I had the chance to go to Gordon Biersch's newest location at the Glendale arena(aka West Phoenix) last night. It's still a work in progress, they just recently opened, so for the next couple of months if it's a choice between Tempe or Glendale go for the Tempe location.
They only have started brewing beers, the Hefe was the only beer they had brewed so far on site. The Hefe was a bit more on the banana side, which I prefer the clover or a balanced mix.
The rest of the beers were okay. Not sure which location they were brewed and frankly our server wasn't much a beer person her descriptions when we got a sampler tray were straight off the description with no personal experience to speak of. The Schwartzbier was not bad though I had a glass after the sampler.
As for the food, this place is in the Southwest so when they said the weekly special was chili my father tried a sample. We both tasted it and agreed it was like Wendy's chili but souper. Not going to cut it in the Southwest at all way too bland. The rest of the food was alright for a restaurant that just opened (and I have worked a few).
The service was friendly but almost overly so. Remember Justin's rant on Lunch Meat about corporate brewpubs and the servers smiling and asking a bunch of predetermined questions. We got that experience in Spades. We told our server we had been to mutliple GB's in the past so it wasn't a new experience but she kept talking off a script like we hadn't been to one. We knew more of the beer than our server did. She was helpful, but on the verge of annoyingly so, after we paid our bill she came back twice ask us if we needed anything else when it was obvious we just had beer we were trying to finish.
I am looking forward to going back in a couple of months to see how it improves as the crew gets more comfortable in their jobs, but for now stick with the Tempe location.
