The wings are good, the service is not. Other online reviews imply locals get served right away and "outsiders" get ignored. If that's true, Hibbing (about 40 miles away) is not "local".
Arrived at about 6PM on a hot summer day. Ok, they were busy and understaffed (2 waitstaff for about 12 tables, plus the bar). I'm patient with that as long as the staff seems to be trying to keep up. Unfortunately, our waitress could only do one thing at time. When it's busy like that, you have to be able to take a drink order from one table on the same trip you take a food order. This lady was strictly one task per trip from the bar or kitchen, which really makes her job harder than it needs to be.
Still not sure if the 2nd waitress was also the cook or not.
Took about 20 min to order, over 30 min later (after ordering!), *no* food is out yet. We could see it was busy when we arrived, so we had ordered appetizers so that the kids would have something to eat while waiting for the main food. No such luck.
Found out the kitchen "lost" our order when we finally flagged down the waitress. Ok, that happens, but waitstaff should be on the ball to fix that in less than an hour. She checked if we still wanted our meals... should have walked out right then and drove to Bimbo's (about 7 miles south), that still would have been quicker!
Here's a good chance to show good service in a bad situation: The right thing to do is expedite the order, especially the apps, double-check on beverages, then touch the table periodically. 30-40 minutes later, I had to flag the waitress down at the bar to find out what was going on. Yea, the bar let us steam about the issue rather than give updates, or to even try and sell more drinks.
Seriously... they couldn't even expedite mozzarella sticks and nachos. NACHOS! scoop up some chips, melt some cheese, and RUN the freaking order out to the table!
Waitress disappeared again once the food was out. 3rd chance to salvage a bad situation: make sure the drinks are topped off (could have sold me 2-3 more beers during our stay, more profit for you, more tolerance from me!) make sure we get our bill in a timely fashion, etc. What happened: I helped myself to the "to go" boxes at the wait station, and then went to find my bill.
Total length of stay: just over 2 hours. They did knock a chunk off of the bill.
We like to go out for hot wings about once a month. The Viking is an easy drive for us, so I was hoping to make it a regular stop. That's just not going to happen for a long time....
Viking owners: Here's what I'd want to see changed:
1) Train your staff to be more efficient during busy times. Good waitstaff would have handled the crowd just fine.
2) Customer service: yea, stuff happens. Kitchens get backed up, tickets get lost, etc. If your staff was proactive about the issue, I'd be much less concerned. If they touched the table once in a while, they'd have noticed "oh gee, that table hasn't gotten their apps yet" when later orders were coming out before ours did. Learn how to expedite orders, especially appetizers as a method of damage control.
3) On the subject of touching tables: Keep pushing drink orders, hey, it's a band night, things are busy, have your staff make sure we're hydrated. Everyone's happier, and you'll make $$$ on the drinks while we're waiting for your staff to catch up. That's a better situation for your customers and your business.
Advice to other diners: head south on highway 5. read more
