Roxy's Arcade — Restaurant in Cambridge

Came here to spend some time with my cousin and his friends since I haven’t seen him in a while. First glance it was pretty cool and brought some nostalgia, considering I hadn’t been to an arcade since I was young. The games were fun, the food was good. I got the late night chicken burger along with some truffle fries. Before hand, I bought 6 green tea shots for 4 of us (including myself). There was an automatic 20% tip gratuity, which I thought was odd considering we didn’t even sit at the bar during this, but whatever. The only issue I had was with the service. Around 40 minutes later after playing some games, I bought us 4 more green tea shots. At first it was just my cousin and I, as his friends were still playing the arcade games. We were sitting at the bar, which did not have a lot of room considering we had some condiments as well as our tray of food, and we ended up accidentally spilling one of the shots. The glasses were slim, so it was very easy to knock over, but obviously, it was our mistake. The guy at the counter was nice enough to come over and clean it for us, but he made a small comment “I remember my first time at the bar”. Condescending much? It’s definitely not our first time, and this isn’t even a full bar, but okay. They made us a new shot, which we appreciated. 10 or so minutes pass by, and our friends arrived, so we moved to the seating area that had a booth/table. Of course, our friend accidentally spills one of our shots as he’s trying to pass us a ketchup bottle, so he goes over to the bar asking if he can buy another one for us. The lady at the bar declines saying because we spilled one beforehand, she’s not able to make us another one. Seriously? He is paying for it, and it’s a shot, not a whole cocktail. Accidents happen, and it’s not as if we are drunk at all, or unable to handle ourselves. It was genuinely just unlucky. So they were denying him to be able to BUY a drink? It’s not as if we are asking for a free one. I go up there, and eventually they just end up making it without saying anything. We still tipped. Then about 5 minutes before closing time, I stopped by to use the bathroom. Mind you, there was still other parties of people there, but obviously everyone is getting ready to leave. As I get back to my table and I’m putting on my jacket, my cousin grabs the last piece of my burger to finish my food (as we are walking towards the entrance). Then one of the workers comes up to us and says, “Come on guys, I told you 3 times already you have to leave.” Are you serious? You guys JUST closed, and people are still walking out the door. How are you going to rush us to leave AS we are literally walking towards the exit? I tell him that along with the fact that they had waited for me to use the bathroom, but this was a couple minutes before closing time. Then he wants to say “Yeah okay”, while not even facing to look at me. Just very disrespectful. I also work in the service industry, and I just would never act this way, especially towards people who are spending money to have a good time. Do better and learn how to treat your customers with some...

When I first heard about A4cade I got really excited. A grilled cheese fast food restaurant with a speakeasy style arcade bar. I was thrilled. Only open for a week, A4cade is definitely popular which is extremely evident right when you arrive considering the long line waiting outside to get in. If you're just looking for a grilled cheese sandwich at Roxy's then you don't have to bother with the line. I waited for an hour and fifteen minutes with my friends outside before we finally got our turn to go in. On the bright side, the employees felt bad for everyone waiting in the cold so they offered all of us free tater tots.

Considering we were starving we ate first. If you love grilled cheese sandwiches, you'll love Roxy's. They have a great selection of sandwiches and the appetizers are amazing as well. My favorite is definitely the truffle fries. Yummmmm.

Once we were ready, we walked through a door that seemed like it goes into the kitchen. Through that there's another door that looks like a door to the restaurant freezer. Open that and you'll enter the magical arcade bar. The selection of games included pinball machines, retro arcade games, skee-ball, shuffle board, foosball, and a few others I've probably forgot to mention. It's definitely crowded inside but there's still room to roam around and people were nice enough to switch off games after their turn. In order to play you had to buy Roxy tokens from employees walking around.

Bar service was decent but not great. There are limited bartenders so be prepared to wait around for your drinks. Although I will say this, the cocktails are cleverly named and taste amazing so they're well worth the wait.

All in all to sum it up it's a great experience to try but due to the small space and current popularity, it's not the type of bar I go to...

ARCADE REVIEW

After eating elsewhere, we came to A4cade as we heard some cool things about it. I had been to Lucky Strike which is a big arcade with a bar in Fenway so in my head I was doing the comparisons while I was there.

A4Cade is tucked behind Roxy's Grilled Cheese which looks really good but we had already eaten so that's not what this review is for.

A4Cade is a fairly small room packed with Arcade games, from pinball, to pop a shot, to ski ball (as well as Mario Kart!). You can order drinks at the bar and then buy tokens to use the game. For $5, you get 20 tokens and games cost between 2 and 4 tokens. I was surprised that they didn't offer incentives to buy more tokens. $5 was for 20, $10 was for 40, and so on. I would charge less per token for larger quantities but also they seem to be doing fine so who am I to point out improvements.

Drinks are about what you would expect in Boston but you can also order drinks in these heads of your favorite cartoon characters. Definitely, a fun place to discover things you won't find in other bars.

A4Cade is much smaller than Lucky Strike but less kid-friendly which is definitely desirable for the 20s/30s crowd. Seems like a great place to take a date too.

If I am in the neighborhood, I'd love to come back...