J.J. Foley's Cafe — Restaurant in Boston

My family and I come here every year for a Christmas lunch. We have been coming for years. Unfortunately this year will be the last as our service on Saturday the 2nd was the worst I have ever experienced. We arrived at about 2pm with a party of 7. We waited to order until everyone in our party arrived. We all ordered at the same time. About 20 minutes later, 4 meals arrive. We politely try to wait until the other meals arrive but it starts to be a while. After about 10 minutes the waitress says she will check on the other meals. She comes back and says somehow they were placed on a different ticket and would be out shortly. Maybe another 10 minutes later she arrives with 1 meal and tells our two other guests that no one told her they ran out of meatballs and would have to pick something else from the menu. This now had to have been at least 45 minutes from when we all first ordered. If you are out of a product, that's fine it happens but tell the customer when they order or when you give the order to the kitchen, not 45 minutes later, after everyone else has received their meals. The two other meals are ordered and must take another 20 minutes to arrive. You would think those two orders would be placed on a rush but apparently not. It was not that busy in there, it was about 3:15pm by this time. When we finally got the check, we politely asked the waitress to remove the two meals that arrived over an hour after they were ordered and significantly later than the other orders. She went to get the manager, or another employee, he never introduced himself. He just said "so what's the problem here?" We explained what happened, his reply was "well we ran out of meatballs earlier today"- completely missing the point! He didn't even apologize. He said best I can do is take off one of the entrees. We accepted as we did not want to argue. We would have appreciated an apology or at least some form of taking responsibility. He was extremely cold to us. The whole experience left us all with such a bad taste in our mouths. I work in the food industry- I get that mistakes happen, products run out, items are misplaced but you at least have to own up to it and treat the customer the right way to make up for it. We are extremely disappointed and will...

I was dropping my friend off at the airport, but since her flight was delayed, we decided to grab food and drinks nearby. This was our first time at JJ Foley's Cafe. When we arrived, the table we were seated at was dirty, which wasn’t a great first impression.

I ordered the Blue Lemonade, and my friend had a Long Island Iced Tea. The drinks were decent but not very strong.

For food, we ordered the wings with buffalo sauce on the side and the duck poutine fries. Unfortunately, the wings were completely unseasoned, tasting like they had just been battered in flour and fried without any seasoning. The duck poutine fries were burnt. While I didn’t want to make a big deal, my friend decided to bring it up with the bartender. His response was dismissive, he said since we had “dug into,” he couldn’t take the dish off the bill, even though we’d only had two bites.

Later, we spoke with the manager and pointed out that the fries were burnt. His response? “That’s why there’s gravy, to soften the fries.” While he eventually removed the dish from our bill, his attitude was unnecessary and unprofessional. For the rest of our time there, he ignored us, even when we were clearly trying to get his attention to pay the bill.

Overall, the experience left a bad taste in our mouths. A dirty table, lack of attentiveness, and dismissive behavior cost them a...

The burgers and fries were great, one of the only redeeming qualities here. There was an older bartender who was very kind and respectful, but one of the younger male bartenders was incredibly rude. He refused to make drinks that were on their menu with no explanation, just said “no” and nothing else. I understand the bar gets busy, but frankly there is no reason to be a jerk about it and there’s a much nicer way to handle things, especially since I was trying to order another drink that the older bartender had already made for me earlier that day. Even if he had told me it was too busy to order that drink, I would have been more understanding vs him just staring at me and saying no with no explanation. He also told my friend that there was a $20 card minimum AFTER she ordered her drink and refused to let her close her card (the federal law is $10, saying its $20 was illegal, FYI). Thankfully she avoided the rude younger bartender after and asked the older guy to close out her tab (he let her close out no problem). When closing my tab, I got the rude younger guy again. I tipped poorly due to the bad service, and see now days later the younger guy decided to give himself a 20% tip instead of the lower tip I left. Luckily I had a feeling he would try to pull something like that and took a picture of the receipt to dispute it with my credit...