Chatterbox Pub

Tonight we are engaging in a holiday tradition by request of our daughter.
We go to the Macy’s display and the Chatterbox Pub. We usually go to the Chatterbox in St. Paul, which has more of a family feel. The St. Paul location is larger, has board games to check out and several retro game systems for the kids to play. This is what we expected when we walked into the Minneapolis location. Uh, not so much. We walked into the bar section and thought we got the wrong place. The bartender instructed us to go through the hallway. On the other side we found the similar décor. There is a Sega and a Nintendo that my daughter water to play. According to our server, it was being tinkered with last night and not sure if it works, daughter disappointed. The «techie guy» never came back to get it running.
It is an older location that, according to my daughter, smells like history.
My hubby had the Kentucky beer burger or something, he liked it, but over cooked.
I had the grilled cheese and tomato bisque. I only got half because my 10 year old daughter kept asking for bites.
Kaitlyn did like her kids Mac and cheese, too.
The red pepper sour for the fries is way garlicky!
All in all, I think we will go to St. Paul for the family atmosphere.

Went here for my son’s birthday and to try the mac and cheese. Ordered a bunch of appetizers which were delicious and played games while we waited for our food. The kids loved the old Nintendo and Atari which ALMOST made us forget than an hour had gone by since we ordered. So since it was close to 9 and the kids were getting restless I asked our server if our food would be out soon. She hurried back in the kitchen to check and when she came back she proceeded to tell me that she forgot to let us know that they were out of mac and cheese. Mind you 4 out of the 5 people in our group ordered mac and cheese, not sure how you all of a sudden forget that you’re out place the order and fail to say anything. The place was dead for a Friday night which didn’t bother us just not sure why all the tables were dirty and the server was doing such a poor job. We watched a number of people come in, sit down, wait, and wait some more and then eventually walk out because she never came to their table. Pretty sad because we made a reservation and told them it was my son’s birthday. Needless to say he left in tears and everyone was hungry as we had to find another place to eat. Not easy to find a place to eat with children after 9 on a Friday in Minneapolis but because of the awful situation we had no choice. We ended up finding a much better place that accommodated us and had plenty of mac and cheese. They also took very good care of my son for his birthday.
We drove all the way from Elk River to check out this place because it got such great reviews. Not sure how anyone had anything positive to say. I would actually give 0 stars if I could but the 1 star is strictly for the old games that brought back childhood memories. Never again! !!!

Mac and cheese is what I say to be phenomenal, but the bf wasn’t impressed. We were equally unimpressed with service, one beer entire bowl of Mac n cheese and hot wings gone– no water. But hey its convenient I’ll come back!

So… you have that old pair of shoes right? They kinda smell. They have holes. They definitely aren’t fashionable. You should stop wearing them. But you don’t. You justify. They’re comfortable. This is the chatterbox for me.
It kinda smells. The food is not anything special. The beer is run of the mill. They often don’t have the wine that’s listed on the menu. The service isn’t going to blow your skirt up anytime soon. But…
It’s comfortable. I can bring my little darlings here and play a game and have a glass of wine and mac n cheese. I know no one is going to give me the stink eye because the baby is throwing a toy around. It’s loud enough that it’s comfortable. Plus, I met my husband here. So my girls like to see where mommy met daddy. Awww.

Haven’t laughed so hard at lunch… since I can remember. Terrance was one of the best servers we’ve ever had… I love the bacon!!! The staff at chatterbox pub made us feel welcome and at home… even though we didn’t play Nintendo or Sega, it was awesome to see that there to entertain their guests… most definitely would go again and whoever gave these guys 1 star must have been having a bad day!!! Thanks chatterbox for an awesome experience!!!#

