The Bear’s Den

pizza and bears. Great place all around the food was good but the Bears were the highlight. The negative reviewers that posted on here are too picky and expecting gourmet style pizza and bears doing circus acts. Totally unreasonable and Unilocal should have an option to shame these people for their delusional reviews.

My family and I LOVE The Bear’s Den! Such a fun place to eat and the pizza/​mac and cheese is amazing! Highly recommend!

I have to say this was a bad experience all around. The wildlife ranch is great but the restaurant is not worth it. The tea tastes like burned rice. The ‘breadsticks’ were an awful thin pizza crust with Parmesan cheese. The cheese pizza took almost 40 minutes and came out burned. The crust tasted stale and had no flavor. The cheese was poor quality and the waitress only came by to give us our check. Her name was Cayenne. So please avoid coming here.

Absolutely love this place! My boyfriend and I always go on a Saturday (reservation only at 6:30pm) where we get to watch the bears eat, and get an a 4 course meal for a pretty decent price! The food is amazing! Highly recommend Purple Pig!

This place is great. The pizza and salad are of high quality, and the atmosphere is unbelievable. Make sure to go outside when Scott feeds the two live bears at dinner time. It’s awesome.

Good salad that’s big enough to share for two. The pizza had good quality toppings and a good crust. My only thing was that the sauce was too sweet. Great to be by the bears!

Purple pig pizza was surprisingly addicting! Never thought raspberry, alfredo sauce, and pulled pork would work on a pizza but it does! Service is decent. Only one size pizza but good enough r to share for up to 2 – 4 people. Thin crust which I usually don’t like but this was good b/​c they cook it in a real firey pizza oven fresh. You even get to keep the souvenir cup with your drink! $ 9-​$ 16 pizza. Also serving pasta, dessert, salads, breadsticks, and margaritas! Open to the bear habitat! I wonder if the Bears get hungry with the pizza smell! ;p Cool and casual place for friends or families visiting the Sharkanosa park!

Oh man. I found this place on Unilocal and thought it would be a fun stop after visiting the Texas Tulip Farm… Nope nope nope. Bad idea.
I didn’t realize we had to pay admission to the park to enter the pizza restaurant. Ok fine. We’re hungry and an hour and a half from home so hey let’s check out this place, how bad can it be?!
Well the service was fast and courteous at the restaurant but our table was dirty. We started with the cheese fries that were tasty. Given our dirty table but tasty fries, I was hoping there was room for redemption but I was wrong. We asked for ketchup and were given a bottle that could not have been cleaned in days, and I’m being optimistic here.
The pizza came out quickly and was fast enough but the dirty sticky table and filth ketchup must have deterred my appetite. Then the servers took my card for the bill, ran it, and then took my card two more times after that. No idea why, assuming they weren’t sure if I paid yet but now I’m checking my bank account to make sure my card number was not compromised.
Either way this restaurant was not a favorite ans not something I’d recommend people going out of their way for.
Also this restaurant was part of the wildlife «ranch» that really was code for sad animals in small cages and a «safari» led by a John Deere tractor. Not impressed.

Something fun to do with the family. The pizza was great and we could see the bears from where we were sitting. We came with an extremely large group. The waitresses were friendly and attentive. Once dinner was done, the gentleman talked about the bears, sat down with them on the picnic bench and gave them treats. There is a playground right next to the restaurant for the kids to play on while you wait for your food. We will certainly be back!

Great pizza! Awesome margarita! They were totally overrun today and understaffed but we had a great time.

This place was great! My family took me here when I was in town for a visit, and I was pleasantly surprised by how great the food was. The pizza was artisan, delicious, hot, and plentiful. I’ve lived in Chicago and San Francisco and been to great pizza places in both of those locations, and the pizza here could hold its own against many of those restaurants. The food was made with quality ingredients and many unique flavors were available. The bear show was interesting, and the guy who introduced the bears and talked about them was fun and informative. It was a great outing and a lot of fun. I highly recommend it for something a little different from an ordinary old dinner out!

