Blue Sunday Bar & Grill — Restaurant in Bowie

Decided to try Blue Sunday one more time this past Monday. The restaurant had wonderful wait staff when it first opened, but we had a terrible experience last year when my husband, daughter, and I went on a weeknight. Last year when we visited only two other tables being waited on, but our waiter took our drink orders after we were seated for about 10 mins and then ignored us for over another 20 mins while trying to resolve the bill at another table. Never got the drinks, never got to order food, and we told the seating host about the problem before we walked out, but he didn't offer any help.

This Monday my husband and I came in about 6:15 p.m. Our waiter (a different one from last year) took our drink order quickly, but then he disappeared for awhile even though the restaurant was mostly empty except for bar patrons. After about 10 mins. the waiter did reappear with our drinks and took our dinner order. Our food came out about the time we expected it to. But, my husband didn't get the rice that was supposed to accompany the dish and the waiter apologized for not asking what type of rice my husband wanted, so he offered my husband a side of fried rice. We thought the fried rice would come out immediately, but it took another 10 mins for the waiter to bring it out.

We thought everything was OK after that until we got the bill. I got the Signature Noodles and was charged the Happy Hour special price of $11. We noticed that my husband wasn't charged for his soda and mentioned this to the waiter who apologized and told us not to worry about it. When he brought our check back with our credit card and the receipt to sign, we notice that the credit card receipt was exactly $10 higher than our bill without any explanation. That's about the price of 5 sodas!

We went immediately to the seating host and complained. The host apologized and went to speak to the waiter and then the host totaled up the bill again. My husband mentioned that his drink didn't get charged. The host said he'd comp us the drink. But, when he came back with the new bill, I was charged the full price of $14 for the Signature Noodles instead of the Happy Hour special price even though we ordered our food before the 7 p.m. deadline. So, we ended up paying more for my dish than expected which got rid of any good feelings we had about the comped drink and the efforts to correct our check.

The waiter did come out to apologize to us for $10 discrepancy between our original bill and the card receipt, but it's hard to understand how the extra $10 could have been added to the original bill without him purposely adding it in since the host explained that the restaurant's ordering system rings up the price and tax for each dish and drink based on what's programmed in the system. Only way to change the amount is to key in an additional amount like a tip. We definitely did NOT tell our waiter to decide his own tip and add it in!

The food at Blue Sunday is good, but not good enough to put up with terrible service experiences. ...

I visited Blue Sunday in February 22nd and waited a week to write this review because I was really angry. When reading a review it doesn't take long to determine if the reviewer is angry, therefore, simply ranting/venting. I didn't want my review to come off that way, so intentionally waited until I calmed down.

First, I'll say that this was not the first time I patronized this establishment. I never experienced an issue prior to the February 22nd visit. However, I think my party was treated with utter disrespect.

I arrived a bit later than the two people I was meeting that evening. As a matter of fact, we all arrived at different times. The first person to arrive secured a table and ordered an appetizer along with a drink and waited for us. (So, there was someone sitting at the table eating and drinking when I arrived.)

I entered the restaurant and told the manager and hostess I was meeting others there and saw that they were already seated. I went to the table and we all began to chat. The waitress came over three times within a span of five minutes of my arrival. (I was still waiting on a menu.). The last time she came over, she informed us that she was instructed by her manager (Ashe - spelling?) to tell us that we must order something or we would have to leave. My mouth simply dropped open as I didn't quite understand why we were approached that way. Remember - one person had ordered, the other was looking at the menu, and I was still waiting on a menu.

One of the people in our party motioned for the manager to come over, which he did. When confronted with questions regarding why he instructed the waitress to pass along that message, he began to explain that there is no charge for the live entertainment, therefore, patrons must order food/drinks to make up for the cost associated with live entertainment. He continued on to say that "people" come in all the time and simply order water to take advantage of the live entertainment. I mentioned that arrived five minutes before and was still waiting on a menu. He also informed us that he did not instruct the waitress to come over. What waiter or waitress would harass their customers in that way and risk the opportunity for the best possible tip? I guess I could have ordered a Coke and everything would have been all good... Not sure.

At this point, the circumstances of how it started didn't matter to me. Call me crazy, but I was offended beyond measure. In my mind it was a specific assault on my (and the others on my group) character. I kindly picked up my purse and left. I guess they'll never know how much I was going to spend that night. I would say if you can't allow you're patrons time to chat and casually browse the menu prior to ordering maybe you should charge a cover for your "live entertainment."

Needless to say, I won't be back.

I would like to add all...

Worst experience ever at a restaurant , unprofessional , rude, hostile on duty manager . We reserved a specific seating area for a party of 25 guest for 02 24/2024 at 4pm for a Birthday Celebration. We paid weeks in advance the $ 200 holding charge per Blue Sunday policy. We arrived at 3:45 and there is another party of guest sitting in the area that had been guaranteed to be on hold for our party because we put down the required fee. We asked the Hostess about it and she ensured us that we would be able to seated there at agreed upon time 4 pm , however 4pm came and passed and we were still not being seated. We asked again about the situation and then the on duty manager came over to us very rudely and said the other party didn’t want to be moved. He didn’t offer not even a little concern about the situation or apologize for the mistake that his staff had made by sitting another party at out reserved spot. His tone was condescending and nasty, he said that we had to be seated by the bar at separate tables because the other party of guests wasn’t cooperating. We told him we preferred not to be seated near the bar but he said it wasn’t a choice.

What bothered me the most was after we finally got seated the manager came to us and said we only have 2 hours because he’s short staffed and had to push another parties reservation back twice because their overbooked.

I explained to him that we were seated late due to their mix up,and the issues he’s having is an internal restaurant problem which shouldn’t be taken out on us as customers. He continued to ignore us and remained impolite, choosing to condemn us for their problems. The waitress was overwhelmed and she started to become frustrated and rude to everyone. When one of the guests asked for a drink and the waitress said that she only had two hands and a party of 20 people was a lot. After 20 minutes we finally put in our drink and appetizers order , which took more than a long time to come out the waitress didn’t do another table touch for another 30 minutes.

We finally ordered our Entrees which came out in sparsely some guest received their food in 20 minutes and the other 35 to 49 minutes. The most embarrassing and unpleasant experience was at around 6:10 the manager was giving us a death stare and finally came over to table telling us we needed to leave . Most of the party was still eating and we were like you cannot be serious we haven’t finished eating and half of us hustled received our food. He was clearly frustrated because he was understaffed but he didn’t know how to treat his customers with common decency and dignity. I will be sending a letter to their corporate office, putting a review on yelp , Facebook and all other websites

Very disappointed with their...