It’s impossible to be this bad by accident.
Like other reviewers, I went to this restaurant because I’ve had good experiences at the Highland location. I’d had a bad experience at this location once before, but figured it had probably been a fluke, and I was willing to try it again.
Mistake.
It was truly, laughably bad. Poor cleaning, poor service, poor food.
We arrived and were directed to sit at a booth on the «bar» side of the restaurant. This area of the restaurant was mostly empty, with lots of extra tables. The booth we were directed to sit at was filthy. The table was greasy, scattered with crumbs and (this is not a joke) a dead fly. We should have just left then, but didn’t. Mistake.
Our waitress came by shortly after we sat down and brought us some ice water and took our drink orders. My glass was dirty – not just water stains, but actual remnants of the last person’s drink. It clearly hadn’t even been rinsed, just dumped and refilled. Bits of pulp and small dark seeds floating in the water indicated that the person before me had ordered the strawberry lemonade. (I was relieved when I realised that the dark bits were strawberry seeds; I’d initially thought they were more dead flies.)
The waitress brought our drink order, and, upon request, replaced my gross water glass. We asked for another moment to look at the menu. Mistake: she didn’t come back for almost twenty minutes. All of our drinks were finished long before we had a chance to even order food. (I’d ordered the house ginger ale, my favorite drink at the other location, but was disappointed: it was weak and watery, and not at all the drink I usually enjoyed.)
We did discuss leaving at this point, but were both so hungry that it seemed to make more sense to stay here than to find another place to eat and start the whole process over. Mistake.
When our server finally returned to take our order, it took a couple false starts before I was able to request a dish that they weren’t out of. I eventually ordered fish and chips. (Mistake.)
We never saw our waitress again.
Forty minutes later (by then, the slow service was so comical that we were keeping close watch on the time), a different staff person came by and said that our food was on its way.
More than an hour after we came in and sat down, we got our food. It was mediocre at best. My companion had ordered wings, and got a tiny, appetizer-​sized portion. By process of elimination, I’d ordered the fish and chips, which was awful. The fish was rubbery. There was no vinegar (why even call it «fish and chips» if you’re not going to offer any vinegar for dipping? Just be honest and call it fish sticks and french fries), which was disappointing but not surprising. The tartar sauce served in lieu of the vinegar was warm, yellowed, and looked like it had been sitting out for days. I didn’t dare eat it.
Long after we’d finished eating, someone came by with the check, and quickly disappeared before we could ask for anything. (Our drink glasses had been empty ever since our original waitress disappeared ages ago. We were averaging one sighting of a staff person every twenty minutes, and that’s generously including the person who’d initially pointed us to the greasy table in the first place.)
Reasoning that it might take another hour for someone to come by and swipe our card for us, we left cash on the table and fled the restaurant.
To recap: Restaurant was filthy. It took over an hour to receive our food, which was awful. In that hour+ amount of time, not one person stopped by to refill our drinks, which were mediocre and served in dirty glasses.
I’ve worked in food service. I know things go wrong sometimes. But this was just amazingly, phenomenally bad. I can’t imagine it being the result of anything but complete apathy on the part of every staff person working that night.
Avoid this place.

The service is awesome. things have really changed around for the better since the new management. Try the burgers!

The Chatterbox has lost whatever magic it used to have; Spotty service, mediocre food, and no apparent effort to clean up the interior after so many successful years. The music has always been too loud, but it was forgivable in the past with the din of people enjoying themselves. Now it’s just annoying. The menu used to be exciting and tempting. The sandwich I ordered was overcooked and the bun was dry and crumbly. One server who helped me was pretty terrific, but the other, my main server, though polite enough, was incredibly inattentive in the nearly empty dining room. It wasn’t just this latest trip that left me unimpressed. The Chatterbox Pub has been heading consistently downhill for several years. I guess this was my last visit. See ya, Chatterbox.

The chatterbox is a great lunch spot. Terrance took care of us and did an amazing job. He is very funny and was worth the price of admission. Food was awesome. Our group has never laughed so hard during a lunch. Go to the chatterbox and you won’t be disappointed.

It’s a shabby restaurant thought the ideas of providing game are nice. Servers came slowly, orders came slow, service is poor. Literally took us an hour to get our food and the restaurant wasn’t that busy.
Not a clean place either.

