Nellie's — Restaurant in Branford

A confusing experience at a mismanaged restaurant

I called to make a reservation for dinner for 4 to go eat with friends out of town and was told it is first come first serve we didn’t need a reservation.

Upon arriving, we were told that it would be a 30 minute wait for a dinner table, while we were looking at 4-5 empty dining tables (they don’t take reservations). We decided to go wait in the bar and sat at a high top, ordering drinks and ended up ordering food too because it would be much faster than waiting for one of these empty dining room tables.

The bar was quite dark, and we asked our server if we could move to the corner booth that had a light over it so we could see better, he said he would have to quickly check to make sure there are no other larger reservations booked for the table (I thought we don’t take reservations?). After checking he let us sit in our newly requested table.

We placed our food order, while it seemed to be coming out smoothly, we ended up with 2/4 dishes while they brought out dish 3, the server says the last dish will be a few minutes. A few minutes go by, and the bartender comes over to drop a refill and mention that the food runner has dropped dish 4 and they need to remake it. We now wait almost 20 minutes for the new dish 4 to come to the table. They comped one drink off the bill, not even the dish that was 20 minutes late.

The food was okay, dish 1 was the only dish that came out proper. My fries (dish 2) came out slightly cold and dish 3 said the lobster was over cooked and dry. When we did eventually get dish 4 to the table, the portion looked like an appetizer.

Overall from being told we had to wait to sit at empty tables to then waiting 20 minutes for a replacement entree to be cooked I was not impressed for the price of the experience. A manager never came to the table to cover the situation, and comping a free drink for a botched dish? Just confusing.

I have worked food industry/management for 10+ years. Management should have come out and addressed the entire issue and offered to comp the dish off the bill. Just my 2 cents...

Do better John (manager). I arrived at 6:30 when most of the deck was in direct sunlight. I was seated in a table directly in the sun, even though there were 5 other larger open tables in the shade and an empty bar outside with 10+ open stools. The hostess told me that she could only seat me in the sun or else she would be yelled at by John. I offered to happily give up my table in the shade and move if they needed the larger table before I was done…nope! John said that I must sit in the sun or move inside, couldn’t possibly allow me to sit at an empty bar or any of the 5 empty tables, simply not open to discussion.

Then my server showed up and created a wonderful experience. She was friendly, attentive, made recommendations and made the rest of my dinning experience amazing. The food and cocktails were also wonderful. John then helped himself to two beers from the “closed” outside bar, and I did in fact watch him be very hard on the hostess who was clearly afraid of him and trying her best. I told the waitress about my experience (after giving her a 50% tip), and she obviously had no interest in involving John, as she too was clearly intimidated by him. I hope that John can get the help he apparently needs and change his ways, he has options that don’t involve intimidation and drinking on the job, all of which lead nowhere productive. #dobetter

PS - It is against my nature to leave negative feedback, read my other reviews. Tonight, in honor of the servers and hosts, I felt I needed to speak up. I honestly hope that something good comes of this, I’m not looking for retribution but rather an opportunity for...

My now fiancé wanted to surprise me by proposing here. Before he did we came into Nellie’s and were told if we wanted to sit in or outside there was a 15 minutes wait because there were no tables available. After 10 minutes of waiting I looked around to bar wall and saw that there were tables that were empty. I ask why we couldn’t sit at one of them and was told it was due to other people who were at the bar waiting on their orders to come out. After a while a waitress came by and asked her manager why were we stand there and why we couldn’t wait outside. I was extremely bothered and asked her was there an issue because mind you my fiancé and I are a interracial couple. The manger said no it’s just a long wait and if we felt more comfortable we could have waited out side. Which was odd because we were fine. After a while we got our table by the water there wasn’t enough lighting to view the menus and had to use our cellphones. After getting bit up by mosquitoes of the long wait for our food that was not so perfect. My lobster sliders were cold and the bread was extremely hard. The salmon was good but my rice had pork in it. Which the menu doesn’t mention. The wine was good though. We skipped desert and that’s when my fiancé purposed. Overall he wanted it to be a nice dinner but it was not as expected. Our waiter was very nice his...