Hard Rock Cafe — Restaurant in Baltimore

Updated August 29th, 2024

I had emailed the hard rock cafe representative that had asked me to reach out to them on July 30th. Still to this day, I have not received any correspondence back on how to rectify this experience. I'd suggest just skipping this restaurant all together & spend your hard earned money else at a different dining location. If I could give this location zero stars I would! Horrible employees, horrible management, horrible experience..

Took a family trip to the Baltimore Aquarium for the first time today. We settled for eating here after walking around the aquarium for most of the day because it was generally close. The hostess was relatively polite, we requested a booth since it's an easier way to eat out with smaller kids. We were informed by the hostess that all the booths that weren't filled up with other customers were still dirty & it would be quite some time until a clean one became available. This was about 3:30, so long after lunch time rush yet not dinnertime rush.

Sat down at our table, we were provided with 1 napkin & 1 fork for 2 adults & 2 kids. Received 2 full menus & 1 kids menu. Our server came up to our table roughly 3 minutes later, introduced herself as Debbie. Took our drink selections & disappeared.

Upon taking our drink order, unknowingly to us, our server must have played rock, paper, scissors with another server & loser took over our table attention because the server who brought out our drinks, then took over as our main server for the rest of our visit.

This server never introduced herself to us, so it wasn't until we got the final bill that we found out her name was Tiesha. She ended taking our food order, but was very curt & short with us the entire time. When taking our food order it seemed as if she had other places, other conversations that needed to be had instead of attending to "the guests" that decided to eat at the restaurant she decided to work at.

Upon our food coming out, 1 kids meal came out 10 minutes before anyone else's did. When we asked for more silverware, she acted as if we were asking for mountains to be moved & was very put out when we asked for a knife so we could cut our child's cheeseburger in half. When the rest of the meals came out, 2 of them were fine, the other one had a hair on the bottom of the fajita wrapper & then was placed on top of the lettuce. She corrected the error, but was definitely lacking any urgency & empathy for the mistake. Also, half of the order was completely forgotten about & when we asked about it, yet again, lacked any urgency or empathy for the error.

There was no "how is everything?" "Do you guys need anything?" etc, like you'd have in other restaurant dining experiences. At one point we had to get up & get napkins & new silverware ourselves off of the other tables that were set.

We didn't see our replacement server until she brought out our bill. We had our payment method ready to put in the plastic bill book & hand it back to her ASAP because by this point in our dining experience, we wanted to just pay & leave because we had enough of a bad experience here & just wanted it to be over. But, our server handed us the bill & ran off to talk to someone in street clothes over @ the bar area for 10 minutes & then finally came back over to take the bill book.

All in all, we were glad to be done dining here because it was a less than enjoyable experience despite having a relatively nice day in Baltimore for our first time there as a family. If & whenever we'd return to the aquarium, we will not be dining here again.

I understand the economy is rough, but people are putting out hard earned money to eat on a daily basis, so when someone enters your establishment (corporate chain or independent restaurant) they're your guest. You provide them with stellar attention & you're supposed to have them walk out of your place of business with a sense of "I can't wait to return there again" & not "thank goodness that experience is over with because not even duct tape could fix that...