I’ll preface this review by stating that the Highland Park Chatterbox was the first restaurant I visited in the MSP area, and a major factor in convincing me that a move to Minnesota was a great idea. I’ll concede that service there can be slow but the food is awesome. It was on the strength of my experience at the Highland Park location, and its proximity to other places we’d be while up in the cities, that I chose to bring a group of friends to the Midtown Chatterbox Pub for dinner on my big bachelor party day in the city.
The experience started out rough, we came in through the side door and didn’t see any staff anywhere, or if we did they were masterful at blending in to the crowd. I wandered over to the bar and waited a minute to be acknowledged, before getting the ‘sit anywhere you’d like.’ It seemed like the bartender and one server were the only front-​of-​house staff on what was clearly a busy Saturday night, so we ended up having to bus our own table to find a place that would seat the five of us.
To his credit the server came out soon after we were seated to clear away the bouquet of used glasses from the last diners and get our drink orders, and those drinks came out again in a reasonable amount of time. What didn’t happen, however, was our server later asking anyone if they wanted refills or waters to replace our empty glasses. This becomes important later.
After a while the server came back around to take our order, we asked for a Pretzel and Beer Cheese fondue as an appetizer for the table and various burgers, sandwiches, and mac&cheese for our meal, and were then left to our own devices again. When the appetizer came out the server failed to bring out any sort of small plates, which made eating it a complicated dance of hand contortion to desperately prevent dripping cheese all over the table or ourselves. After varying levels of success or cheesy embarrassment, and a mostly-​consumed pretzel loaf, the meal came out.
First, the simple goof: I was given fries instead of the roasted red pepper mashed potatoes I ordered, but the server was able to correct that. No biggie.
Next, the Very Bad Thing: I had asked for my Hellcat Inferno (the spicy burger) to be served rare because I appreciate a burger that isn’t an overcooked, desiccated husk. I’m guessing it was the first thing onto the griddle and then off again, and by the temperature of my plate spent more time than it ought to under a heat lamp while everyone else’s dishes were finished. This means that instead of a warm inside, as rare should be, the burger was literally (and I am using the word correctly) bursting with scalding hot juices. I took my first bite and my upper-​lip was sprayed with a concoction of flash-​burn-​temperature juices and spicy sauce.
Let me be very clear: I suffered a second-​degree partial thickness burn on my upper lip from the scalding juices of a burger left sitting under a heat lamp for too long.
Of course the initial pain was made worse by the fact that this was the spicy burger and all of those Scoville units had open access to raw skin. As soon as I felt pain I wiped off the juices as best I can with my already-​used-​up napkin that had suffered the brunt of my aforementioned cheesy clumsiness, but as pointed out above the server failed to offer any sort of water or drink refills so I had nothing, no cold liquids at all, with which to cool the burn.
I’d like to say I’m proud of myself for not unleashing a stream of profanities that would have silenced the restaurant, but in hindsight doing so may have made the situation more emergent to the staff. As it was I had to get up and hunt down the server on the other side of the restaurant to explain to him that I had just been burned, and that I expected that when I got back to the table from cleaning my wound in the restroom there’d best be a glass of ice water waiting.
After washing off my face in the restroom (which seemed a bit dingy, if we’re writing a review) I got back to the table, but that glass of ice water didn’t come out for a few more painful minutes. The server didn’t give any indication of believing that something was wrong until I stopped him, turned on my phone’s light so he could see in the surprisingly-​dark restaurant, and showed him the red, raw blister already forming on my upper-​lip.
Now I know there’s nothing he can do to reverse the situation at that point, but I would have expected something more sincere than a surprised «huh» and no further mention of or apology for the temporary facial disfiguration I suffered because this location’s cook doesn’t know how to time a table’s dishes so they’re all ready to be plated and go out within a few minutes of each other.
I’ll go back to other Chatterbox Pubs, but absolutely won’t visit this location again.

Go with a Groupon. I really want to love this place. I’ve gone with friends probably around 10 times. The atmosphere is fun and the games are enjoyable. All that to me feels like a rather successful distraction from the food that falls short of keeping the promise that the restaurant seems to make.
The beer tastes like it’s made from kits designed to reflect already exiting options. They are fine, just lacking in character somewhat considering the growing standards to microbrew in the TC.
The root beer is actually really nice but it doesn’t qualify for the happy hour so I have a hard time dropping what, if I remember right, is about $ 6.
Do not under any circumstances eat the apple crisp in the desert menu.

The service was good and friendly, but it was way too dark in the bar to be able to play any games. I was disappointed because I had been wanting to go here to play games and have drinks.

