BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse — Restaurant in Columbus

I don't know where to start. I sent a complaint about my situation and have yet to hear back and that was 4 days ago now. But here is what we experienced. Our total order ended up being $65.88. Our check number was 409. I am upset that we had reservations at Butcher and Rose for my wife's birthday celebration and we decided this place was closer and would be a little cheaper and now I truly have no interest of ever returning due to how we were treated and the fact that the whole dining experience took a little over 2 hours. We waited about 20 minutes for my someone to take our order and then an additional 20 or so minutes for my wife to even get her soup. Then it was about seriously 45-50 minutes for us to be served our food. Not to mention mine not being correct. I requested medium well, I told the waitress I don't like pink and when I cut into the meat it was very pink and I didn't touch it again and in about 15 minutes she finally came back and I told her I'm not eating it and she apologized and asked if I wanted the cook to cook it more and I said 'no, we don't have time to wait another 30-45 minutes as we have other plans after we ate to celebrate my wife's birthday'. Then she proceeded to tell me I can take it with me and put it in the oven when I get home and cook it some more. The audacity, why do I pay $29 dollars for my meal if I am just going to take it home and cook it myself. Most restaurants if they mess up on your order they do what they can to make it right or they just remove the food you ordered off your bill. So not only did I not eat the steak as being suggested to take it home and cook it more myself just floored me and I just threw it out as I left the restaurant. THEN, when I went to pay for our meals, the website automatically adds 18% tip and there was no way in hell I was going to give that much for a tip after the bad service I was given. I took it down to 10% and after I entered my CC info and hit submit, it went through and I looked back up at the final total and saw it reset it back to 18%. I don't feel the site should automatically set a tip for this purpose, it just feels shady that even though I lowered the tip amount, the site still reverted back to the full 18%. She did NOWHERE NEAR 18% worth tipping. It was just a bad experience altogether and throughout that 2 hours time, she only refilled our drinks once and practically for 75% of the time, we just had glasses of ice with no drink. I would have rather paid the close to $100 I'm sure I would have paid at Butcher and Rose and got exactly what we ordered and my wife's birthday dinner would not have been ruined. Now you know why I am not sure I will ever recommend BJs Restaurant to any of my friends, family or coworkers. It was a complete and total failure and ultimately a waste of time and money. I will post telling people of our experience and that BJ's is not a place to celebrate birthdays that's...

8/3/24: ORIGINAL RATING 2 STARS (see update for 3 star rating). Service was horrendous. This the first negative review I have ever posted on Google about anything—I’ve only ever posted positive reviews. It was that bad. My kind husband tipped the server 20% but she surely did not earn it. 1. Server was disinterested and messed up repeatedly with no acknowledgment or apology. 2. Server came to the table and spoke to me a few times, but never looked at me. She was looking over her shoulder and around the restaurant when she talked so I wasn’t even sure that she was talking to me at all. 3. My meal was not delivered until 10 minutes after my husband’s meal arrived. No apology. 4. When my meal arrived, it was clearly missing some of the items described in the menu, i.e. a gaping empty space on the plate and I had to ask for the missing food. Again, no apology. 5. After my meal the server asked if I wanted a container and I said yes. She then walked by the table several times to wait on other customers or chit chat with other staff. She returned to our table a couple of times to discuss the check (more on that below), each time saying she’d bring a container. She never brought it. 6. What’s most pathetic? We were there on a gift certificate from BJs to apologize for our visit a month ago, when they brought the wrong meal entirely. It took the server several tries to figure out how to use the certificate, and in the process she brought us 3 different checks for 3 different amounts. She never figured it out, so we couldn’t even use the apology gift certificate! She shrugged and said “I don’t know what to tell you.” No apology! Pathetic.

UPDATE 8/6/24: Restaurant manager responded to say this was not up to their standards. She invited me to come in so they could make it up to me. I appreciate the reply, so I increased the rating from 2 stars to 3. But I’m not asking them to make it up to us, it’s not about that. In fact the apology gift certificate mentioned above was not because we complained or posted a bad review. BJ’s sent us a generic survey ASKING about our experience last time, and we answered honestly. The apology gift certificate was a surprise. I like BJs and we’ve gone there often. I’m sad that I’m taking them off my “favorite restaurants” list, because lately I expect to be...

If you like to wait forever for bad food – this is your place.

Came in around 6:30 last night, Saturday. The place was busy, but not overwhelmed. We immediately found two seats at the bar. It took a minute for the bartender to clear the bar and set up water and menus, but not too bad. Got a drink order in, drinks came out fairly promptly. Then we waited a little bit to get an order in for food. Slow, but not enough to alarm us. Then we entered the black whole of silence and waiting. We sat there for over an hour waiting for our entrées. Meanwhile, everyone else around was served. Occasionally the bartender would walk by and mutter something about “sorry guys”, but we couldn’t really tell because she never actually stopped and engaged us. Literally, for over an hour, we were not even asked if we wanted another round of drinks.

I looked to either side and both parties who had arrived at the same we had were done eating, had their leftovers boxed, and were paying their checks. Having waited over an hour for food, we were two minutes away from leaving when the food finally came out. The hamburger was sad, small, and undercooked. The piece of cheese on top of it was not even a full piece, it looked like someone had taken a big bite out of it before putting it on the burger. At this point I was to the bottom of my Old Fashioned, and the entire bottom of the drink was sugar water, like they dumped too much in or didn’t bother to stir it when they mixed it.

Bad enough that the food was late, but what I struggle to understand is why we weren’t attended to during the wait, (the bartender clearly knew the food was late given her repeated mutterings as she flitted by), why we weren’t offered something to munch on, a breadstick perhaps, or at least given some other accommodation. I’m guessing BJ’s corporate policies, metrics, and KPIs emphasize the bottom dollar, so the staff gets in trouble if they actually try to do right by the customer?

I’m not sure what else to say. It was a lousy experience that left us feeling burned. If you like to wait forever for bad food – this is your place. Otherwise, I suggest going...