Grand Central Restaurant & Bowling Lounge

Great place to hangout with friends! They have some unique games upstairs that you wouldn’t normally see at a bowling alley. The bar is fully stocked and the food menu is varied. If you’re wanting to bowl by the game, it’s a bit cheaper if you go later in the evening. If you go between 6−11PM on Friday or Saturday it goes up to $ 48/​hour. If you have slow bowlers in your group… go after 11PM. The atmosphere of this place was a lot of fun. It’s unfortunate that there aren’t more places like this around.

Ate dinner upstairs near the arcade, server came and took our order and left. We just allied for waters to drink. We were never even given waters or silverware. Someone brought our food out, left, I had to go GO UP TO THE BAR to ask for water and forks to eat our food. Service was terrible, if you can even call it service. Also, the Mac and cheese was so poor tasting that I would literally rather eat Kraft. Skip the disappointment and go somewhere else.

I have never been compelled to write a review before… Absolutely awful service, we were the only 3 at the bar & it took LITERALLY 25 minutes to order a drink (Renee & Shaina) They also told us the kitchen was closed while they were still serving drinks for another 20 minutes which is illegal per OLCC. Won’t be back or allow friends to frequent.

I came here with a group of 10 for a birthday party. Our lane ended up breaking down and we didn’t get to finish our second game. For the inconvenience they gave us coupons for a few free games and took 30mins off the bill.
Pros
Upscale bowling
Arcade on 2^nd floor
Great food
No bowling league
They had the Blazers game on the TV as we played!
Cons
A little spendy
They couldn’t get our lane working so we sat around for 40 minutes

My girlfriend and I wanted to go bowling, so we called to see if there was a wait and there wasnt. We went in and were told the rate to bowl was $ 30 – 45 /​hr on Friday and Saturdays (not including shoe rentals). It would’ve been nice if we were informed of this on the phone since that’s a ridiculous rate just for two people who want to go bowling.

So a group of my friends decided to celebrate our finals being done!
Played games upstairs for like 1 – 2 hours.
Double the tokens after 8pm if you get them from the BAR. JFYI.
There are games also on the first floor but the majority are upstairs.
Got a few beers.
And bowled.
You can drink beer while bowling. They have nice couches to sit on.
Downside. Party of six per lane and basically to one couch if it’s busy and there’s another group right next to you.
Overall good atmosphere. Decent size drinks for the price of beer.

Staff was amazing, food was amazing, bowling was amazing. Best bowling alley in Portland, by far. It’s like a Big Al’s, but better. Gotta check this place out if you haven’t.

Went in to reserve a lane at 9:32pm. Said a lane would be available at 10:45pm, and they took down my information. Received a call at 10:38pm about our lane being available and that we had 10 minutes to check in. Get to the front desk at 10:45pm to find out that our lane was given away and that we’d have to wait another 20 minutes… yeaaaa…not cool.

I was in charge of planning my work’s belated holiday party so I thought bowling would be fun. Grand central was conveniently located by my work. I called and made a reservation for 20 people about a week ahead of time.
When I arrived, they had the lanes ready for us. They made it easy for my to use the company credit card on everything besides alcohol and let people know that they had to pay for their alcohol separately. They made everything very easy for me!
It was our best company party yet! We will probably be holding more parties there.
One negative was that I made the reservation until 5 pm but at 4:30 pm they started setting up for the next party and we felt like we were getting pushed out.

A bowling alley done right. It’s big, comfortable, clean and offers plenty of things to do outside of just bowling (sports games, pool table, shuffle board, an upstairs loaded with games like pop a shot).
I’ve also had good luck with the staff. The last time we visited, we were promised a lane but someone else ended up with it (miscommunication). Hailey and her manager made sure to take care of us through what could have been a really frustrating situation. This is the second time they’ve gone out of their way to ensure our experience was a good one (last time they let us stay a little longer on a lane before the next group showed up).
Tl:dr | Clean. Fun. Accommodating staff. Lots to do outside bowling. Can’t wait to go back.

The atmosphere is great. Good food, good drinks. Reasonable prices on everything. And if you’re lucky to come during Happy Hour — Even Better. Small Menu, which is good. What’s better is that everything looks good.

