we got anything before he could not serve us anymore. He even gave us fist bumps with every crazy play during the game. At the end of our time there, the bartender thanked us and remembered both of our names (from our IDs)! A+ to that particular bartender (: Next time I go to Big Al’s for a game, I’m going to try to sit at the bar again haha.
One thing I have an issue with is that some sports fans can get rowdy and aggressive towards other patrons. With all the staff running around, I would have hoped that they could deal with some of the situations I’ve seen, but I haven’t seen them intervene once. I know people can get really involved while watching their favorite teams play, especially while drinking, but all patrons should feel safe in your establishment.

Been hit and miss when I have gone here, super great service or bad service. Food is actually really good and can’t go wrong with the big TVs to watch the games
Happy hour is great too…

This place is HUGE compared to Dave and Busters. I came to visit my BF and he took me here to watch a game. Great place for the family! They have a little bit for everyone: restaurant, bowling ally, games, shuffle board, pool tables, bars, poker room and TVs galore.
I’ve never had their food here before but apparently they’re known for the nachos! I’ve seen a few pass by me and yeeaaahhh, definitely something to shaaaarre. It’s huge!
There’s a bar upstairs for 21+ which was nice because we were away from hustle and bustle of everything

Great place to bring the kids. Even if you don’t bowl the arcade upstairs is a huge draw. Kids and adults love it!!! Even the sports bar downstairs has great food and huge TV’s. Something here for everyone!!! The luxury lanes are a great addition!!!
There is even a 22 and over bar upstairs to enjoy! Which is a nice place away from the noise.

It’s okay. It has pretty much everything you could ever dream of at a place to have some entertainment… beers, big tv’s, places to eat dinner, bowling, game areas where you can collect tickets.
We went to have a night watching some college football, fairly overrun with high school kids on dates and little kids up stairs playing games and collecting tickets. I am not the fun police but I most likely will go somewhere else to go grab beers with my old college buddies.
If you’re in high school this is a good place to grab a bite and some games with freinds or date but in reality if youre older than say… 21? You might be able to find some better places to go aorund town.

Uh, well…
Bowling is good, arcade had couple things broken and the restaurant is… Well judge for yourself based on photos included in this review. We didn’t dare to order more than fries and even that arrived … Messy. I can’t imagine what’s going on in the kitchen.
Bowl there sure, but don’t eat there.

Good things come in big packages!
Big Al’s is quite the place. Been here about four times for date nights and meeting friends and overall it’s been impressive each time. At first it can be a little overwhelming. There’s bowling over here, a restaurant somewhere over there, bar in the middle, loud machines going off above you, wow, a lot going on. After you take a few minutes and walk around it all makes sense.
Food and Drinks– Typical sports bar menu. Pizza, burgers, sandwiches, salads, fried goodness, etc. Nothing fancy, just decent food, and not overly expensive for what you get and the portions are pretty big. My favorite so far is the pizza. Nicely done without gobs of cheese turning the crust super greasy. Plus there was a great veggie option for me and they’re glad to do a half and half which makes it easier.
Great selection of drinks, especially craft brews on tap. They smartly have a lot of local beers available, which can be a problem at chain restaurants. Some fun cocktails as well. Drinks area way overpriced, but it’s a chain place, and of course this is where they’re going to make money.
Bowling– Well taken care of bright and shiny lanes. You may have to wait awhile for a lane if they get really busy, but otherwise it’s fine. Everything is clean and the check in process is simple.
Atmosphere– Brilliant! Restaurant is built amphitheater style in front of what has to be the largest big screen tv in Oregon. Fantastic to catch a Blazer game! Highly recommend this. Big Al’s aims to please and keep you around awhile and they put a lot of effort into quality service, ambience, and attention to detail. With as busy as it gets, the restrooms are always nice and clean which is important.
Negatives– Great place for families, but keep in mind that it is big and loud and a little crazy at times with people running around. They don’t exactly have the best flow and it can be hard to figure out where to go to get started. It would really help having a hostess at the front asking what you would like, i.e. bowling, dinner, kids games, etc. Really would help a lot.

Big Al’s … Big Al’s … I’ve had to think about you overnight to figure out what I wanted to say. The company who employs me decided to have the «company picnic» at your facility rather than go back to Oaks Park where they had been doing for maybe 30 years. That’s a long time.
Everything was more than generous on my employer’s part, and we had the place to ourselves for a couple of hours. Drinks (alcoholic and regular) were served (gin and tonic for this girl, beer for my companion). Plenty of food on the buffet table (quite nice picnic fare such as hamburgers and hot dogs and plenty of sides). Free bowling and arcade games for everybody. Service to all of us there was impeccable and friendly.
After a college foray in a bowling class for PE credit that turned into a train wreck (I have a pretty funny story about that, but will demur right now), and the fact that two year olds can beat me at arcade games, I didn’t dip my bill into either of those. What was left was sitting, eating, and greeting.
Your facility is really too cavernous for intimate conversations between this many people, so people ended up sticking with their own groups at separate tables. Several ended up working the room and pressing the flesh or hugging all the cute kids like politicians. The drinks were good. The best part of the good buffet were the brats which were delicious with some good snap on biting in and some excellent spice. Would love to know where you got those. The facility overall is in excellent condition and was very, very clean as were the bathrooms.
The whole experience mostly reminded me of having a picnic in a Vegas casino. Not necessarily bad, but certainly not great. When so many people work so hard these days and don’t have a lot of family bonding time, this seems like a strange and expensive place to me to be promoted as a family-​friendly fun place. It also reminds me of Chuck E. Cheese, not a favorite with me. I gave you the three stars because many of the adults and children in our group had a great time bowling and using the arcade games and because of the excellent and hard work that your staff did to bring our company together for an overall good experience. But I hope our company thinks about returning to Oaks Park next year to a more traditional picnic setting in the great outdoors.

This review is based solely on their restaurant: I would just advise stay away from the food, but the drinks are fine to order. I understand it’s a sports bar type restaurant, but I expect their food to uphold a certain standard.
Our friend asked the waitress for some pepper jack cheese to put on his burger and she came out with a slice of American cheese sprinkled with some hot pepper flakes. Who does that? Then when the waitress was confronted, she did admit this is how they do pepper jack here and admitted it was not conventional, but it tasted real good she said. I just feel iffy about it. How can a huge restaurant only carry cheddar and American cheese only? Makes no sense to me.
Our boneless wings were mediocre at best-​all breading and not much chicken present, and our other friend’s burger order kept coming out wrong after he said something.
Even though we were still hungry after the fact, we just decided to wait and grab food elsewhere. Sorry restaurant in Big Al’s, you did not impress me.