Ordering nicely cooked pizza, chicken and hamburgers is a pleasant experience here. Delicious draft beer is among the most often ordered drinks at this bar. Johnnie's Bar & Grill - Onsted is well known for its great service and friendly staff, that is always ready to help you. You will like low prices. At this place, guests can enjoy the homey atmosphere. Google users granted the rating of 4.3 to this spot.
Small town bar. Good bar food. Large portions and fair prices. Nice outdoor seating. The bathrooms are under construction but are still available to use. Locals are friendly. The picture of the nachos is a small order that can easily feed 4 people. They also have a pool table which is nice. Only issue that I have is, there is only 1 table inside, the rest is high tops and are kinda small for 4 people.
Service
Dine in
Meal type
Lunch
Price per person
$10–20
Food: 4
Service: 4
Atmosphere: 3
Recommended dishes
Burger
Fun place to eat because of the live music here this evening. We sat down at 4:30 and had drinks immediately and our side salads were brought out to us quickly. Just a little loud, but great atmosphere for a bar and grill!
However, the grilled cheese took way too long to be brought to the table.
Service
Dine in
Meal type
Dinner
Price per person
$10–20
Food: 4
Service: 5
Atmosphere: 5
My wife and visited Johnnie's Bar in mid-September, 2022, for the first time. Online reviews were pretty good, so we thought we would give it a shot. Buckle up, this is a long one. (TLDR at bottom)
The inside was dive-bar-like, but welcoming. I did like it, simple and to the point. There is a nice patio area, but the tables with ash trays are so close to the entrance to the building that each time the door is opened, cigarette smoke comes into the restaurant (if someone is smoking). Might be a good idea to just move them away from the door a bit.
We visited on a Thursday around 6pm, and the bar was not busy. Service was decent, not exceptional, but nothing poor either. Our server was friendly.
I ordered the "Chicken Tenders Dinner" which came with a two sides and the tenders. Here follows the meal description:
The side salad was not good. It was unappealing to look at with many pieces of brown lettuce. One large chunk was very brown (see photo). They also use small diced up onions and tomatoes in their salad. The kind you use on nachos. The onions were so finely diced that you could not really eat around them or remove them if you do not care for onion (I did not know it had them, or I would have asked, my bad on that).
The tenders were decent. They were cooked properly, and the breading was good, but very light (in a good way). The issue with the tenders was that they were so small, and you get four of them. I was not expecting a ton, but for their size and the price ($14.00), I just figured it would be a bit more, or a bit larger (See photo). So if you want these, they do taste pretty good, but know that they are pretty small.
The fries were pretty disappointing. To look at them, they look great (see photo - they do look great), but to taste them they are both bland, and flaccid. They seem like they were fried at too low of a temperature, and so they were lukewarm in the middle, and they literally had NO crispness to them whatsoever (other than the tiny little end pieces at the bottom). Fresh cut fries are usually not super crisp unless fried two times, so normally I expect them to be not so crispy, but these would completely bend over like wet pasta, unfortunately. (Yep, I ate them all, I was hungry and paying for them).
Odd ball situation: The ketchup... I am sure the server will remember us based on this... but the ketchup at our table.. it was vinegar. I mean, it tasted like 1/4 ketchup and 3/4 vinegar. We tried ketchup from another table, and it tasted fine (Heinz or similar). We did notify our server who took the bottle.
My wife's meal was a coney dog basket and fries, and she will leave her own review, but I will just add that she felt like it was okay, the dogs were fine, but she was torn on the "coney" sauce (She said it tasted like Hormel, I did not try). But her fries were also flaccid and floppy.)
Wife and I meal with a beer and a coffee, $28.00 not including a tip ($2 draft beer special).
Overall, I would give this restaurant a 2.5 overall (cannot give that in the Google score, so I did 3) (primarily based on food). Room for improvement, and probably a really fun place to have a few beers and chit chat.
TLDR:
2.5 out of 5 (Google does not allow 2.5 in numerical score)
Floppy and bland fries
Cigarette smoke wafts in from patio
Small tenders (but good - just gimme like one or two more!)
Friendly and decent service
Brown lettuce in salad
Odd ketchup full of vinegar (at least ours)
Moderate to pricy (at least in terms of value for my meal).
This place was headed in the right direction and has tons of potential. But lately (the last couple of years) I’ve seen the construction work stop. Also it’s hard not to notice the kitchen is not being cleaned. Bathrooms are 2 or 3 years temporary (under construction). You never see the owner in there anymore and SOME of the help are looking pretty shabby. I could understand if it was a big city biker bar but it’s not. Hopefully it will take another turn for the better soon. And before you judge me I ride a motorcycle too for those of you that might think I have it out for the bikers. The food is good and they have a great selection of things on the menu. Just make sure you specify what you want because the cook will add whatever he wants to the order. A good suggestion for the cook would be to cook it like the menu says.
Service
Dine in
Meal type
Dinner
Price per person
$10–20
Food: 5
Service: 5
Atmosphere: 5
We did takeout. Fantastic salmon salad and Reuben sandwich. Very impressed. Will definitely order from them again :)
Service
Take out
Meal type
Dinner
Price per person
$10–20
Food: 5
Service: 5
Atmosphere: 5
Recommended dishes
Reuben Sandwich
Great food, good prices and amazing service. Meat lovers pizza is fabulous!!
Service
Dine in
Meal type
Dinner
Price per person
$10–20
Food: 5
Service: 5
Atmosphere: 5
Recommended dishes
Wyandotte Whammy Burger
Anything below 5 stars for this place is an insult to this restaurant when you think about it. When looking for food while visiting the area and looking for someone with online ordering, Johnnie’s is the ONLY ONE near Devil’s Lake that isn’t a chain restaurant. Thank goodness because it’s a home run in my opinion! Seriously, when you have a young child and you’re putting them down, online ordering is huge when you’re on vacation so this was such a relief!
My wife had the popcorn shrimp and we shared the fried green beans and they were amazing. I had the Wyandotte Whammy Burger and it was delicious!
The ONLY SUGGESTION that I would recommend to the owner would be to give a little bit more description to the online menu as the Cowboy Bites sounded cool, but with no description we went with fried green beans instead! Either way, thank you for the delicious food and the next time we return we’ll have to order again! Thank you!
Meal type
Dinner
Price per person
$10–20
Food: 5
Service: 5
Atmosphere: 5
Recommended dishes
Burger
I know it's just a bar. But when I can see the cook not wearing gloves, touching his face. Went out side for a smoke, then started cooking before washing. Makes me question everything else.
We really loved this place! It was our first time visiting, but I doubt it'll be the last. The food and adult beverages were made really well! The server was fantastic, and the place was quiet-ish at the in-between time of lunch and dinner. We also liked that they had an option for eating outside.
Service
Dine in
Meal type
Lunch
Price per person
$10–20
Food: 5
Service: 5
Atmosphere: 4
Recommended dishes
Small Nachos Supreme
Lovely bar with really friendly staff. Will be back. Sorry, posted incorrect image and cannot delete it.
Service
Dine in
Meal type
Other
Price per person
$20–30
Food: 5
Service: 5
Atmosphere: 5