Had a party of 6 for my daughter's 17th birthday. 1st time eating at Hard Rock Cafe also The food was great, atmosphere was great EXCEPT for our server. We were seated by the kitchen along a 10ft railing. Our server took our order at the table which was about the best experience we had with her. When the appetizer came out it was handed to us over the railing which is chest height to her. We asked for silverware and she came out with the silverware in her bare hands and handed them out over the railing to the closes person to her by the part that goes in your mouth not by the handle to be passed down to the whole table, we asked for refills and again the refills were handed over the railing. Keep in mind this railing is chest height to her in which she almost spilled our drinks . She came out with 4 cups and she had a difficult time trying to give us our drinks trying to hand over the railing. The main course came out and again she tried to hand plates over railing and we asked if she could walk about 10 feet around the railing to our table to hand over food over to us and not only did we get our food but we also a attitude. We asked for another refill and again over the railing. She took 2 of the orders wrong with the sides and we notified her of mistake and she argued with us that it was our fault and we didn't order the correct side and she stood firm until I said can you just please send us the correct side and she turned around and stomped off. My sister inlaw asked for the manager since our server never came back to us to see if we needed anything else and our server came by and said loudly I'll just get the Manager to come by and take care of you guys. Keep in mind 20+ minutes has gone by and they still haven't given us the correct sides. The Manger was very understanding and took off 1 of the meals and the appetizer when he dropped off the check . 30 minutes has gone by and our server nor anyone else had taken our check that was well over 100.00. So I saw our server go by and I said excuse me can you please take this we have been waiting. She responded with I thought someone's else was going to finish serving you and grabbed it out of my hands. She came back and gave me my card and receipt. I'm not the type not to tip usually I over tip but in this case 18% would of been $31.50 , 22% is $38.50 ,and 25% would of been $43.75 . Which I would of rounded up to $45.00 . But in this particular situation with her attitude and service along with ignoring us for the entire time I left her with a $5.00 tip. It's a shame she could of easily gotten $45.00 but I had to keep apologizing to my daughter and other family members about our server. The food was great but because of our experience the was not so tasty anymore after our experience and we ended up with 5 to go containers due the horrible server. I'm sure others servers are excellent and willing to do thier job well but our server I felt like she didn't want be there. I would eat again at the Cafe but I would make sure I had a different server.. I would give 0 stars for server but I'm forced to give at...

Shockingly poor operations and service. We were celebrating my son’s birthday with a party of 6, so made a reservation. It was a busy weekend and I mixed up the time of the reservation, so we arrived 17 mins after. They couldn’t find my reservation, so I showed them the confirmation on my phone, which is when I realized the error on my part and apologized. They said they couldn’t find the reservation because they automatically cancel the reservation after 15 mins. They said we would be put at the bottom of the list and it would be a 45 min wait. I asked if there was any leniency with the reservation, and they said that’s just the policy (zero empathy). I asked if they call people before they just cancel their reservations, and they said no “because we’re too busy” (this coming from 4-5 hosts who then proceeded to stand around and talk to each other, drink drinks, and even eat at the host stand for most of the time while we ended up waiting).

We had two young kids with us who were hungry and impatient, so we asked for an updated wait timeframe after 25 mins. There had been very few others waiting during that timeframe (only one other small family at the time we asked for an update) and 4+ large available tables. They again had trouble finding us on the list and then said it would be another 30-40 mins. I said we were initially quoted 45 and it had already been 25 (and in my experience, restaurants tend to overestimate). Again with no empathy, they just said they couldn’t do anything about it. We should have just left then, but decided to wait for 45 mins initially quoted, especially since there were still not many people waiting and open tables.

After 45 mins, we went to the desk again to ask for an update, which they couldn’t give. I asked about all the open tables that had been open for over 30 mins. They said they were for reservations due to arrive an hour after we had gotten there. One of the many hosts asked if we wanted a manager, and we said yes. The manager came over and spoke with a host, who told us we would get the next available table. I said we would still like to talk to the manager to share our experience so far.

Two other hosts then waved us away. I assumed they were telling me to step away from the host stand, so took a few steps to the side. They then rudely said “They’re trying to seat you right now! That’s what you wanted!” I couldn’t believe it and said they didn’t need to be rude to their customers.

The manager came to talk to us and immediately apologized for our experience and said in our situation with the reservation, he would have given us the next available table right away and not put us at the bottom of the list. He said it was handled incorrectly and listened as we shared our concerns about the many hosts and their lack of even basic empathy and service. He apologized again. We appreciated his response, but by that point and due to my last interaction with the hosts, decided to go elsewhere. I am so glad we did as we were seated right away and had a great dinner with friendly, proactive, and efficient...