Mike R.
Yelp
Hit up this restaurant on way home from Bethany Beach. To set the stage, the restaurant had three sections, main dining area, bar dining and huge temp controlled sunroom. Main dining closed with chairs on top of tables, sunroom empty and bar dining had 2 seated tables and 6-8 ppl dining at bar.
Miserable experience...showed up at 1:50pm, sign said wait to be seated, no one showed up, went to bartender, kitchen manager came out and said sorry as they just cut hostess. Seated in sunroom, great atmosphere, temp-controlled with a big screen with Olympics on, so a good setup for my family of 5 (10, 7 & 4).
Server was terrible, she came out after we were seated for 8-10 mins, seemed disinterested, took our drink order and returned in a semi-timely manner. She then fell off the rails, this is a place that puts in the order electronically at the table, which could work well, but not when the waitress doesn't seem familiar how to navigate, we ordered apps, including fried pickles, Nashville hot wings, Bavarian pretzel and bacon wrapped dates. Apps took 30-45 mins to be delivered, didn't see waitress once or anyone else for that matter the entire time...Kids drinks empty for 1/2 the stretch...luckily Olympics were on.
Apps came out, the good were the wings and fried pickles, bad was stale pretzels with chunky/crappy dipping sauce, and the ugly was stuffed dates burnt to a crisp, which no restaurant on this planet with a clue would send to a table. As I'm saying that the dates looked burnt the waitress was gone, and that meant no drinks for kids would continue. 15-20 mins later waitress shows up at table to drop entrees. I told her the bacon dates were burnt, she agreed and grabbed them and took off. Came back 10 mins later. I asked her why everything took so long. She seemed confused, I reaffirmed that everything from the start was taking an unacceptable amount of time and especially given we had 3 young kids and since their restaurant is empty.
She then argued that the restaurant was busy, I kid you not, I said we walked by 2 empty dining rooms and 2 tables in bar area. She said bar area was now full and even sitting main dining room and kitchen doing their best to catch up on tickets. This was crazy for a few reasons, we were 3rd table sat in an empty restaurant therefore whoever arrived after us shouldn't matter when it comes to the kitchen and most importantly when we walked out of restaurant after we finished there were still no tables in huge sunroom, no tables sat in main (she lied) and 3 tables in bar area (less than half-lied again). Why argue to begin with, but especially since the restaurant totally botched it and we'll see with our eyes that she's lying.... I told her to get refills for all drinks and honey mustard for the chicken tenders that 2 of my kids wouldn't eat without it and had been waiting for 10 mins. She returned quickly with what I asked for, but then disappeared for 20 mins, which was 10 mins too long because kids were over it and we needed out. We paid and I tipped 15% (3rd time in adult life) instead of typical 20-25%.
My theory....we sat near a glass door in the sunroom that accessed the back of the restaurant where the kitchen access was to the outside. During the 1.5 hours we were there, I saw multiple culinary staff coming and going from outside, including same ppl multiple times, the "manager" being one of them. So, I think ppl were screwing around instead of working and the waitress mailed it in unbelievably so because the restaurant lacks in leadership, training and culture, but probably blames the available workforce and unreasonable patron expectations, instead of looking inward and fixing glaring flaws. My kids wanted to go to Dairy Queen...they are wise beyond their years. Good luck BrickWorthless.
