The Local Kitchen, Bar, Grill...food place in general, with beer...

The Local Kitchen is going to have to work hard to overcome the rep of the sites former tenet. The Garlic Rose was not a well respected joint, simply put.

However, under a totally different management team and owner, the only thing that seems to be the same is the location, which has always been awesome. At the bottom of Bastion Square, the Local Kitchen has a summer patio ripe for sunny days. Therefore it must be properly reviewed.

Don, of the Victoria Burger Blog and I checked out the sunshine soaked seats and went in on some pints and burgers for this one.

Overall, it has a fairly expected feel to it. It's one of those stereotypical west coast patios. There's a selection of local beers and domestics, but not a lot. The patio has no distinctive features other than it's location, which is the real selling point. The food was good and fresh. The service attractive and friendly. Everything is so...so normal. Outside it lacks that character that older places get.

To look at things a little more in depth is difficult. First off, we decided to sit outside, which was the obvious choice on a beautiful warm day. Traffic was a loud in nearby, but that's the trade off for the rays and people watching.
The music was good, no complaints there, a fun, selection while still being fairly chill.
The crowd was middle aged, and a couple families were even spotted.
It just lacked that certain something, but it's got a shot of being great.

So it has it's bases covered, but it needs to grow. Hopefully it passes the 4 year mark and continues on to gain some of that missing "it" factor, because right now it's just a nice place. Yeah, that's a bit of a backhanded compliment, but that's what it is.

The tourists probably love it.

Service - Friendly and Professional...and a little business like - 3.5
Beer Quality - All the standards, none of the flare - 3.5
Beer Price - Location has it's cost - 2.5
Food - It was good! - 4
Character - Maybe inside has more - 2

To be honest, it's hard to complain about a place that does things well, but...meh.