Buffalo Wild Wings — Restaurant in Chesapeake

I really, really wanted some wings. Yep, for the past three days it has been on my mind. Wings! Wings! Wings! And beer. Ranch dressing to dip the wings in. Some carrots and celery. And wings, from a little chicken.

Did I mention the wings? I did? Okay. Well, there is only one place to go if you’re craving hot and messy wings. Buffalo Wild Wings. This place has lots of tables. My sis and I wanted a booth and got it quickly. There were lots of televisions, many, many of them, though I didn’t come there to watch sports.

And lots of youngsters, with smiles and interesting hair styles and all of them wearing the number 82 on a pretend football jersey. Eighty-two. Really? I wondered why. It seems so clone-like and unoriginal, but there is a reason for this sameness. I asked my phone to tell me the answer (thank you Google), and I discovered that it relates to a particular year (when I was still in high school). 1982. That’s when Jim and Scott, two friends from Buffalo, New York, now living in Columbus, Ohio, had entrepreneurship on their mind and opened a brand new eatery featuring chicken wings, just like they used to eat in NY. TVs joined in quickly, cuz people like tv. They were set to music videos. Yep. Remember the 80s and MTV? Well, one day someone asked if they’d put it on an Ohio State foot-ball game, and wahlah, the sports bar was born. Did you know that there are BWW chains in every U.S. state? Yep! That would be cool to eat at one in every state (except maybe Alaska in the winter, brrr, or East Texas during the summer, too many bugs). Me? I ate at my first BWW in Ontario. No, not in Canada, eh. In Southern California, dude.

Anyways, back to the fowl food. I am a chicken when it comes to eating chicken. I like tasty and savory, but not hot and spicy. So, I ordered a medium tub of wings (on the bone), with Honey Barbecue sauce on half and Teriyaki on the other half. Ohhhhhh, it was so delicious. And some Mozzarella Sticks with red tomato sauce of some kind. And a Blue Moon in a tall glass. Wowsers! The buzz hit me quickly and I was all “blah, blah blah” until the food saturated the beer in my belly.

“Yeahhhhhhh!” A single person screamed, and I looked up to see the Texas Longhorns score a touchdown. Boo! I laughed and kept eating. Five minutes later a chorus of screams erupt-ed, and I looked up to see West Virginia celebrating a touch-down of their own. That was cool! I’m not a fan of either university (go UCLA), but it was hilarious how people reacted. This eatery was the place to be if you wanted to watch a big game. Friends had done that, and rivals, and all seemed to be enjoying themselves on a Saturday evening.

Look, if you’re ever in the area and wanting to hang out with friends over beer and wings, come. The servers are friendly and check up on you frequently. The cooks know exactly how to prepare your wings. And there are dozens and dozens of televisions to watch whatever sporting event you want.

Did I mention how good...

I just want to start this off by saying this is the first review I have EVER done on a restaurant and I glad to be making this my first. We dined at the Buffalo Wild Wings Hillcrest location on 01/26 (it was a Saturday). We arrived at 7:10 pm, there were a couple parties ahead of us (maybe 2 or 3) but we were seated within 5 minutes of arriving. The restaurant was not very full for a Saturday night. Once we were seated, I noticed there was a 6 top that had also been seated in the same section. The server of our section (skinny, short blonde) I can’t remember her name because she was not helpful to us at all throughout this dining experience, immediately went to the host (I’m assuming to complain about being double seated). She proceeded to talk to the host about these two tables for a good 5 minutes, at this point we had been sitting there for about 10 minutes with no drinks and not even as much as a greeter or a “I’ll be right with you guys”. Once the server was done complaining she went straight to the 6 top to start taking their drink order. Now I am a server and have been for 8 years, when you get double seated a 6 top and a 3 top, you ideally would want to take the SMALLER tables order first because it takes less time and keeps them happy, and then proceed to the larger table, this server did not do that. So now we have been here for 15 minutes, no drinks, no server, NOTHING! Finally, I noticed that the ONLY person who was paying attention to our situation was the host (her name was Maddie and she was AWESOME!) she went to the manager (who also did not notice what was happening with our table) and let him know. Maddie then went to our table, apologized for our wait and took our drink order. After that, our “server” brought the 6 tops drinks over AND THEN STARTED TAKING THEIR ORDER. At this point it was 7:45, we had been there for about 35 minutes and our waitress still did not say a word to us OR take our food order. Maddie once again, noticed what was happening with our table and told the manager, she then came over and took our food order. Once the food was out, that was when the server checked on us, finally introducing herself and asked if we needed anything, I told her I needed napkins (she never brought them and I had to ask the food runner who did). Then I asked for a refill on my drink as well as my husbands...that was the ONLY thing this server did for us was refill our drinks. That being said, the only reason I am writing this review and giving a 5 star rating is to praise Maddie for going above her job description and jumping into a role she may or may not have been familiar with, in order to help insure we had a good dining experience. She was kind, helpful, informative, and all around fantastic! Buffalo Wild Wings, it’s employees like Maddie you need to keep around! If this girl isn’t a server yet she needs to be! So once again, thank you MADDIE for your amazing service and being so helpful! We...

We were really hoping to have a good experience tonight. We used to have a great time at the Harbour View location, but the Greenbrier BWW is 0-for-2. When we arrived at about 5:10PM on a Monday evening, the dining room was almost empty; there were only two tables with people seated at them. We thought, "This is promising!" One other couple was waiting to be seated. The host leaned around them and asked "Have you been helped? How many do you have?" We said "Not yet," and "Two." She rolled her eyes and then trudged into the corner to pick up cleaning supplies to clean a booth. We wondered: Why, if the dining room is virtually empty, does a table have to be cleaned?

While she seated the couple in front of us, another host asked how many in our party, and we asked "Could we please have a table rather than a booth?" She smiled, picked up menus, and made a note on the board. Then the first host came back and said "Follow me." No eye contact, with us or with the other host, who called her name to say "They asked for a table." The eyeroll this time was even more pronounced, and we couldn't tell whether we were supposed to follow her or not. It was quite uncomfortable, and we saw other guests receive the same performance after we were seated.

Our server seemed very pleasant and nice, but had the softest voice. We could barely hear anything she said... and the dining room was almost empty. I can't imagine how she can communicate when there's a big game going on! Sunday afternoons must be miserable.

Service was quite slow. It was 12 minutes between taking our drink order and bringing by our drinks. She had an entire tray of drinks that she dropped at 3 different tables, and she didn't offer straws or sweetener for the unsweet tea. My partner's diet pepsi was empty twice, for more than 5 minutes each time, without our server noticing.

We both ordered cheeseburgers. I asked for the Buffalo chips and my partner asked for the potato wedges. Both our meals arrived with fries. The server who brought out our meals brought us back the correct sides, fairly quickly. The burgers were tasty, cooked to a nice medium-well. There are many people squicked out to see any pink in a burger, and they would have been unhappy with their meal, but it was just right for us.

After we finished our meal, we tried for more than 10 minutes to catch our server's eye to get the check. She was quick to run it for us, though. I tipped $4 on a $19 purchase (post tax). Usually I calculate 20% on the post-tax total, round up, and then add another dollar or two. I actually felt bad leaving only the 20%, knowing that in the US, tipping really is part of compensating servers fairly and isn't merely a gratuity.

We didn't see the game boards being used by anyone. Usually, the server asks when they take the drink order if we'd like a game board. I hope it was just a bad night at this location, because the experience was overall a...