The Union

Great cajun inspired fare will bring you in, excellent local live music will keep you there and bring you back. With a good supply of competitive eateries in downtown Kalamazoo, this continues to be my go to.
Oct 7th, 2020

Honestly, The Union is usually pretty great and my family has been coming here loyally for years. Especially on Thursday nights, their 50% off from 3-5pm is an amazing deal. We love it. But tonight was just absurdly bad. We arrived at 3. Got seated right away, put in drink orders right away and food orders about 20 minutes later. At 330, the waitress (Angela, she says she’s been there since August but she is clearly Very New) apologized that she had just spilled our drinks and they were being remade. My husband’s drink showed up at 345 and finally, at 405 (more than an hour after I’d ordered the thing), my drink showed up. Over an hour. With some apologies from Angela and the Manager who we brought over to the table after Angela failed to go get her upon our request. The food arrived late, as well (at least 45 minutes from order to arrival) and mine was scorched (photo attached) and my sister’s didn’t have the shrimp she’d ordered with it. Angela botched at least one drink order and the supposedly free first round wouldn’t have been free for my mom if I hadn’t analyzed her receipt. To cap it all off, she went around when we were asking for our bills and asked each of us to recite our orders to her because she apparently hadn’t written them down? I get it. Several folks at our table have worked in restaurants/bars and know how crazy it can be. But we weren’t the only table receiving terrible service and this was clearly a failure on multiple fronts. There very likely weren’t enough people working (even though it was much less busy than usual Thursday nights) and those who were working were likely getting an earful from angry customers like us. I sure hope they lost a lot of money this evening because it absolutely doesn’t represent the quality of service and food/drinks we were used to.
Oct 4th, 2020

SERVICE: Was perfect. The young woman who took our order was very attentive and seemed like she genuinely wanted to be there. Her smile was contagious and I'm glad she served us! FOOD - DINNER: SO YUMMY!! I got the ribs with a side of red skin potatoes and Mac and cheese. First of all, the meat on the ribs SLID right off on all but two of the bones. I barely had to even work for my meat. I was actually happy to have to chew off the meat on that last two bones as half the fun of eating ribs is eating like a caveman, right? The potatoes came whole and were crispy on the outside and I wanted to die because it was so good. They have a basket of BBQ sauce you get to choose from, too, which I loved because I LOVE BBQ! FOOD - DESSERT: I got the lemon curd cheesecake and it was super delicious. I loved the mix of tart and rich sweetness. DRINKS: I had an alcoholic drinks, a mule basically. It wasn't a heavy pour (which I hate). MUSIC: It stated the music would start at 7pm I believe but it didn't start until well after 8pm. But, it was a nice rockabilly duet and I loved it. I enjoyed having the live music with my food and company. OVERALL: Will definitely be going back. Good food, service, and atmosphere.
Sep 17th, 2020

Good food, good service
Aug 22nd, 2020

The Tuesday burger special was great! Unique burgers to choose from. Great atmosphere and good sound level.
Aug 20th, 2020