KC's Alley — Restaurant in Ambler

I felt compelled to write this review after dining in with my husband, tonight 3.16.24 We were seated right away in the middle of the first floor. Our server, Noemi took a little bit to come over and greet us. No big deal, I know it’s the night before St. Patrick’s Day so they were busy, especially with a loud and rowdy group at the bar. After we placed our order the appetizers came out, the fries and wings. They were very good! But then, it got bad. Our server never came over to check on us/no two bite check back and we did not have any plates even after asking the expo/food runner for a set he never returned. We sat for about an hour before our server came back to ask how our food was…which was bizarre since we never received our entrees and were completely out of drinks. I let her know about the missing entrees and we needed refills. She then returned to our table and said she didn’t know what happened to our order and asked if we wanted to place it again, but told us she didn’t know what we ordered and was seemingly irritated. I told her we wanted to leave due to a time constraint, so she then went back to the kitchen and got our food to go. She also informed us our entrees would be comped. When she did return again within 10 minutes our food was done and packed up. I gave her my card to run for the bill, and when she returned I saw I was still charged for the entrees she promised to comp. I couldn’t find my server, so I stopped a woman who told me she was the manager. I explained to her what happened and she took my card to refund me. After nearly 2 hours we finally left. It was a terrible experience. I worked in a restaurant for 5 years as both a server, bartender, and manager and 100% understand the industry. I understand they were busy with the holiday, but I don’t understand the disconnect that happened tonight. The table that sat behind us, was seated after us and received all of their courses before we left. Either the staff is undertrained, or the scheduling manager did not adequately staff the restaurant for this weekend. Either way, not acceptable. Also, at 7pm someone decided to turn the music up so loud you couldn’t even hear the person across from you talking. The only other thing to note was as I watched the tables being bussed it appeared they were only using a wet cloth (no sani bucket or spray in sight) which, besides be unsanitary as someone with a food allergy this is very concerning. A shame our experience was like this, because the location was great, as well as the appetizers. Will definitely not be returning, there are lots of other places on the Main...

A group of friends and I came here on Friday night and we all agreed we’d never return due to how horribly we were treated.

We originally sat down upstairs to have dinner and drinks. Our waitress informed us after we had finished eating that she had to close out as her shift was coming to an end. She told us that we were welcome to remain upstairs at our table, but we would have to go downstairs to grab drinks from the bar if we wanted to drink more at our table.

While we remained upstairs, one of the bussers started flipping chairs on tables around us, sighing and glaring at us as we sat at the table. Finally one of my friends asked her if she wanted us to leave because we were confused since our waitress had said we could remain up there. The busier turned around and in the rudest tone told us “well yeah that’s what your server wanted you to do”, then rolled her eyes and walked away.

We started to feel really uncomfortable, but decided to just go downstairs and drink at one of the tables down there instead. At this point, it was only a little past 11 pm, and we were under the impression that the bar closed at 2 am.

As time progressed, we did notice people starting to leave, so we double checked online to make sure the place closed at 2 am (which it said it did every time we checked).

One of my friends and I did go up to the bar and ask the bartender what time they closed. She would not give us a straight answer and kept saying things like “we try to close earlier if we can” and “well if things slow down, there’s no point in staying open.” All the while she and the rest of the staff are glaring at us and looking us up and down. At this point, it wasn’t even midnight yet.

They started to close down the entire bar before we even left, flipping chairs on tables and turning off most of the lights in the building.

I understand wanting to leave early and being wasteful to keep a place open if there's nobody there, but why have specific hours if you’re going to try and pressure people to the point of discomfort into leaving over two hours early?

It’s sad because this place is in a prime spot and could be a really great atmosphere, but honestly I’ll probably never return after the way the staff members acted and treated us, and will probably tell others about this...

There are a lot of pubs and bars throughout the Philadelphia area, and I had much higher hopes for this establishment.

It was a friends 35th birthday and so we thought let’s give something new a try.

Upon arrival (which was 7:02 pm) the hostesses seemed a bit too bothered chatting to assist. I had to approach them and a little aggressively break into their personal conversation for assistance.

The evening went down from there. After sitting it took the waitress a good 15 minutes to approach our table. We placed drink orders and then the waiting began…… an additional 20 minutes passed and no drinks, water, not a thing.

10 minutes later the waitress comes back to our table apologizing and throwing any excuse in the book as to what happened and tried to urge us to order our food (note we still Had not received a drink or a glass of water yet at this point).

Finally drinks arrived (almost 8 pm at this point) and we ordered our food.

We had :

Cauliflower app (it was not appetizing - steamed cauliflower sprinkled with bean sprouts and a simple teriyaki sauce to dip it in for about 12 bucks. - I’d skip this app if I were you

Wings - they were good (the BBQ sauce had a great flavor and zing) however you could tell that 2 of the 12 were freezer burned before cooking.

Sweet potato fries (nothing serious)

Nacho platter - this was very lackluster, a bare plate of nachos with a few olives and cheese wiz over the top - definitely not worth it skip the nachos

Pizza - it was decent - nothing to complain about at all

Mini mozzarella bites - this description was misleading as they were nothing but fried greasy cheese curds - completely Not melted ( we hardly touched the pile of them )

All in all I’d say that you can find way better restaurants in Ambler for a better price with much more attentive service.

I hate giving bad reviews but this place is not one I would want to go back to. It has all the pieces there, it just doesn’t rise to the occasion. A bit of a disappointment.

Our bill was 170 dollars for the 4 of us - the food below, 4 beers...