Sidelines Sports Bar & Grill — Restaurant in Fort Myers

I’ll start off by saying, I really liked this place before our negative experience towards the end of the night. The food was good, our server was very nice and accommodating with our big group of 7+.

When we had first entered the bar, we were told that we needed to give our card to the bartender so she can keep our tab open. No worries, maybe it’s protocol here. We hand her our card and start ordering drinks with her and once we get those, we walk off towards the tables close to the outside patio door. We drink, we eat, and now we’re ready to close out our tab because it’s getting late and the bar is closing anyways.

We go to close our tab out and we’re told that our card had been lost. Okay, it happens. I understand, lots of cracks and crevices to search where it could get lost. Bartender gets her manager, manager takes down our name and number and says he’ll call if they find the card. 30 minutes go by and we’re seeing the bartender go back and forth from the front to the back for minutes at a time. We had hoped that she would take at least even a second to look because we were going to an event 2 hours away and would be gone for the weekend. After we had seen this happen repeatedly, we reiterated the need to find our card. The bartender on staff then proceeded to get her manager back out once more and he told us that there was nothing that he could do. The bar wasn’t busy with orders so I’m not sure why neither of them could search for the card while the other made drinks. We then reiterated our time constraint to the manager of which he became defensive. We were told that we could “just pull out cash”. Also, the inconvenience of having to order another card, not being able to utilize money during an important 3 day festival, and the attitude from the manager were all very unsatisfactory. I get it, it’s a bar. I don’t expect 5 star service but when the manager mocks a patron who spent money there, it’s unacceptable.

To add, our card has now been tried to be used for payment twice now. No apology from the manager regarding the issue after we had “upset” him when we reiterated our time frame. I am not sure if our bartender had given our card to another patron or if it is someone part of management. Bartender kept on saying she left it on the register.

Please never give out your card to...

My SIL, her boyfriend, my husband and myself all came here for lunch when we got to Fort Myers because of all the great reviews we saw here on google. Our experience was far less than our expectations. When we arrived there was a sign that mentioned some seafood dip, when we got to the table my husband ordered it and the waitress had absolutely no idea what he was talking about, when it came out our waitress was acting strange and came over to our table multiple times asking “does it taste okay?”, we got bad vibes, thinking our food was tampered with so we stopped eating it after the 3rd or so time of her coming over. Onto the entrees, SIL’s boyfriend that ordered the Buffalo chicken sandwich had no Buffalo sauce and no Buffalo flavoring in the fried crust. My husband had ordered fries with his meal and didn’t get them. And my entree the fish and chips— the fish that I took 2 bites out of was disgusting and tasted sour, like it was rotten. So I ended up paying $43 to eat fries and for my husband to only half eat his meal. And I don’t know if our waitress was new or not, but when she asked if we wanted refills on our water she said she’d bring us some right over, she brought us the pitcher and set it down on the table and walked off to the back again, instead of pouring our waters. Something small but annoying. And finally when she went to ask if we needed boxes and I said no I’m good she said “awh you didn’t like it?” Referring to my fish. And I flat out told her no it was disgusting and tasted sour. Then she just kept saying “I’m sorry you didn’t like it”, and didn’t even offer to comp the entree or the dip we didn’t eat. I don’t even care about the money, it’s just a principle, if your customer says hey this is disgusting maybe you should take care of that for them especially when all I ate was fries and then had to stop at a fast food joint to get a burger to eat…I’m kind of amazed with how many good reviews there are but our experience was total opposite and I would never tell anyone to eat there, honestly I would tell them to avoid this place because it was awful, awful experience...

If there were an option for no stars that would be my rating. Me and my family went here a few years ago when they first opened and they were dead. We decided to give it a try anyway. Worst idea. The waitress or waiter at the time I don’t really remember if it was a male or female was rude as hell and took forever to get our food out to us. It was dead in there what could take it an hour to come out??? Well today I decided to stop in again and try considering I was next door at Firestone getting an allignment done and I had my little Pomeranian with me. (He was being impatient so I took him for a little walk.) I decided to go next door to sidelines. I walk in no one was at the door. It was again dead inside. A waiter approached me and asked if I was being helped I said no and my first question was do you guys allow dogs. I didn’t want to be the type to just come in with a dog I wanted to at least be polite enough to ask. He asked another female there she was kind and said yes if you want to be seated outside on our back patio. I went back there it was dead. There was a couple sitting at the bar and all chairs were open. But all chairs were high tops. I sat in one and put my little dog beside me. I looked around and saw the waitress at the bar across the patio giving me bad looks. She approached me with attitude and said “are you doing lunch” I said yes. She gave me a menu I looked it over she comes back and asked what I wanted to drink I said water is fine. She comes back again and gives me attitude and says sorry your going to have to put your dog on the floor. It’s a safety code. Look. That’s fine. I get it might be a safety code or whatever but you just lost a customer twice not because of my dog but because of your attitude. If you don’t like customer service. Don’t work it. You wouldn’t even have noticed my dog if your business wasn’t so dead anyway Honesty. Your place probably wouldn’t pass and inspection anyways with as dirty as it was when I walked in. So please, My Pomeranian is cleaner than most kids to begin with anyway. Good luck on getting more customers with...