Tavern in the Square — Restaurant in Cranston

My sister and I came here for my birthday lunch. We entered the restaurant and walked up to the host station. We were not greeted, did not receive a smile or even a hello, welcome to Tavern. This young lady was very aloof and maybe not the best person to be a customer's first point of contact at a busy restaurant. She asked for our name and phone number after telling us it was a 20 minute wait. We decided to wait right by the host station, instead of walking around to the shops, as it was cold out.

While waiting there, I received a text that said our table was almost ready and to come back to the restaurant to check in. Considering we never left and were the only people waiting there, we thought the hostess, standing 3 feet from us and within talking distance, would just let us know when the table was ready. But, we saw a couple that had put in their name after us come back in and get seated before us. We thought that was odd, but gave them a couple more minutes before asking how much longer the wait would be. We were told the table was already ready for us. We both thought it was pretty puzzling why the hostess didn't just let us know the table was ready when we were standing right in front of the station and we clearly never left.

Another hostess came over to bring us to our table. Again no smiles and when we both thanked her, she said nothing and walked away. No you're welcome or enjoy. Our server was ok and again no you're welcome when we said thank you for the drinks and food. We just didn't feel welcomed at all. We finally did get a smile when the check was brought over.

The three stars are for the food alone. It is good, but I did expect a little more for the price point. The southwest tots are yummy, but need more sauce on them. The first couple on top that have the sauce are great because the other toppings stick to them, but as you try to eat the rest, most of the toppings just fall to the bottom of the dish because there is nothing for them to stick to. The Chicken and waffles could be much better. For me, the garlic mashed potatoes seemed a little out of place and I would have preferred the meal without them. My sister thought her barbecue chicken pizza was pretty good, even though the chicken was a little dry. Maybe we ordered wrong? Some of the other menu items do intrigue me, but I don't think we'll be back based on the service alone. A very nice manager did come over to ask how our food was, but it didn't make up for the other 3 we came in contact with seeming aloof and...

We have eaten at the Wrentham location of Tavern in the Square several times and had excellent experiences, so on a Sunday that we found ourselves at Garden City, we thought we'd have ourselves a nice time at this location. Our server was fine, and didn't do anything particularly egregious besides just not really caring. He did stop by once in 45 minutes to acknowledge that our food was taking an unusually long time, but didn't seem to care to do anything about it. Mostly, every single thing we ordered was bland, flavorless, and stale. It definitely seemed like it had been sitting under a heat lamp for the entire time we had been sitting and waiting, like they forgot one small aspect of one of the plates and then didn't send our food out until they had added it, so everything else should have been re-fired at that point and had gone bad. The fish was cold, the tortillas were stale, the guacamole had no flavor, the rice was mushy and overcooked, the sauce tasted like it came from a can, and then oddly, among a bunch of totally hammered and overcooked food, the vegetables were practically raw and completely unseasoned. At the end of our meal, the server came by to tell us that the system was down and that they couldn't process our card, so to please give them a few minutes of patience. We sat and sat and sat until we finally decided to just leave the table and go find someone. We had to ask several differnt people before anyone could help us, and eventually they went and found our card and delivered us our bill. The food, the service, and the experience were nothing at all like what we had experienced at the other location. This is the only reason I am writing this review -- because we were astounded at the difference in quality from what we had experienced before -- which, I should mention were also during coronavirus. We liked that they had tables in a semi-heated outdoor area, so we had hoped for the same great experience. Something is wrong at this location, and we won't...

I was very excited to visit Tavern on the square, but I must say my experience was far from pleasant. Our waitress was extremely rude when asked to slightly modify my order. I worked as a server in a restaurant for 6 years and I know how easy it is to modify an order for a customer. When I asked, she made an extremely disgusted face and responded back rudely saying she didn’t want to. I told her why I wanted to change the dish and she still had the same response. Finally I told her flat out to give me plain chicken rather than the blacked one and she told me that “she guessed she could do it”. After we finished our meal and I had graciously tipped 20%, my waitress asked if any of us had downloaded the restaurant app. I reluctantly downloaded it but figured the gift card I would get would be worth it. Soon after I gave my waitress my code for getting the app, the manager came over and told us we couldn’t get the gift card because we had already paid and split it on two cards. We asked if we could still get the gift card because we had downloaded the app, and she refused. To top it off, hours after eating our food, one of us became violently ill, with what was diagnosed as food poisoning. I called the restaurant to inform the manager who proceeded to ask me if I considered myself a thoughtful person. He said if I did I would call every restaurant I had been to within the 24 hours before his because the food poisoning was definitely from one of those and not his restaurant. Now normally this would make sense except everything that the person who had become sick ate BEFORE going to tavern on the square I ate as well, and I never got sick. I was completely offended by the way in which the manager handled my phone call.

I will never be eating at tavern on the hill again, and strongly advise you don’t as well. Horrible wait staff, as well as unreasonable and rude management, and the risk of...