The Swamp Restaurant — Restaurant in Gainesville

They done a beautiful job as far as replicating the old swamp restaurant, spacious, Florida feel. I was so excited to finally eat there because it was my tradition on game days to have some swamp juice and Gator nuggets. I went the day after game day and it was busy but not excessively as there were Empty Tables available however we had a 30 minute wait. Went to the bar to get a drink and it took the entire 30 minutes to get the attention of the two bartenders. Two young girls that appear to be fairly Clueless much unlike the bartenders working there in the past that were so fast and efficient. They would not make eye contact because they knew we were waiting which was aggravating. They should have at least acknowledged so that we knew they would get to us. Ordered my usual swamp juice and it was not at all like it always had been. She missed entire ingredients. It tasted like banana syrup. We took a table outside and they're beautiful Courtyard which houses a large TV with football on. It took some time before a waitress came out and took our order. We ordered chips and queso to come out first it took about an hour for it to arrive along with our ice water. We were nursing the one drink we had ordered knowing we would not get another one anytime soon. I was able to get the waitress to bring us a glass of ice and I walked out to my car and grabbed a couple of white claws out of my own cooler so we would have another beverage while we waited. The food arrived and was very good. My friend ordered the Smashburger and I ordered the chicken quesadillas. They had a limited Game Day weekend menu so not very many items to choose from and no Gator nuggets on the menu which was disappointing. I was told after the fact did they had gator and I could have ordered but there's no indication on the menu and not much communication. The queso for the chips is a touch on the spicy side just an FYI. I didn't expect it but it was still pretty good. We were there for approximately 3 hours just order one drink and simple food. Multiple tables around us were full of dirty dishes from guests that had left no one came to clear one table the entire time we were out there. Another table full of guests that were having drinks got up and walked out and their food arrived 2 minutes later. They had gotten tired of waiting. They are severely understaffed unfortunately. I feel like if they were able to find enough help that things would go better. And I definitely need to get some bartenders that know how to make drinks and can work quickly. I ordered two of their signature drinks and it took more than 5 minutes for her to make them. That is pure insanity. I will return and hopefully they will have ironed out...

We visited The Swamp yesterday and had some issues. Apparently a new menu had been recently introduced and the kitchen staff was not yet familiar with it. That being said, my issue is with the way it was handled, not with the problems themselves.

We were not informed at the time we were seated, that they were way behind in the kitchen and having issues. We ordered our meals right away when our server came to take our drink orders, because we were in a hurry.

We waited 45 minutes, and never saw our server. She did not keep us up-to-date that things were taking longer than expected, we never got our waters refilled or got to order more beer. We finally flagged her down to ask what was going on. She came back and informed us that our meals would be out in 1.5 minutes. After 10 more minutes, the manager brought our food out and apologized for the long wait and explained about the new menu issues. But she never offered any compensation for us having to wait an hour for our food! I didn’t expect a free meal, but maybe a beer on the house would have been nice, since we expected to drink our beer with our food. They were warm after sitting for so long, so we had to order more.

I had a veggie burger and the risotto cake. The risotto cake was a dried-out, burnt mass and inedible. The burger wasn’t bad, but had some burnt, crunchy pieces on the outside. I have had that burger there before and it was really good. So something had obviously gone horribly wrong. So we waited an hour for burnt food and were only offered a smile of apology.

We had to flag our waitress down two more times just to get the check. We never did get any water refills. I am very tolerant of issues at restaurants having worked in the food industry, and I would have written a rave review if these issues had been handled well. Instead, they they were handled poorly, and we are unlikely to go back after this. It would have gone a long way just to get a beer on the house as compensation for what we had to put up with. That’s a...

We walked in on a Football-Sunday afternoon and got sat around 1:30 at a table upstairs. As we walked through the restaurant, I noticed a lot of dirty, unbussed tables. Once sat, we were not acknowledged for 15 minutes. At that point we decided to move to the outside bar out back to see if we could get some service. We sat at one of the high tops outside and within two minutes, Shelby came to the table, introduced herself and took our order. When she brought the drinks to the table, we finally ordered our food (by then, it was around 1:55). We ordered a burger with everything on it plus bacon and a Philly special. We didn’t get our food until just past 2:20. When our food hit the table, the buns on the burger were cold, the lettuce tomato onion and pickle were not on the burger, and the cheese had barely melted on the patty. The Philly came out with no grilled peppers & onions and wasn’t even cut. It took an additional 10 minutes for a side of grilled peppers and onions to come out, but by the time they did, we were ready to leave and had gotten boxes and asked for the check. Shelby did everything she could to recover our table and our experience with quick and attentive service, but the kitchen is clearly lacking and inefficient. It’s not sad that it took 20+ minutes to make a burger and a Philly, restaurant get busy. It’s sad that two simple items from the menu are made incorrectly. Servers also lacked a sense of urgency and were not attentive enough to notice multiple tables that needed to (at least) get a greeting and waters on the table. I really wanted to like The Swamp as it was my first time visiting, but unfortunately it was a bad...