Buffalo Wild Wings — Restaurant in Bangor

TLDR: Worst service I’ve ever had in a restaurant, excessively loud dining area, decent box chain bar food. Good time if you expect the bare minimum.

BWW is a staple in the bar food scene for the Bangor area. It’s a basic box chain with higher prices, TVs for watching sports, and it’s one of the few places that stay open late. Aside from the variety of the sauces, there’s nothing special about the food. It’s bland, portion sizes are small for the price, soda tastes watered down, and I’ve never been impressed. That being said, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with it, either. I think it’s comparable to the Golden Arches - you know exactly what you’re getting and it’s consistent.

The experience is often dull. The décor is fine for a basic sports bar, it appears clean without looking too hard, and the place is usually full. Waiting a few minutes for a table isn’t unusual. The music, however, is too loud. We have to lean into each other or yell to understand what we say. The environment is overstimulating. The lack of food variety in the area and the love of certain sauces are the only things that keep us coming back occasionally. However, this last visit had the worst, most awkward, and unprofessional service I've ever had eating out.

We followed the manager to a table, who yelled at an employee across the dining room to wipe it down in front of us. The girl came over and showed him that she already cleaned it, so he seated us. We waited a bit for our server to greet us, enough to figure out what all of us wanted from the menu. When he came to our table, I observed that his shirt designated him as a trainer, which was ironic for his service skills. He greeted us, asked how we were doing. We said, “good.” It was hard to hear over the music, but we thought he mumbled, “That makes some of us.” An awkward silence ensued before he asked us what we wanted.

Per usual, I ordered a well done burger. He stated, “No,” before explaining their burgers come medium-well. I asked if they could cook it for a few extra minutes. He wrote down “extra crispy,” (it was not). I’ve never been told “no” when ordering well done meat. My SO ordered a wrap that came with buffalo sauce. He asked her which sauce. She was confused. He told her to flip the menu over in a condescending tone with a hand gesture, followed by pointing to the list of wing sauces. She said buffalo. He questioned her. “You sure? It’s one of our ‘spicier’ sauces.” He left with the menus and came back. He leaned across the table within our friend’s arm reach and peer pressured her into getting more food than what she wanted. Granted, it was a great deal for a dollar more, but she looked visibly uncomfortable, said she didn’t want more, but she gave in and ordered more food when he didn’t go away.

He brought our drinks and left to get straws. Instead of taking an extra step, he stopped just before reaching our table, leaned over, and threw a group of straws. I stopped them from sliding off the table and hitting my SO. He brought our food, set it on the table, asked us if it looked good before we touched our trays, and asked if we needed anything else. Our friend pointed at her drink and said, “just a refill,” in a calm tone. He aggressively and sarcastically said, “No! You didn’t say ‘Please.’” We thought it was a joke until we all sat in silence looking at each other for a few seconds. She said, “Please?” and that’s when he left to get the refill. We were dumfounded and shocked. We didn’t feel comfortable asking him to do anything else above and beyond, or anything regarding food.

He came back after we were done eating, made a comment about how fast I ate, and brought to-go boxes for us (I didn’t have to say “Please”). I paid with cash in fear this guy would do something. After seeing the manager treat his staff like he did, we didn’t bother complaining to him. He wouldn’t care.

BWW barely hits the lowest bar for restaurants, and we won’t be back anytime soon.

Best...

Overall the service that was given to me & my partner was very poor. When we first walked in, my partner said a name for the order, which is Liz. When the manager called us to our table after our wait, he said “Party of two for lettuce” in front of an entire lobby. Me and my partner were nervous laughing out of embarrassment. That was completely unprofessional of them to put our name in like that. Then, we got sat by the manager and our server was not over for over 17 minutes. The manager was not back over until about 10 minutes later, asking if we had seen our waitress. We said no. He then took five minutes and was seen moving a table beside us, and asked again. We said no. He got us drinks, and then instead of taking our order told us he would find the server. He then found a back up server for us. This back up server did not have much sympathy at all, and had to take over because the other one did not show up. She asked us if we wanted any appetizers and by that time we were outraged because we had been there almost 20 minutes and had not been helped professionally. We politely said no and ordered our food. She did bring out our food quick which was the only good part of the visit. We had no napkins (we were eating bone in wings), no silverware or anything. We were brought it about 4 minutes later. Then, we started eating our food and the vibe was completely off for us because of how we had been treated so poorly. The server came back with a refill and we told her we actually wanted boxes and our checks as we will be leaving. She said “sorry and thanks for your patience” before we left. The manager had absolutely no sympathy as we left. My partner tipped well and honestly it was generous after what we went through. The manager saw us on our way out and said nothing, and neither did anyone by the door. If your way of running a facility is to over price wings, have servers who do not attend to customers and are untrained on how to sympathize for poor service, management that clearly did not care about us being there or even offer to put in our food for us and instead sit there and move an empty table and clean. You might as well just not even have a restaurant. We will not be back. Do better within your facility. It’s sad too because some of us come to facilities like this once in a blue moon to have a good time and we could not even enjoy it...

Consistently disappointing. No matter how you experience, takeout or dine-in, this location consistently underdelivers. Takeout orders are frequently missing items or simply incorrect, and the fries? Always cold. Not lukewarm—cold.

Dining in, unfortunately, isn’t any better. On one occasion, my family met another family there for dinner. We ordered drinks and appetizers, only to be told after we were ready to place our entrée orders that they were out of chicken. At Buffalo Wild Wings. You can imagine our surprise. Why this wasn’t mentioned when we were seated is beyond me.

Their inconsistency in wing saucing is maddening. More times than I'd like to count I’ve received orders where the wings are nearly bone-dry; completely lacking the signature sauce I'd expect.

One time, I even tried to be proactive. I asked the server to make sure the wings actually had sauce on them, not extra, just some. Their response? They asked if I wanted to pay for extra sauce. I clarified that I didn’t want more than usual—I just didn’t want none. Still, they insisted there would be an upcharge.

At Buffalo Wild Wings, it seems if you get dry wings, you’re expected to just live with it.

My final visit truly sealed the deal. I ordered the bacon patty melt, only to discover on the first bite that it was missing the bacon. To make matters worse, our server was nowhere to be found. It was 45 minutes before she returned to check in, seemingly unaware that everyone at the table had already finished eating—except me. I pointed out the missing bacon, and she offered to bring some from the back. At that point my patty melt was cold and congealed. I asked if the sandwich could simply be remade properly.

Now, you’d think they’d rush to fix the error, especially given the restaurant was nearly empty. Instead, I waited nearly 30 more minutes for the corrected sandwich. By then, everyone else was long done eating.

Bottom line: whether you're dining in or ordering out, don't expect accuracy, timeliness,...