Bungalow Restaurant, Beach Bar and Hookah Lounge — Restaurant in Atlantic City

Monday, 7/26/21 around 5-7PM.

Well this was a strange experience. Allow me to share it with you.

The Arrival: As my wife and I approached the entrance a staff member hustled our direction. About 50 feet away he stopped and put his hand in the air ✋ indicating we needed to 🛑. Kind of like a, "HALT, who goes there?", type of deal. As we stopped, the staff member hustled over to us and asked us what we needed. To which I replied, "We wanted to have a🍹 by the ⛱." As if I really needed to explain why we just stopped at a beach front bar.

The Entrance: So this guy puts his arm around me like we are pals and walks me through the entrance over to the bar. That's about as weird as it gets right there... He walked me over and asked the batrender if they could serve us... again, very strange since the place was clearly open for business and had plenty of patrons there. My wife and I are in our mid-to-late 30's, so it's not like that was in question. Is this place members only or something?

The staff member who greeted us and hand-delivered me (literally) to the bar then proceeded to have a very strange and awkward conversation with the bartender about "who should he pay" which again, is pretty strange. He asked us to first order at the bar and then make sure to order through him afterwards. My guess (especially after I learned the prices) is that the staff members get a cut of the customers bill, almost like a commission, and the guy who walked us in was trying to make sure he was going to make some $ on us. Either that or these guys have some sort of racket going. I absolutely do not believe this was the case, but you have to consider the possibility after the strange meet and greet which just occurred.

The Order: I ordered my wife an 🍊 Crush and I had a Cucumber Breeze - some sort of Vodka 🍹 with a hint of 🥒. It sounded refreshing at the time so I went with it. Both 🥃's were ordered directly off of their drink menu, nothing uncommon or custom.

The Drinks: So, $43.92 💰 later (Including a $7.00 service fee) we had our 🍹's... not 5 or 6 or them... two of them... a cool $21.71 per drink. My wife's 🍹 was "decent", so I have to give credit there, but my $22 dollar 🍹 was terrible. It tasted like 💧 with a hint of 🥒. There was barely even any vodka in it. Not enough to even taste the alcohol. It honestly tasted like a dirty cucumber water.

The Experience: Our plan was to grab a couple beach 💺's near the corner where it was quieter, but the 💺's were pretty dirty. I understand there is going to be sand on them, but these were actually quite stained and dirty. We reluctantly sat and I immediately found myself replaying the very strange experience I just had. The weird entrance, being stopped, the arm around me, the strange questions to the bartender, the terrible drink and then of course the fact that the two drinks cost me over 40 bucks... C'mon man... this isn't an upscale Manhattan lounge it's a mediocre ⛱ front bar on the AC boardwalk.

The Exit: We decided to get outta there... my 🍹went in a 🗑 on the way out. What a disappointment this place was.

The Sentiment: Unless you're specifically looking for overpriced, watered down drinks and a mediocre-at-best (but very strange) 🍻+⛱ experience I would suggest you avoid this...

In summary: terrible service, decent food, great atmosphere but the service ruined dinner for us - to remove mandatory tip, speak with a manager. Vibes are good, music is good, scenery is good. But since 20% gratuity is mandatory, the service is so slow we have never ever seen our waitress in our area at all (the outdoor section). She was indoors the whole time, but the indoor section was empty and had no customers at all! Did not replace our bottles of tap water when they were both empty. Told me the guest wifi has no password requirement when the Bungalow - Guest wifi prompts for a password.

After ordering food, we then decided to get shisha/hookah as well but it took us having to approachthree other staff members on three separate occasions to flag our server down. Even then, it took her another 5 minutes to get back to us and by then we had decided not to get the shisha anymore due to time constraints.

Food also took a ridiculously long time to be served, about 25 minutes. The cauliflower steak was amazing though - the cauliflower was roasted really well, had great texture and was pretty tasty. We also got the mussels and flatbread, which were alright. Pesto pasta was way too cheesy in a way that overpowered all other flavors and the chicken bits were tough.

We then waited 10 minutes to get the check and another 10 more before we decided to just walk to the till and pay it ourselves. Other servers could not access our tab so we had to wait for our server anyway.

They also charge the NJ sales tax on the gratuity, rather than pre-tip, so be warned. When we walked up to pay, we asked to remove the mandatory gratuity which required a manager to process - but just wanted to give any potential customers reading this a heads up that it is possible, in case you receive terrible service like we did. (We still left a tip...

Ive been to plenty of bars and upscale restaurants, but this place takes overpriced to a whole new level. I ordered a single shot of tequila and nearly fell over when the bill came - $65 for one shot. And no, it wasn’t in some fancy crystal glass - they served it in a flimsy plastic shot cup like we were at a college house party. I couldn’t shake the feeling the bartender thought we were drunk and tried to take advantage of us. The atmosphere was nothing special, service was slow, and there was zero explanation or menu note justifying that price. If you want to waste money and feel disrespected, this is the place. Otherwise, go somewhere that actually values their customers.

Also, the entrance to the beach bar is $30 and we were offered to cashapp and zelle the waitress…like I own a business and I get when employees pocket the money…

But to make it worse…we decided to leave in an hour but something happened on the boardwalk, so police closed the entrance to the beach bar and we had to walk on the beach in the dark and then jump off a wooden bridge behind the toilets just to leave. So, you see 50-70 nicely dressed people jumping off that bridge…yet you have 8-9 employees sitting at the entrance who clearly don’t care about their customers and wouldn’t walk us out because they already collected their $30

Overall my experience was a disaster but I hope others...