The Hen and Hog Restaurant in Boca Raton, Florida — Restaurant in Boca Raton

Not a place I can recommend. I checked it out after passing by and reading good reviews. However, I've since discovered all the NOT so good reviews... and also read that they recently let go of their prestigious chef (I'm not sure why).

Here's my experience, there was a very long wait for food, the brisket was not good at all, & they were extremely insulting and rude to us!

So after waiting, once we finally served our food everything looked good. However the brisket hash had tiny fatty pieces of brisket. (Not like yummy burnt ends, if that's what you're thinking) These small pieces had barely any meat & were hard. Brisket is by nature a fatty cut of meat, but usually very tender. (Which is the main appeal of this cut) This also wasn't pulled brisket, but tiny cut up pieces. If they didn't have enough brisket for this dish, they probably shouldn't have served it, rather than trying to pass it off as "that's how brisket is." That being said the rest of the dish was good & we were just eating around the brisket pieces.

The waitress asked how our meal was & we said everything was good except for the brisket. She sent out the chef who I presume might also be an owner based on his response, but I could be wrong. He came out, seemingly looking to argue with us. It was very uncomfortable. Now just to be clear, we never asked for a discount or anything, just letting them know everything was good except the brisket. He basically was telling us that that's how brisket is and since we ate most of it (aka everything except the meat) he'd only give us 20% off. He said this as if we were ASKING to return the dish, or for a full refund. We asked for nothing! Honestly the rest of the dish was fine (and after it took so long, we hadn't plan to ask them to remake it or anything.) We didn't ask to speak to a manger, we didn't ask to return it, we didn't ask what they can do for us to make it better... we just nicely let them know and really didn't ask for anything which makes the response so much more uncalled for.

It took a while for the check, as we had to wait for the $4 discount so generously offered to us after an awkward confrontation. However, On the check, there was a note saying that we were nuts and didn't know what brisket was. It was written on the check!!! (Under the wrong entree and with bad grammar, but I digress)

I'd like to say I don't know a lot about business, but that's not how you treat customers.... But I actually DO know a lot about business and a lot about brisket (my family worked in restaurants making delicious brisket for many years), so I can say with certainty that you shouldn't have that written on the check, nor should try to pass off tiny pieces of fat as brisket. Especially since the omelette we ordered had a huge slice of pork much bigger than what you expect to find in an omelette, so I know, they know what good bbq is (for comparison, The brisket pieces were maybe the size of half a postage stamp so a significant difference from the size - and texture- of the meat in the omelette).

Anyways, we heard the waitress asking another table for review to grow the business. They didn't ask us for one, but here it is anyway…

So some of the food was good, waitress was nice- but the food takes a long time AND some portions come big (like the meat in the omelette) & some portions come small (like the meat in the bbq platter which was fine but not a big portion... or in the hash which as previously mentioned was not fine) & obviously I personally wouldn't recommend any brisket dishes here, since the chef told us "that's just how brisket is."

Unfortunately, I can’t recommend them. I also as mentioned read online they recently let go of their chef, so I recommend keeping that in mind as you read other reviews. ( For example, there's a review on the Pompano location's yelp page from someone who said it was good & now the food was not even close to what it was) In my opinion there are much better places in the area with better food, shorter wait times & without any...

Let me start by stating that I’ve been a server for 16+ years and I’m very very understanding. I wasn’t going to write a review, but after seeing the lady next to my friend and I write one from last weekend, and get a response calling her out on being rude, I decided I would. The restaurant itself is cool. We sat outside. We knew they were busier and were fine with that. The other staff was polite. Our server had 5 tables that were all 2 tops. They were not being sat all at once either. Regardless, she was either new or weeded. She didn’t have the best communication skills either. Our food for what it was took a long time (it was the most basic thing I could order just eggs, bacon, toast). My friend was told they were out of Benedict’s and the server wouldn’t go check, she just said she was pretty sure. We were not checked on until the end when we flagged her for the check, so didn’t get drink refills until the very nice food runner came by and we stopped him. The other tables next to us were just as lost and bothered. A single woman was sat next to us and was totally ignored for around 8 min until my friend flagged a manager (least we think he was a manager). He took her drink order, but that drink never came out. Once again we flagged him (he kept walking past the group of 2 tops going to other tables) after about 10min her drink came out. Mind you it was just a mimosa. The server finally got to her 15-20min later. We know this because we were having a full on convo with her while she was waiting. She got a little annoyed due to the server not answering questions and not paying attention to her (I’m sure all the waiting before didn’t help). She even asked the manager if the server was new and he responded that he didn’t know (which was kinda odd). I watched as another server was just forgetting about her tables and would forget to get them their checks as well. All in all it made me think maybe they were overwhelmed as servers in general…again I try not to put my own serving experience onto others. I still tipped our server 20% (old habits of guilt) and I strive to hope maybe it was just an off day for her. Again, though for my first experience, this wasn’t great. The only positive I took away was making friends with 4 of her other tables as we all spoke to each other in confusion as to what the heck was going on. While I don’t need a company to be apologetic (far from it) I do find it interesting that the snarky comments are only on the less than 4-5 star reviews. I get some people write petty reviews not caring how it affects a business, but this particular one is 100% not being petty and again I wouldn’t have even written it (was going to let it go) until I saw the rude responses from your company to the girl we sat right next to the entire time. Hence, I think we know what really happened and why she was upset. Everyone can have an off day.. it happens, but maybe assist your servers a little more or put them in sections they can handle. It took us almost 2 1/2 hours for a simple breakfast and that was majority due to the inability of the server and...

Having been to the one in Pompano, and having really enjoyed the food there, I thought having a sister restaurant closer in Boca would be a natural automatic winner. For our first visit, my wife and I had breakfast here. It really is "southern comfort" cooking and everything is made from scratch. Sausage gravy and homemade biscuits, shrimp and grits, etc. Unfortunately, I guess they forgot their demographic, now that they're in Boca. We both had the Hen and the Hog Breakfast and an order of the sausage gravy and biscuits. A pretty basic breakast was $50+ before tip for 2?!?! Still wanting to give them a chance, I went back today for lunch. On Wednesdays, for lunch, they roast a suckling pig for 7 hours. I had been looking forward to trying their suckling pig platter. I'm Hawaiian and a roast pig literally "calls me." My father even roasted a pig for me and my wife on our wedding day so you can imagine my level of anticipation. Don't get me wrong. It was delicious. The pork was juicy and the skin was crisp without being too hard. But it was only an 8 oz serving for $28?!?! It's served with beans and rice. In South Florida, with such a strong Latin influence, if you're going to serve beans and rice, it needs to be spectacular for a $28 platter. The beans and rice at any restaurant serving latin or carribean food, even Pollo Tropical, is better than here. And finally, if they expect to build a lunch following, the kitchen needs to be faster. There was construction blocking their parking lot, so they were slower than usual according to their servers. It was still almost 25 minutes, after placing my order, before my food was served. For a dish that was already cooked and just needed to be plated...really?! Most people don't have that long for lunch. If they want to build a lunch following, the kitchen must get faster. Maybe you're willing to pay almost $30 for the uniqueness of the preparation, but at the end of the day, $56/lb for a roast pork meal seems a bit much to me,...