Sally’s Saloon

Loved coming here. Outdoor patio was great. Devon, our server, was fun, attentive and we enjoyed $ 5 Burger Wednesday!

Kenzie K. was an outstanding waitress she provided an environment that was relaxing, welcoming and very attentive to her guest. It not often that you receive such great service from any restaurant especially one near a campus. I would recommend Sally’s and their service to all UofM and Minneapolis/St.Paul residents.

Service here is still terrible. Everyone has an attitude — no smiles. We were in again on a Sunday — not busy and got a nice spot at the bar to watch sports. Our entire group was nothing but friendly but we still sat for 15 mins with empty drinks as the bar tender chatted with another server. No apology for the delay.
This time we had food off of the regular menu and it left little to be desired. The majority of my Buffalo Chicken Wrap was lettuce. The fries are TERRIBLE! They are chunks of potato that are close to raw. How can you mess up french fries?! The location and good HH deals are still a draw but there are too many better places in this area that we won’t need to return any time soon.

Bouncer pushed me out. Only go here if you want poor service and a boot out the door when it gets busy and they need your table.

Super fun sports bar with incredible wings! Atmosphere is comfortable. Food and spirits were awesome! Highly recommend.

I’m not sure why people expect 5 star service at a college bar, but this place has cold beer, and is a great stop before and after a Gopher home game. The drinks are cheap during happy hour, and my server Trey was personable and always available. Looking for 5 stars? Dinkytown is college, so if youare older than 30, try to remember when you didnt give a shit about service. I’m sure most 21 year olds give this place 4 or 5 stars. It’s OK in my book.

It is great to see a lively bar located within the Stadium Village — East Bank campus. This place has been a hit after its opening. Whenever I walk past it, it is packed. Sally’s value proposition is to provide an atmosphere where people can go out for beers, listen to top-​40 songs, and watch sports on their gigantic TVs. That is great and all it offers. Keep in mind that beers are a bit expensive though, but drinks like gin & tonics are on par with the other bars on campus.
Also, if students think this is a true college bar, think again. It isn’t a bar where you wait until midnight for all the adults to leave and to start dancing with live music and such. There are many middle-​aged adults who are looking to drink after a Viking’s loss. I would think of Sally’s like your suburban Champs or Bonfire

Been here numerous times before games and the service, not for lack of effort, is terrible. The servers themselves are great, but they are stretched far too thin.

Went here while in town for the Chicago Blackhawks/​MN Wild stadium series game. As a Chicago native, we have high expectations for service — especially in relation to speed. Ended up liking the food so much we came back 3 times in 3 days.
Friday night we came for a late dinner, had the thai chicken wrap and the chicken ramen. Both were excellent, but I have to say I could probably eat the chicken ramen every day. Absolutely delicious and a HUGE portion.
Saturday we went for drinks and lunch before hockey game 1 of 2 for the weekend and we were blown away by our server, Desiree. She was absolutely fantastic and catered to our every need. Sometimes it took a little while to get alcoholic drinks, but it was very apparent that it was just due to how busy it was. Bartenders were getting drinks out as fast as they could.
We came back Sunday after our wonderful experience with Desiree on Saturday and even made sure to arrive right when you opened to ensure we could sit with Desiree again. Great food and service same as the day before. Again, sometime drinks were a little slow but the place was PACKED and the speed at which we got our drinks did not hinder our experience at all. We came back after the game and had a different server who was also wonderful and a Chicago girl as well.
Desiree definitely gets 5 stars, the only con I have is that when we were on the wait list on Sunday after the game it was frustrating to see people take tables after other guests had left instead of using the wait list like we had. The two hosts were friendly and helpful, but could only do so much in regards to getting to tables as quickly as they could to make sure the people waiting got the table. We waited for about 40 minutes for a table, which is completely reasonable for how busy it was after the game, but probably could have been sooner had tables not been taken by other patrons not on the wait list.

