Back 40 A1A — Restaurant in Florida

After seeing a previous post about cheesecake recommendations, my wife and I decided to go check it out.. we LOVE supporting local businesses and are trying new to us places in the area.

We arrived just before the dinner rush, and when we stepped inside it wasn't clear what to do (seat yourself, wait) so we stood for a few minutes before walking up to the bar and asking if we could sit, and the guy told us sure sit anywhere.

I work in the service industry, and my wife who had previously worked in the service industry, are hyper sensitive to the current situation and unfortunately, the pandemic just didn't seem to be the reason for our unhappy experience.

We sat at the bar for about 20 minutes, watching multiple people enter and sit down and order (at both the bar and tables) before my I finally broke down and asked for a menu.

The guy behind the counter was nice and grabbed us two menus and told us someone would be with us soon to take our drink order. By this time, the restaurant was starting to get busier. A waitress (maybe 16) took our drink orders and put in order for an appetizer (Chips and Queso). About 10 minutes after that our appetizer came out and the chips were stale and the cheese COLD (also not really queso - IMO).

We told the guy behind the bar and he said "Oh OK, I'll take it off". Not "Sorry, would you like a fresh order?" Or "Sorry, would you like something else?". "Just, I'll take it off."

The meals came out, I had a burger with chips, and my wife had a quesedilla. Unfortunately, even after sending the chips back, they brought me more stale chips. I asked for onion rings as a sub for the chips, and shocker... they were burnt when they came out. 😩 my burger (ordered Medium) was VERY WELL. Just everything, honestly was pretty bad.

My wifes quesedilla was okay, but bar food quality (IMO).

When we told the server the food wasn't good, she simply said sorry and shrugged.

As someone who genuinely wants to support small business, this experience made it hard. Everything from the entry experience, the servers' disinterest and the terrible food, it was just a...

My wife, Marsha and I have a very nice lunch today at this restaurant. The VALUE was excellent with regard the quality of the food, portions and service when compared to the price. Our server was Olivia who promptly informed us that "she loved her job" as she multi-tasked her way to handling the entire floor of customers. Very impressive, Olivia!

We live in the neighborhood so its an easy walk or golf cart ride over to their location on A1A. The owners are shrewd promoters offering well thought out attractive specials such as Tuesday Night Date Night where Two for Tuesdays is back in style. Your choice of TWO entrees (anything on the menu), a pair of beverages, and a delicious homemade dessert to spoil you rotten. This special coupled with Wednesday Night 1/2 price bottles of wine from opening to close provided an entree is ordered gives plenty of incentive to keep the Back 40 A1A on the weekly calendar. Also, if you eat lunch there 5 times during the hours of 11;00-3:00 your 6th one is on the house.

If that's not enough check out the $2 bottles of Corona Tuesday-Sundays from 3:00-6:00 p..m. If Corona is not your beer of choice the others are $1 off the already reasonable price of $4 for an import. They have 2 nice flat screens in the bar area as well.

The small friendly atmosphere at this restaurant decorated by beach art from local artists is another nice intangible. We highly recommend trying the Back 40 A1A location.

Marsha & Brady Fennell St....

Food was good. Service was not. Came here as a casual invite from one friend for her family’s birthday thing. They sat us at one table out of three (for the party) in the restaurant. I understand the concept of being “understaffed” or “overwhelmed”. Our waitress was extremely unorganized due to these issues. I gave her grace because I empathized. My husband and I requested our check, to which she replies “oh I thought I already gave it to you”, then applies charges of extra drinks we never ordered. Cool. We patiently waited for it to be corrected to pay. We leave the building and start to pull out of the parking lot. The waitress begins to hit my truck over and over demanding to speak to us. She then proceeds to tell us someone from the birthday dinner didn’t pay their check and wanted us to pay their bill because we were “with the party” (different tables). And then lectures us on how we made her life difficult because we set up our party in a way that wasn’t manageable for her and goes back to us having to pay. Mind you, there were SIX people from the party who were STILL at their table in their restaurant. I told her no, I only came because my ONE friend invited me and I didn’t know any other person at those tables. She huffed and said “Whatever! It’s fine!!” And stomps away. I am absolutely astonished. The last thing I wanted after a long day at work is dealing with childish and rude behaviors from my waitress...