Shy Bird - Kendall Square — Restaurant in Cambridge

The five star food is only outdone by the five star service from the amazing team members. Ren, our server for the evening, had some great recommendations, as did Manager Shannon, who stopped by not to assist because it was needed, but to enhance everyone's experience because she wanted to.

Food: Definitely recommend the street corn dip, and eating off of the rotisserie menu as was suggested. I had the salsa verde rotisserie chicken, which was a really large half chicken, with a generous portion of fries. Highly recommend. Delicious crispy skin, and succulent meat. My friend had the rotisserie octopus, which I tried and was unique and delicious and juicy - get both!

Drinks: ask your server, and they can recommend a plethora of different mocktails and cocktails depending on your mood. I forgot what it was called, but my friend had a white foamy looking mocktail that he said was delicious, and I thoroughly enjoyed my drinks. Kudos to the bartender. Shy Lady was just the right amount of sweet and citrus, and I'm blacking out on the other two drinks but Ren and Shannon were able to match them perfectly with my taste. Reasonably priced.

I can honestly say this is some of the best service I've ever had in a restaurant, no matter the price range or level Michelin stars or James Beard awards or Zagat ratings. The team is on point, helping each other out and all very aware of what guests need. All I had to do was glance at something and there would be somebody to take a plate away, as if they were reading my mind. There was also a point towards the end of the evening where we were deep in serious conversation, and Ren and her co-workers could see that and gave us a few extra minutes before clearing dessert, (quietly without interrupting). Ren has this demeanor of warm and welcoming while also professional and expedient, never rushing customers to make a decision, and yet always giving thoughtful recommendations and arriving at the right time when service is needed. Great Leadership there, from her and from Shannon. .Kudos to Ren and the entire server team, as well as the management team. Having such great service from multiple people for multiple tables means that this is truly a restaurant that values the diner/guest, and creates an experience where elevated hospitality is not a "one-off on a special night", but an everyday experience for guests, whether it is a busy Saturday or a low-key Tuesday. Thank you to manager Shannon and Server Ren for truly making our evening special, and providing unexpected surprises that enhanced our evening - definitely get the brownie dessert!

Room for improvement: The only thing I will say is that since this is Cambridge, there are certain things out of the restaurant's control: the weather, nature, and being in a Cambridge city environment. Team responded with alacrity.

Kudos: To me, it is not necessarily about what happens when something goes amiss, It is about how the team responds and rushes (or doesn't, as happens at other places!) to remedy the situation. The team response was great here!

Shybird deserves to hold the top spot on all of the lists for local and national dining scenes not just for their food, but for their five star service that is approachable, fun, and above all - sincere. The world needs more Rens. The world needs more Shannon's to help teach others how to serve and provide hospitality like Ren!

If I owned a restaurant, I would definitely poach members from this team (Ren, Shannon, and others !) to train others on how to provide sincere, approachable luxury hospitality. This is not just based on how they assisted just our table, but other guests as well. Kudos all around.

And don't forget that the food is amazing, best rotisserie that I've had in a long long time, with vegan vegetarian creative options as well!!

I will be back multiple times, for intimate romantic future dates, and also large parties. Thank you to the entire...

Went here a few weeks ago for brunch and had an absolutely horrible experience with the service, ended up getting overcharged by our server, and we were very unhappy with the way the restaurant handled it.

When we arrived, we were told there were no more tables available inside, only at the bar and outside. It was a bit chilly outside and loud from road construction, so we went to the bar to try to find seats. There were 2 seats open at the bar, so we sat down there. The bartender told us those seats had to remain open for the servers to access the bar, so she sat us down at an open table in the bar area that she said was available. She brought us waters and took our coffee order. Then a couple minutes later another server came over and told us the table was taken by a reservation. We explained that the bartender sat us here because we couldn’t sit at the bar seats, and she looked at us like we were crazy. We looked back at the bar seats we were turned away from, and another couple had taken the seats and were now being served. The bartender ignored us after this, and did not acknowledge that she sat us at that table.

We were then moved outside to an area where we were sitting alone. They turned the heaters on, so were fine with the table. However, the service from this point was pretty much non-existent. we had to tell them we ordered coffees, when they were brought out we were not offered anything for them, and my boyfriend ended up going inside to get cream and sugar our server ignored us for 25 minutes, we had to flag her down to tell her that we still needed to order food when our food came, they did not bring any utensils or offer any condiments. after 5 minutes waiting, I had to go ask the hostess inside for utensils and ketchup/hot sauce. our server never checked on us, we had to flag her down again for the check.

When we did pay, we were not given a check just shown an amount on the screen. I just paid it, as we were ready to leave after an overall uncomfortable experience. HOWEVER, we realized later that the bill was very high. Almost $50 (not including tip) for 2 meals (~$10 each) and coffees. I called the restaurant to explain and asked for a copy of the check. They looked our order up, and found out the server had moved someone’s meal from another table onto our check. I was told to let a manager know about our experience, and was told our meal would be comp-ed (which wasn’t our goal when calling). When the manager got on the phone, they just said they would refund the meal, did not ask anymore questions and then hung up. I wasn’t going to write a negative review, because I have had better experiences at Shy Bird previously, and I would have preferred to explain our experiences to the restaurant directly in case it was just an issue with one server. But I checked my credit card bill recently and found out we were never refunded for our meal like we were told. (This was 3 weeks ago, so it should have gone through by now.) I am very disappointed by our experience with the service, and with the way it was handled by management. The experience overall was uncomfortable — we were made to feel like needy/whiney customers for asking for simple things like utensils and cream and sugar for coffee, and then were charged for food from other tables. I have worked in service before and understand that mistakes happen and people have bad days, but it felt like at no point in the process did the restaurant attempt to correct or make up for the mistakes in service. I will not be...

Dinner on a Sunday evening for a party of 5. The experience was definitely worth writing about.

On arrival we were not greeted, despite having made a reservation. We were made to feel like an inconvenience even though the restaurant was quite empty.

When we were finally seated, we ordered our meals and drinks. There was a small mix up where we were given the wrong order. We mentioned it was wrong, but no one offered to change anything. So we had to directly ask for the originally ordered dish to be brought, which should have been an automatic gesture.

The food eventually came and was sub-par, some items were not as described on the menu. The meatballs were bland, the “octopus” rice had about 2 pieces of canned overcooked octopus in there, the rosemary fries tasted like frozen supermarket fries.

On top of this the staff seemed to want to rush us out of there. Our dinner began at 7pm which is not particularly late, yet we had plates being cleared while people were still eating.

When we were done the bill couldn’t have arrived faster. As there are 5 of us, we naturally asked to split. We were told we could only split the cheque in two and “there was no way to enter a manual amount” which seemed quite made up.

Something we did seemed to annoy the person serving us, and after we received some change after paying cash, we noticed the person serving us clearly talking about us to another member of staff for some reason, which is obviously unprofessional and rude.

To top it off, in the confusion, we missed that we had also been charged for the mistaken item which is a joke.

In all, it was not a comfortable or enjoyable place for a group of non-white people. The charge for an extra item also has left us more annoyed. The person serving us had blue hair and didn’t seem to want to be there. For context an all white and very loud table near us (who were actually there before and after us) didn’t seem to receive the same treatment, not rushed or made to feel uncomfortable in...