Wish I could give this zero stars.
Servers have no idea what they’re doing and should be trained more. Couldn’t tell the difference between a Mich Golden and a Guinness…
The food is awful. It tastes like it came out of the freezer and was microwaved.
Oh and management is extremely rude! I don’t think I have ever been treated like this in an establishment before.
If you’ve been to the «old Sallys» this is no where close to the same
Horribly disappointed when it re opened!
Don’t waste your time.

Great atmosphere. I had the steak tips and cheese curds and loved them both. Great service on drinks too.

Interesting place. Went here for a guys night out, 28^th birthday. We sat and observed the tomfoolery that went on between 10pm and 12am. Girls in tight dresses flirting with every guy in the bar. Girls in tight dresses making out with every guy at the bar. Girls in tight dresses disappearing and reappearing in a matter of minutes. The whole time I was wondering, are they really 21, some looked 30. It was a fun time though. Huge, beautiful tvs hanging on the back walls above the bar, awesome server who made me a lemon drop when it wasn’t on the menu. Another server forgot the jalapeño cheese curds we ordered but gave them to us for free an hour later, realizing he had forgotten. I would go back to Sally’s. For a Tuesday night business wasn’t too bad, this is college town after all.

Love this place! Came to visit my brother at the U for the weekend and ate here 3 times in 3 nights! Great prices and atmosphere! The dry rub wings are nuts!

Sat at the bar for 15min and then another 10 at a table. The servers seemed more concerned with larger groups then a party of three. The manager didn’t seem too concerned with loosing business. While I never received service there, I’m also not waiting over 30min for a bartender or server.

If you are looking for some pretty good food and great prices during Happy Hour this is a good choice. We tried it because it was a beautiful day and we saw that had a patio. On top of that I really wanted a beer :). They had a few different kinds for $ 2 including the very good Sally’s Amber. We tried the Jalapeño Cheese Curds (very good), Queso (OK), and a very delicious bowl of steak Ramen for $ 2 which was fantastic. The service was pretty good, and honestly at those prices unless it was completely lacking it probably wouldn’t bother me. We’ll definitely go back!

Oh Sally’s… I really do not like writing bad reviews but you have left me no choice.
We’ll start with the pros since I do like to see the glass half full.
Pros: It is a great atmosphere with a variety of seating types, booths, high tops, bar seating, and patio. Nice décor and a good mix of people. The happy hour prices are great too! The happy hour menu includes a variety of bar food and cheap rail drinks and beer.
Cons: Good food but a little on the salty side. I love salt on my food but it can be overpowering to those who don’t like to overdo it. During my visit we had the queso, dry rub wings, mild wings, and tachos. The queso is very thick so don’t order if you are expecting some kind of runny dip, the wings were pretty standard, the dry rub was salty so watch for that, and the tachos (tater tot nachos) were the star of the evening.
The worse part is that my friends and I almost missed the happy hour specials after waiting for almost half an hour to get our menus and another 20 for the server to take our order. I do not blame the server completely since it was obvious that the restaurant was severely understaffed on a busy Friday. Understaffing is not doing the restaurant or your staff any favors.
If you do chose to visit Sally’s I recommend avoiding Fridays. Also parking is very hard to find you can park on the street if you can find a meter or in the U of M Washington Ave Ramp.

We went in for their Wednesday wing bucket and drinks. We ended up ordering a drink and some tater tots additionally. Little did we know that we would order and it would take over an hour to get our food. Okay, fine. We can drink some and have a good time while we wait. Wrong. Our waitress never came back to our table. We got our one drink and no food in the first hour. We finally get our food and we end up having to go to the bar to get napkins for the wings because our waitress never comes back or asks how we are doing. The waitress finally decides to walk by (which she still ignored us) and ends up spilling water all over myself and a friend I am with. She doesn’t apologize or anything. She just responds with «oh, did I get you?» It was an entire glass; of course you got us. We finally flag her down for our checks and she ends up messing all of those up. We were there for two hours for two drinks and a bucket of wings. The food was okay but if you are just looking for bar food and cheap drinks go to Dinkytown or down further into stadium village.
Tl;Dr: terrible service, basic food took over an hour to get, and treated poorly by staff.

