Punch Bowl Social — Restaurant in Dallas

I took my fiancé here for his birthday, and by the end I cried I was so embarrassed that I took him to such an awful place. First, I made a reservation online for his birthday dinner. I was picturing after we ate we’d get into some activities. I showed up, and they notified me it was open seating and only bar service, no wait staff. There was no indication of this when I made the reservation, and no one contacted me to let me know. It’s okay to offer open seating/bar only, but I wish they would have let me know so I could have looked elsewhere for dinner plans. But they did not, so we start with me getting up to order our food and drinks from the bar, rather than having the birthday dinner I had a reservation for. I figure ‘bummer’, but it should be fine. It was not fine. There were 2 bartenders at the bar, and neither made eye contact with us for more than 8 minutes straight of us standing there (understandably- 2 bartenders is absolutely not enough staff). After that, it took another several minutes for them to actually take our order, and another several minutes before our drink was finished. That's 15 minutes of us waiting at a bar before we could go back to our table. Note here that after all that time, my fiance’s drink was wrong. There was nothing we could do though – we weren’t going to wait another 15. For activities, there is no clear place to go to get on a list for any of the activities (except bowling, which was a 3 hour wait), so who knows how to actually take part in the fun things PBS is supposed to offer. I finally stopped a staff member and found out we could use the ping pong table without a wait list. Great! We snag the table because it's open, but tragedy strikes – we need a second drink. This means my fiancé walks across the room and stands alone, by himself, at the bar for 15 minutes straight, while I stand alone by the ping pong table. He still hadn’t had anyone take his order after 15 minutes, and at this point I was so frustrated and disappointed, we bailed. (luckily, closing the tab was fast). We left sober and feeling invisible, as staff rarely acknowledged our existence (again, because they were busy, nothing bad on the staff themselves). I will note, I was here for the grand opening before COVID. Service and wait times were also horrid, but I assumed it was because it was the first night. As far as I can tell, this is just the norm. I would absolutely not recommend visiting unless you don’t drink and just want to sit in a...

A great physical space ran by front house and bar staff clearly unprepared to provide acceptable service and handle payments. There is a clear need for a true soft opening to better prepare the team for consistency and service. I was hoping for a great birthday lunch with friends that has turned into the bad experience that wasn’t ended two days later. I thought it was appropriate to order a punch bowl... I asked for the mer-man which serves 4 and waited 30mins for a icepacked bowl of tea. When the operations manager came over he looked at the bowl and recommend we get the mer-man instead not even visually recognizing that’s what I’d already ordered. He walked over a sample of an individual serving remade at the managers request... tasted like a completely different drink! I’d expect a place named Punch Bowl Social to make quality and consistent punch bowls. The Shrimp burger was great and I thought we were in the clear until it came time to pay.

In a party of 6 we had 3 separate tickets. My card was charged for all 3 tabs! And my friends cards were also run for double payment on the same tickets. I was told the incorrect charges were removed and I wouldn’t see any posted payment. Not only did two payments go through, today (2 days later) an ADDITIONAL NEW CHARGE for a random total was posted to my account.

Called today for resolve and was told to wait a couple days and see what happens with the mysterious new charge to my card (which is the same thing I was told 2 days ago) and call her back. I would’ve hoped a manger would offer “We are new and still learning. I will follow up with you in 2-3 days because I want to make sure we correct our mistake” but NOPE.... I really want to like this place but the headache of this first experience makes this a hard...

If you’re planning a private event you may want to reconsider. We were assigned a waiter and waitress to our event. Initially, they were very attentive to our needs; however, that quickly changed when the coordinator for another party arrived. The waitress completely shifted her focus to them, helping them setup, and socializing although their party had not officially started. The guest at our event needed drinks refilled but they were no where to be found. We were told when we picked up shoes for bowling our names would be added to the lanes; only one name was added. I had to leave several times to get everyone added and our time on the lanes were still running down. The second lane malfunctioned twice and our assigned staff was no where to be found. They wanted to give us 5 minutes added to the lane for inconvenience when it took over 5 minutes to find someone, 10 minutes for them to figure out who’s responsible for fixing it and 10 minutes to get it fixed. THE FOOD: not sure how long it was sitting out but the bread on the sliders were hard as a brick from the heating lamp. I asked for the wings to be cooked well done prior to the event and they were not. The ladies restroom had no tissue. I brought it to management’s attention and the employee he sent said she wasn’t putting more inside because it would be on the floor at the end of the night and she didn’t want to have to clean it up. Huh?! We made the best of our “private event” but the assigned waiter and waitress DID NOT deserve the 18% gratuity they received. I will not be returning to Punch Bowl Social or recommending them for a private event...