Bourbon Street Bar & Grill — Restaurant in Bedford

Awful, Absolutely Awful Service.

Went to this local Cajun Restaurant for Mardi Gras. My party had found this place online, it had decent reviews and from the photos, the food looked very well made.

So we entered and the hostess had told us wait was going to be a while. We understood, it was Mardi Gras after all, and decided to stick out the till we got a table. After about 40 minutes we got seated to our table.

Our server had once again told us that the food was going to take a while, again we understood and decided to wait. Our waiter said he would try to take care of our party to the best of his abilities. But if the best of his abilities is only just one round of drinks, then I'm concerned what being okay is. After just serving one round of beverages, he had never came back to out table for nearly 50 more minutes. We tried being patient but he did something I found most strange, he sat down and had a conversation with another patron. I had decided to get up and go to the young man with as much respect as possible, asking him for at least another round of drinks and to ask what the status was on taking orders. He said he'd check but I could tell on his face, he looked uninterested.

After 15 minutes, an older gentleman, who I assume is the owner, came and told us that it would take an hour to start taking food orders. Which which has left us all bewildered, we had seen people who came in after us be served food first, yet we had to wait an hour. We had told the gentleman that we had already waited that long and he responded looking just as confused as us and apologized. He said the only thing they had ready crawfish that would take 15 more minutes but at that point, most of us had enough and left. I would say fed up, but we had not been fed a single thing.

After that night, I'm still in completely baffled by the experience. Just for sheer observation, that The Cajun Market at Bourbon Street, a Cajun Restaurant, was blatantly not prepared for Mardi Gras. From the unorganized and rude staff, to management being unaware what was happening, to even seeing other patrons dealing with the same issues, this night was embarrassing. I really was hoping that at least the food would have won us all back in the end but we got served nothing but excuses, and I can't eat excuses.

I want to give Cajun Market the benefit of the doubt. I want to say that this was just a bad day and that they are the good quality restaurant I had read about. But first impressions are everything, and from this first impressions, this is a well deserved negative review. I hope if I ever do return, I hope it will be under better...

Ordered the three pound crawfish special. Found a leech in our food. Showed the bartender what we found and she politely brought the owner over to talk about what we found. Although she was really nice along with he server and hostess, the owner was really rude. He walked over and the first thing he said was not sorry for what you found, it was "I'm not comping your bill" while he waved the receipt in front of us. He then went on to say he wanted to educate us on how it was a crawfish larva and not a leech. Unfortunately didn't get a picture of it before the bartender took it back and got rid of it. The owner smelled like he had been drinking for a few hours, and was spitting on us while he spoke (probably unintentional but still gross). After we were ready to leave he tried to fix the issue by giving a half hearted apology for what happened and then offering a 25% discount the next time we came in but I won't be returning. The bar area also looked like it was flooding. Wouldn't recommend coming here.

Update: This restaurant cannot take criticism very well. If you look at every single bad review, there’s some form a rebuttal that management does to try justify their terrible service and mediocre Cajun food. Crawfish hatchlings are tiny and not shaped like a black leech.

If you’re looking for a good laugh leave an honest review and watch management try and embarrass you online by saying you’re “arrogant” for not accepting that they really just aren’t that good at making Cajun food. Not to mention they literally only focus on denying the fact they are bad at the service part of owning a restaurant. If I recall correctly flooding from drainage is a violation of health code. Didn’t see any acknowledgment of that from the response you gave there. True form of comedy when a customer gives an honest review and the restaurant management or owner gets upset knowing they fell short. I also didn’t fail to mention that we were looking for compensation on the bill regardless of the how expensive it was. We were hoping some sort discount not the full compensation. I’m not surprised you missed that while you were reading my review though, seems like that’s a pretty common thing to do at Bourbon Street Cajun market.

-yours truly, The arrogant...

We had previously eaten here after it had first opened and had a stellar experience- the food was delicious and the service was amazing. We finally had another opportunity to stop in again and it was incredibly disappointing.

The service was horrible. We waited 15 minutes at the door without being acknowledged by anyone, even though three employees walked up to the hostess stand during that time. It wasn’t busy. The hostess walked up, didn’t say a word, turned around and walked away again. She eventually came back and finally seated us, but didn’t offer a high chair for my toddler. The waitress spent 20 minutes finding crayons that we didn’t ask for before even taking our drink order, and then disappeared for half an hour. The hostess ran out of silverware and literally stole ours to use to seat other customers- like snatched it off the table as she walked past without a word. One of the wilder things I’ve seen. Our waitress finally appeared and told us our food was the next up and tried to walk away until I stopped her and reminded her we hadn’t even had the opportunity to order anything. It took about 45 minutes for my husband’s crawfish to come out… and then another 15 for everyone else’s food to arrive. The crawfish had very little flavor, but were cooked well. The potatoes were so undercooked you couldn’t even cut them. The étouffée had a roux so thin and blonde and tasteless I could hear mawmaw Hebert shouting from her grave. I would have sent it back but by the time our waitress came by we had already been there 2.5 hours and my husband was on the last of his crawfish, so I boxed it up in hopes that throwing on some Nunu’s at home would help.

While we waited we entertained ourselves by watching the hostess shine the same fork with a rag while watching tv, and then walk around the whole restaurant every time customers came in to be seated. I’m not really sure what that was about, but it cause a few pile ups at the door because she would seat a group and then immediately go back out for another lap before seating the next.

I really do hope they’re able to turn it around because this place was fantastic when they opened, and it’d be nice to have a good place nearby for when I have an envie...