I LOVED this place in college, as I’m sure all people did back in the day. But I’d first like to say: the lack of love in this review is not due to a whole «you ruined my college nostalgia by giving the place a facelift!» deal. I’m actually very impressed with the upgrade, the place looks awesome and the addition of the giant screens will make it a great place to catch a Gopher game without having to buy a ticket to the game.
So… the 3 stars comes in for this reason alone: the service. We arrived WELL before happy hour was over, and half of our table missed out on the deals because our server would ghost us for large periods of time. This I may have been able to forgive, if she was nice about it. But after she messed up our order, and then proceeded to argue about our order and say that we may not get the HH deal on the wings she forgot to order, even though we originally ordered well before the 6pm cutoff. And she was pretty rude about the whole thing.
The food was OK… and really cheap on Happy Hour deals, so I’m not going to really fault them on $ 4.50 wings being average. It’s a saloon, not a 4-​star restaurant.
So… 3 stars it is. I’ll definitely give it another shot, and if they’ve worked out the kinks, I’ll upgrade the review. I’m rooting for you, Sally’s!

Do you guys remember when the reboot of the Ninja Turtles movie came out last summer and there was a huge backlash because the turtles looked like the goombas from the Mario & Luigi live action movie/​Splinter had a British accent? I feel like my experience at Sally’s caused me to have that same exact reaction because the restaurant that used to trigger so many great memories from college got «Michael Bay’d» and now is ruined forever. I was so excited to finally be able to try out the newly remodeled location so when my friends and I went there for happy hour, we were stoked to see how beautiful everything turned out… until we sat down. It took our server 35 minutes to bring us a menu and water… and then another 20 minutes to come back to take our order. Here is a summary of the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The Good: Great happy hour prices. Ridiculously cheap prices for rail drinks and full appetizers. Awesome décor, fun music, lots going on, cool patio, fun mix of people.
The Bad: The service. SO INCREDIBLY SLOW. It was so slow that half of our table missed the happy hour deals because it took our waitress almost an hour to bring menus and drink orders to the table.
The Ugly: They removed the buffalo chicken dip from their menu and decided to kick their food up 30 notches by adding like a pound of salt to everything. We had the queso (pretty much velveeta but way thicker), dry rub wings (aka salt city wings), mild wings (typical buffalo wings), and tachos (tater tot nachos-​actually pretty decent).
Overall, I am sad to say that I will not be returning for a while because for the first time, I left a happy hour not happy at all… good service goes a long way and after my experience, I can’t say there was any to be found at Sallys 2.0.

Sally’s is where my husband and I had our first date 12 years ago as U of MN undergrads, so we decided to go check it out now that it’s been rebuilt. We went during happy hour on a Sunday, and it was great. It’s reminiscent of the old building but way nicer (and um, cleaner haha). Our server was really friendly and the new décor and atmosphere is nice – it’s basically a giant, updated sports bar. But we liked it. The food was good, too. I got a veggie quesadilla (was tasty; lots of cheese and veggies –nothing «out of this world», but again, it’s bar food), tater tots (the BEST; hot and perfectly seasoned), and a spicy and strong Bloody Mary; and my husband got a buffalo chicken sandwich which he was really disappointed in as it had no buffalo sauce/​flavor at all. Overall I’d go back for HH for sure.

Beautiful new location. Got all of the happy hour specials– drinks, appetizers, and $ 3 burgers. I would recommend the cheese curds and the onion rings weren’t too shabby either. Wings were decent and the $ 3 burger isn’t much of a deal. All you get is a patty and a bun. Each add-​on is an extra .50 (aka mayo, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickle, cheese). And you’re back up to $ 6 for a plain old burger no fries or side. Loved the waitstaff, music and dog-​friendly patio.

Beautiful new restaurant and bar, but below average service. Our server always had to be asked for something and never initiated the sell. I would come back for drinks with hopefully another server. Ours was lethargic and seems to be pestered by our requests of more drinks… And this was us celebrating a graduation from the U of M. This is coming from a fellow server that’s been in the industry for over 10 years.