There is a good choice of drinks and happy hour pricing is good. They do have WiFi.
This location, unfortunately, is not as fun as the Saint Paul location. You pay a premium for beer and food and the atmosphere is lackluster. It can get really loud, one time we were playing one of the trivia games and I couldn’t even hear the person across my table reading the questions. Also, it does smell a little stale.
I did also have one bad experience where I ordered some food… not at happy hour… with a Groupon and the waitress seemed really angry with me. I was completely embarrassed at the end, even though I had paid cash for the food, I felt like I was treated like I was trying to take advantage. I also heard the server telling someone in the back (loudly) about my misunderstanding.
Okay, I cried. But, who says Happy Hour can’t be sad sometimes?

The Good: My wife and I love the food. We’ve got our favorites, so it makes it hard to branch out at times. Excellent beer selection. Generally, the music is pretty rad. Silent TVs. Friendly staff.
The Bad: As mentioned in other reviews, the staff seem to see their workplace as a hangout instead of a … workplace. They talk loudly about personal issues and complain about work schedules; however, they ARE very friendly. If it is super cold outside, you don’t want to sit within sight of the door.
The Rest: The Mac & Cheese is awesome.

I have visited their St. Paul location and had great experiences there. Therefore, I had similar expectations when I came in here. I am saddened to say that I was disappointed in my experiences here. The food and service didn’t measure up near to what I came in here expecting.
I think it’s a brilliant idea that they offer a variety of games, whether it would be cards, board games, or video games. That makes the business so much more unique and enjoyable compared to a lot of neighborhood restaurants I’ve attended. Unfortunately, the food didn’t taste that great, and the food servings were not that big. Also, the servers didn’t seem enthused to be at their jobs. To give them credit, they were friendly. Unfortunately, their lack of enthusiasm ruined the experience. Also, the décor didn’t look very exciting.
In the future, I am going to stick with the St. Paul location and avoid this location. St. Paul does a far better job.

Started with the beet salad. I’ve had better, and I’ve had worse. Then, shared the California Dreamin’ Burger (organic baby greens, local tomato, basil-​pinenut pesto mayo, pickles) with my daughter. She LOVED the food. Great neighborhood restaurant. So appreciative that there are so many choices of places to dine in the area.

I’m basing this review solely on my time spent on their patio… we’ll see how I feel come winter!
I’ve never eaten an actual meal here, but I do come here for drinks and appetizers fairly often now that I live reasonably close. They only have wine or beer but I love their Bloody which is made with Sake and I love their Strawberry Lemonade Mimosa which has chunks of strawberry floating in it. Drinks come in regular or tall and I almost exclusively go for the tall… which means I wind up spending hours on that patio! It’s not super sunny but it’s relaxing and — in true Chatterbox tradition — you can choose from their collection of board games if conversation begins to decline! Service is alright and the food is average bar food… huge portions of deep fried appetizers — and the hummus is good but it comes with cheese and cheesy-​pita bread which reduces the health factor significantly.
All-​in-​all, I like coming here for the basics: tall drinks, patio, and friend time.

I have been to the other two Chatterbox Pub locations, so I figured I would give this one a try!
We walked in, and walked right back out.
I literally felt gross in here.
I understand the vintage look they are going for. The other locations portray this perfectly. However, this place just feels nasty.
We couldn’t find anyone to serve us, we walked to the other side of the joint to find someone and ended up having to walk through a little hallway that I’m not even sure the public is allowed to walk through. It showed right into the kitchen areas and it grossed me out.
We ended up finding someone, and she said to seat ourselves and she’ll find us. She was very nice, but we just decided nevermind. We walked out onto their side patio (which was cute) and escaped through the fence.
I would say try the other two locations before even considering this one. :(

I took my boyfriend here for his birthday on a Sunday night because I’d heard good things about it and we LOVE video games.
I really wanted to have a good time but from the get-​go it was nothing special. No one greeted us or told us how the pub worked (games, etc). We seated ourselves and waited for a waitress. Two women helped us out but one of them didn’t seem to know what was going on. We had to ask for a game «menu» and when we chose one THEN she told us the Nintendo was broken and that the only Atari they had was being used. Poor service and communication.
The food was something I could have made much better in my kitchen. We ordered the fondue and it came with a bowl of cheese that was filmed over, old bread, and Crystal Farms cheese that we buy from the grocery store (along with popcorn that had clearly been sitting for a while or even popped in the microwave!)
One of the worst experiences I’ve had at a restaurant for a while in a place that’s supposed to be fun! I never thought I’d be sad to have to go back to a restaurant due to a Groupon.