This place was amazing. The pizza was so delicious, the waitress was very responsive, the man who let the bears out was very informative and nice about telling us about the bears, and the drinks were amazing. I can’t wait to go back.

What a gem of a place. Went there for the first time. The pizza was great and the staff extremely friendly. Will certainly be back and will invite our friends to join us at the restaurant as well.

Great pizza and fries. Great owner with a great cause. Love this place. Visited while camping but will make the trip from Fort Worth for a good meal and experience. Kids loved the animals.

This is a really cute place. It is in Sharkasosa, so plan accordingly. The pizza is very crispy and yummy. I was very surprised by how good the food was because of the location. The pizzas feed about 2 people each. I also recommend the cheese fries. They are the best. Great, cheesey and crispy. You cannot beat them. The place is great for kids. GREAT! There are bears right outside the window! Bears! The bear was eating at his table while we were inside eating. It was pretty awesome! The service was a bit dodgy, but I would return.

We came in at about 1:20, stood awkwardly inside the door not knowing if we should seat ourselves. 2 different waitresses (I think the only 2 working on a Saturday) walked by us without acknowledging us. The place was about ²⁄₃ full but it looked like everyone was finished and waiting for someone to bring them the bill. The other ¹⁄₃ of the tables were filthy, we found a clean table for 2 in the corner.
We sat for a few minutes looking around, someone finally came by to get us drinks. We were ready to order the purple pig based on reviews but the waitress didn’t ask if we were ready. We sat for 5 more minutes then our order was taken. We sat for 35 or 40 minutes waiting for our pizza thinking we had been forgotten. Finally the pizza came, it was burned on one half because someone left it in the oven too long. For whatever reason, the opening of the brick pizza oven was in the dining room. There were 2 tables on each side of the pizza oven. The table on the left was where the flour covered pizza trays were discarded. The right hand table was where the pizzas were prepped. They were sloppily prepped so maybe it’s better if the diners don’t see that part.
The pizza was laid in front of us. I had a bite and something wasn’t right. My girlfriend noticed that the half closest to her had cheap funky Kraft parmesan cheese all over it. We sat there wondering why it had parmesan all over it when the menu didn’t make any mention of it. They could’ve had shakers of parmesan on the table like every single pizza place ever.
The oven-​jockey last came over after perceiving that we were unhappy and said, «What’s wrong?» I said that the menu made no mention of parmesan and we’re not really fans. She said, «Oh, we ‘parm’ all our pizzas. I’ll make you another one.» The looks on our faces said, «We’re not waiting another 40 minutes…» so she said she’d «take it off.» This was when we just had to take a walk. Should’ve known better than to eat at the only restaurant on-​site here.

Another Groupon deal for me and a must if you take the trip to Sharkarosa Wildlife Ranch. Went with my two year old son and we had breadsticks with some amazing marinara sauce and a pepperoni, bacon and brisket pizza. The food was amazing and I was a little disappointed I didnt take the leftovers with me. Just didnt see how it would work since we ate before doing the wildlife ranch tour and I didnt know how pizza sitting in my car for a couple hours would work.
The service was exceptional. Food came out quickly and drinks were never empty. Like I said to start; if you go to Sharkarosa you need to stop here for food.