Stopped here for a few hours. All the NFL games were playing on a Sunday afternoon. I had the cheese burger and a cup of coffee. Service was very good, thank you to the bartender Amanda for a wonderful afternoon. I will come back often. Thank you guys.

the experience dining here was so bad i’m trying to erase it from memory.
the restaurant was empty, the service was so lacking it actually irritated me.
the food was greasy decent bar food, but not enough to justify ever coming here.

We had a blast at this disco/​nightclub/​sports bar bowling alley. The volume was too high to recommend a long stay, but with a groupon deal and a a really lovely server, we were in business for a couple games.
On a Saturday afternoon so there were lots of football games going and multiple birthday parties, so there was a high level of madness and noise.
Good choice of beers, killer nachos and bar-​type snacks, nothing original or unique on the menu but we all enjoyed the snacks.
Reservations are a must, but with that in mind we made them the same day and had no trouble coming in later.

We planned our staff team-​building day at Grand Central and they were so accommodating and wonderful about it. I work at a non-​profit, and the manager of grand central gave us a discount so we were able to get everything within our budget. They even gave us free tokens for the arcade.
Aside from the great service, it’s a nice space and the bowling was great. Thank you!

Now charging $ 55 an hour to rent one lane on Friday nights. My friend and I couldn’t finish three games in that time, so we paid approximately $ 10 a game.
I’m a lifelong bowler, so I can tell you that the approach was filthy with sticky beer, which prevented my shoes from sliding properly. Waitress wiped up the mess with a wet towel and then my friend slipped on the water, causing her to fall. Her hips and legs are still sore a few days later.
Music videos were good, as was the music they played. Drinks were decent.

I want to like this place but the surprising high cost of everything prevents me from giving this a higher rating.
First off, $ 60 for 4 people to bowl 2 games. Whoa! That is $ 6 a game. Now I know this is 2015 and prices have gone up but that seems excessive.
Secondly, the food is far far too expensive. 6 potato skin wedges cost $ 9.95. 6 pot stickers were $ 9.95. The Baja Tacos were $ 10.95. Add on some drinks and you’re well over $ 50 already.
We came here to celebrate birthdays and we did have a good time but the prices are far to astronomical for me to return any time soon.

We had reservations, but they had an equipment malfunction taking out lanes, and apparently we were the group to get screwed because we had three lanes. Never mind that there were plenty of open lanes when we arrived, but apparently they were saving those for later patrons. This along would not account for their rating, but certainly doesn’t help. They offered us $ 5 worth of arcade tokens.
The bowling was fun, and the lanes seemed to be in good shape, but they had half the lanes shut down, and they had a football game on, and the crowd was very loud and raucous. Got kind of annoying after a while. The food is over priced, the drinks as well. They do have waitress that comes out and serve you, but they don’t come out frequently enough.
Basically, the alternative to driving to the suburbs to for to Big Als. Given that all the old school bowling places seem to be closing, may be the only option for bowling in town soon. May come back at some point, but in no hurry.

Games, IPAs and nachos happen to be three of my favorite things. Grand Central happens to be a great place to find a combination of those three things.
Just about every time I’ve gone to Grand Central I’ve gotten the nacho. I get nachos at least once at just about every restaurant I can. These nachos are my favorite. My last visit to Grand Central, my girlfriend’s friend asked to share the nacho with me. I tried to make «no f***ing way» sound as polite as possible.
After taking down the nachos I usually either bowl or head upstairs to play video games. Bowling here is pretty expensive ($ 48/​hour) and usually pretty packed. The games upstairs are a more reasonably priced form of entertainment. Plus, the games give me the opportunity to impress my girlfriend with my sweet skee-​ball skills.

Went here for our company party this year, and was not impressed. There was no hostess or anyone to direct us to our party, just some vague signage. Once we located our group, we were given drink coupons and tokens. The service from there was downhill. Multiple people commented about the service, or lack there-​of, from the bartenders. At previous parties at other locations, the staff actually seemed to want us there; I got the complete opposite feeling from this group. When they served dinner, which included steak, there were no knives. I had to ask for some, which ended up being butter knives, not steak knives. It probably took 10 minutes from the time I asked for knives for them to show up. Meanwhile people were trying to cut the not-​so-​tender steak with forks… to no avail.
From food to service, I was not impressed. The bowling was the only redeeming factor of the night, in my humble opinion.