Austins Bar & Grill | Gardner — Restaurant in Gardner

Food would have potential of waitress believed me when I told her “there’s something on my French fries” instead of just being told “I put plain on the ticket” and proceeded to just leave it alone. I then called her back and asked her to PLEASE ask the cook if the fries were indeed plain, since I could visually see some kind of salt and oil (not normal by the way) on them… she literally rolled her eyes, walked away, and got the manager. AT THAT POINT, it was probably the best move she had made thus far. The manager came over, I told her that we had not asked to speak with her (to her surprise), but to please sit down at our table so we could explain the situation without causing a scene for other guests that try to be nosy. At this point, I’m MAD about the rude service and just want the plain French fries I ordered with my sandwich. The manager immediately looked at my fries and told me there was truffle salt on my fries. NO WONDER THEY TASTED LIKE GARBAGE WITH KETCHUP!!! Just like I told the manager, all could have just been avoided if the waitress simply “If they don’t taste right, let me take them from you and get them replaced right away, my apologies”. No big deal. Quite frankly, she honestly wouldn’t even need to apologize to me since I personally know it was the kitchen’s fault. We go back in the second time for my mom’s birthday. Get sat in the same waitresses section again. She takes our order. My mom asks her “can you show me where your desserts are on the menu, I don’t see them”. I tell the waitress it is my mom’s birthday and she may want something later. She points the small section out and my mom looks at the menu and sets it down in front of her. The waitress then tells my mom to give her the menu and walks away. Towards the end of our meal, I get our dinner ticket without her coming back over to ask if my mother would like a dessert or even saying a simple happy birthday. She is simply rude. It was at this time I had got the waitresses name and memorized it. The third time my husband and I went in, we asked if she was working and the hostess smiled real big and said “yes” in which I replied “just don’t sit us in her section“. The hostess looked confused for just a brief second and took us to a table. This time, we listened to a young man vacuum around our table area for most of our visit. Guess we’ll drive the few extra miles to the...

I’ve always loved this place! But after this experience, I’ll find a different location/place. I joined a rather large party (for a beer) that was already at the restaurant (8pm ish). There were numerous requests for an additional server or two (group of 30+ trickling in). After an hour+ of attempts to get a beer, I was able to snag our single server and ask for a beer. My previous attempt to grab a beer at the bar was denied (they told me they needed to check with the server to use a tab since I was with a large group of people? whatever, went outside with a friend to the patio, beerless). After finally asking the server for a beer, I mentioned to a few people at the table I was at that this has been a frustrating process to get a beer! The manager then came up to tell me (apparently hearing the convo) that she would appreciate it if I wasn’t so rude to her servers. This was the first interaction I had with any server (aside from previously mentioned bartender), that went “can I have a Michelob ultra please?” Manager told me that our large group had been “very rude to the server and she didn’t appreciate it!!” I told the manager I appreciated her concern but I, personally, had not spoken to the server out of line and treat everyone with respect so I didn’t appreciate her suggesting that I hadn’t. She then tried to tell me that I had become verbal with several servers??? When I literally spoke to our one server, the bartender, and then the manager? I told her I hadn’t spoken to anyone else on her staff besides the bartender and single server, so I wasn’t sure what she was even talking about? She said “ok” and walked away. About 2 minutes later I was brought my tab from another employee and told that I “wasn’t being kicked out, but asked to leave due to my...

We had a late dinner at Austin’s in Gardner tonight. We were seated promptly in a booth (per our request). Our waitress was Chloe and she took our drink orders while we decided what we wanted to eat. We decided on some wings and a couple of beers while we figured out our entrée. The wings were surprisingly good! When Chloe checked up on us and asked us how the wings were, we told her how much we liked them and she mentioned that the wings were on special on Wednesdays, so we will definitely come back for the wing special on Wednesday!

We ordered the Black Bean Burger (hers) and the Bratwurst on a hoagie with jalapenos and sauerkraut (his). They came out pretty quickly. The bean burger was really good – much better than the highly publicized vegetarian burger at a well-known fast food restaurant lol. The brat hoagie was perfect. As a big fan of hoagies, bratwurst, sauerkraut and jalapenos I’m going to go out on a limb and say it was the best I’ve had in many, many years. The bun was fresh. The brat was well done. The sauerkraut and jalapenos were cooked down a bit so they were moist but not wet (which is important because if you don’t do that, everything is soggy and yucky).

We finished our meal and wanted another beer because we were really enjoying our evening. We weren’t sure what we wanted to drink next but we knew we wanted to try something else. Chloe offered to get us a couple of samples from the bar since we couldn’t decide. The wife got a Dale’s and he (me) got a MC Hardway.

We don’t go out to eat often, but we may change that.

Austin’s is a great place to go for a late Saturday night dinner and a couple of beers. The atmosphere is really peaceful and fun – lots of good energy and great food and...