I went there for a happy hour. We ordered the sloppy tots and wings. The tots were OK but the wings were bad, hardly any meat on the wing and bland. The atmosphere/​décor was OK, I am bit nostalgic and miss the old Sally’s.

I recently went after the reopening and I was very satisfied. Me and 6 of my friends went to drink and get get their $ 5 bucket of wings deal on Thursday. The wing varieties were all on point and the tater tot chili appetizer was fire.
We ate a stomach full of wings for $ 6 dollars a person! The happy hour beer selection is HORRIBLE though, they recently removed Summit from the specials and now I don’t even know what to get.

I went there for lunch and to drink a couple of beers, what a service! We ordered beer right away but the beer never came, we waited for over 25 minutes until I went to talk to our server whom had disappeared. After that no one came over and we were ready for more beer until the manager stopped by and asked us how we were doing, we complained about the super slow service and he was apologetic. I was able to order a chicken quesadilla through him, which by the way was good, however after that no one came over for a long time. The manager came over again and this time he called a different server which was supposed to get us a second round of beer, finally. He told her to take care of us and to not charge for the first round of beer, to only charge for the quesadilla and the second round of beer. Soon after someone came over with a new quesadilla and no beer, I then explained what happened and got frustrated with the service. I ended up canceling my order and asked for the bill. The bill never arrived, but another manager or something did showed up, he asked about our order and I said I was still waiting for the bill to pay. He apologized and said we were covered and thanked us for coming over.
At the end it was nice that we were not charged for the food and beer. However that’s not what we came over for, we wanted to celebrate with some beer and food and have a good time. None of these happened.
I can try Sally’s again, however if it still the same I’ll probably go to Stub and Herbs. This place looks good but the service is super slow and inaccurate.

Considering it’s on a university campus, you’d think it’d be a little less pricey. I guess drunk college kids will pay whatever you ask them to. My drinks were too much, and the wings were highly mediocre. I also got the Ramen, which lo (mein) and behold was actually just Ramen with tasteless grilled chicken thrown in, even though the regular menu Ramen price is $ 6. Not even generous dousings of Tabasco sauce were able to fix it. Maybe the foods I didn’t try are worth their expense, but overall not enough bang for my swindled buck. Nice Kowloon-​esque donuts for many times the Kowloon-​esque price.

Great space! Great to have Sally’s open back on campus. Food was okay, nothing special. Hopefully it improves with time. Buffalo chicken sandwich was dry, other items just okay.

Horrible service. Sat at the bar for three or four minutes before the bartender felt enthusiastic enough to look up from her phone and notice us sitting there. And it wasn’t even all that busy! Plenty of bar seats open, and we occupied a very obvious spot.
This bartender left us alone with our menus for 20 minutes. We were only able to finally order food when ANOTHER bartender noticed we hadn’t been helped and had long finished our first round.
Placed food order. One appetizer, one sandwich. 30 minutes later, it arrives – an ETERNITY to wait on a night that wasn’t remotely busy. Our first bartender finally asked us if we wanted another round just before the food came – damn near an HOUR between requests from the person who had originally helped us. So much lazing about, texting – all the signs of a bar that’s languishing after years, NOT a newly opened joint. At least the food was good, though hardly exceptional.
In short, it was just like the old Sally’s. Gave it another chance, but I probably won’t be coming back.

They have a lot of room to improve, to sum it up.
I went the second day after they opened this new version of an otherwise UMN iconic restaurant. It’s now a biker’s sports-​bar, with two motorcycles at the ceiling, tatooed servers, metal furniture, food with a Mexican twist.
The Philly Cheese Steak used to be really good. Now it’s just another item on the menu. No games anymore. Very loud. Coziness is gone. Patio has about 10 tables currently, in a surprising location, with 3 high walls surrounding it, somehow invaginated in this dorm/​apartment building on Washington Ave.
Will update this review when it’s worth the effort. I am hopeful.