I was up later than I should have been one night when I saw some local news station run a story on Bear’s Den, a place waaaaay up north where I could supposedly eat exquisite pizza and dine with two live black bears. I live way far north so when I Googled the location, I found that it wasn’t as far as I thought. Always one looking for things to do with the kiddos (2 years old and almost 6 years old), I marked it in my calendar.
I read the Unilocal reviews and was almost, ALMOST turned off. There were brutal one-​star reviews that cited specific instances where there was poor service, long wait times, and alleged inhumane treatment of the bears in this Texas heat. Though recently in the last 6 months, I’ve grown to question Unilocal a little more and their selection of what reviews to show and what are and are not «recommended.» Let’s just say I no longer own stock in the company.
So tonight, on the tax free weekend (a Saturday), we made reservations (which were mandatory for Saturdays) for 6:30pm, hearing that we should arrive 30 minutes before. I called two separate times to confirm those details and the same girl answered both times, both courteous and answering my questions. We began the 45 minute drive out to Pilot Point and used the Google Maps app to get us there – some reviewers complained their maps weren’t quite getting them there. A giant sign with a bear let us know we had found it.
It was a scorcher tonight and we parked in a dirt parking lot and walked down a corral past the bear cages. Both bears seemed impervious to us as my boys yelled at them and waved. We found our way to a large metal barn building and entered to the glorious air conditioning. I was worried for many things alluded to in Unilocal reviews – the alleged snotty high school kids working there, the assigned seating, the whole unknowing of what we should do. Before I could get my panties into a wad though, one of those high school girls greeted us and told us to sit anywhere. We sat at an 8-​top and were given cheese pizza crust appetizers and marinara dipping sauce.
Our youngest is one of those who wants to be like his older brother so bad so he didn’t want the high chair. We gave him a go sans one at first, and like a tornado, he threw forks, napkins, and spilled drinks. We worked hard to clean up after him and the staff not only didn’t mind, but worked with us. When the little one pushed away the appetizers, they suggested some Cheetos, which they brought and the little guy loved. Again, most nights we don’t leave the house because the kiddo isn’t «restaurant trained» yet, but the staff was so kind with him and us that it reinvigorated us.
At 6:30 sharp, the owner of the place, Scott, lead us outside and we watched the two bears sit at a table and feast on a medley of fruits and veggies. I get that in 2015 some people may not be amused by this, but by God, the audience loved it (myself included). Here we were 4 feet away from wild animals who seemed happy and well fed to me. We went back inside and were served our second course – meatballs and a quiche. It’s here we realized that Saturday night is a course menu – adults were $ 25 a person and kiddos were $ 10 each (the little one for free). Meatballs were delicious!
Lastly, they set up a pizza buffet on the bar counter with a multitude of flavors. I’ve eaten a lot of pizza in my 34 years and this ranks right up there with the best of them. If I had one complaint (and I had to search hard to find one) is that one pizza had peanut butter on it and I’m allergic and no one could seem to remember which one it was. Oh well. I indulged on the scrumptious pepperoni and another jalapeño concoction. But man oh man, this was not a «glorified snack bar» as another Unilocaler said. If these guys were closer to me and delivered, I’d order weekly.
Little one began melting down and we had to get desserts to go. I can’t stress enough how great our server was – my 5-​year old even wrote «I LOVE YOU» on the top of our receipt in a bold manly move. We hate leaving a restaurant torn apart from the kids, but every time a fork was dropped the staff got to it quicker than us with smiles on their faces.
Unique experience, fun time, playground, delicious pizza, great service, and an owner that checked on us constantly. This is a do again with out of town relatives and grandparents because the boys and my wife and I loved it. Very, very impressed. Check my other reviews– I either love or hate a place when I use Unilocal.This was a love.

The Bears Den is a little non for profit pizza restaurant. All proceeds help offset the costs at the attached wild animal preserve Sharkarose. Pricing is very reasonable and they do serve alcohol.
If its your first time at the Bears Den, try the Purple Pig. Its one of our families favorites. The pizzas are cooked in an open pizza oven and cooked with a thin crispy crust. Alternatively, you can get any pizza on pasta noodles instead of a pizza crust. In both cases they are cooked in the pizza oven.
Immediately adjacent to the Bears Den is the Bears enclosure. So you can catch a talk on the animals while waiting on your food.
One warning, wait staff can be a bit hit or miss. However, given cost, where the proceeds go, and the general convenience, its a great excuse for the trip up to see the preserve.

Came from dallas… Definitely NOT worth the drive.
The bear show is within the first 30 min. so don’t be late!
Ehh not worth it. sad bears