The Cooler Restaurant & Bar

This was my first visit to The Cooler, which was recommended to me for lunch as an easy "walk to" by Lithia Nissan of Eugene while my Pathfinder was in for service. On entering The Cooler, we were barely greeted by the female server who was closest to the front door, who briefly told us to choose a table. We chose a table in the elevated dining area, not the bar. We ordered three entrees, a lovely cobb salad (5 stars), a hamburger with fries that arrived with a tasty dipping sauce (5 stars), and nachos with chicken (2.5 stars), which arrived with real cheese on them but the entire dish was almost as hard as a rock. Although not burned, it was microwaved too long; thus, it was extremely difficult to break the hardened nachos off the plate and each other. All the servings were generous. Daniel T. was our server, and he was friendly, welcoming, attentive, efficient, and fun (10 stars), well deserving of the 20% tip I left. Am adding a photo that shows a bit of the darkish, bar-style atmosphere. If I owned this venue, I'd have the decor thoroughly cleaned, as it generally looks a bit tired and dusty. Had I been able to eat more than just a tiny portion of my nachos entree, I would have awarded 5 stars instead of only 4 stars.

Seating was very limited. People were packed together standing at the bar making it hard to enter since there is a narrow path in front of the bar from the front door. Several people were standing after being served with no place to sit so they stood in the area around the bar which made it more crowded and hard to move around

We went last week to sing karaoke and the bartender was on his phone CONSTANTLY, never even put it down to make a drink! We gave him the benefit of the doubt that maybe something serious was happening. When we went back this week, he was just flat out RUDE! Told us not to ask him for water because there is a water station, when I told him that the water was empty (and had been since we got there at 8), he told me that I needed to bring him my last glass.. that is when I informed him that he took it off of my table. WE WILL NEVER RETURN!