Buffalo Wild Wings — Restaurant in Gilroy

So back in the day this place used to be an Italian restaurant called Johnny Carino's. Well that place wasn't very good, and so they went out of business. Last time the wife and I were in Gilroy we noticed that BWW had opened up in it's place. The wife likes wings so the next time we were looking for a place to eat lunch on a Saturday she suggested BWW.

I wish she hadn't.

We walk in and the place is packed at about 2:30pm. We were told the wait would be about 20 minutes and that ended up being a pretty accurate estimate. We get seated and we're already pretty much ready to go because we spent our wait time looking at the menu. I wanted to get the chicken wrap but I wasn't sure what kind of sauce I wanted to put on it. I asked waitress if I could try the Mango Habanero, the regular hot and the Blazin hot sauces so I can decide. I also ordered a salad and asked what kind of dressings they had as the menu only lists ranch and blue cheese. She says they have balsamic vinagrette so I order that. The waitress puts in our order and then comes back and asks what kind of sauce I want on my chicken wrap. I tell her, "Well that's what I'm doing with the sample sauces. Bring me those 3 so I can taste them and then I'll pick one."

She comes back about 10 minutes later with my salad and a cup of regular old Italian dressing, (see picture). I flag her down and ask her if this is balsamic or regular Italian. She says it's balsamic. I ask her to double check because that is certainly not Balsamic Vinagrette. About 5 minutes later she comes back with another cup of the same stuff. So I tell her to take the salad back as I didn't want plain Italian dressing.

At this point I still haven't received my sample sauces yet. I flag her down again and ask about the sauces. She says, "Oh yeah let me ask my captain." I don't know why it takes a "captain" to bring out a couple of sauces but eventually another guy comes around and brings me the 3 samples I had asked for. I decided to go with the Mango Habanero because the Blazin' was crazy hot. I guess the waitress had waited for this to put in our order because we waited probably another 20 minutes for our food. I had the chicken wrap and the wife had a salad and some wings. We were about 5 minutes from walking out when our food finally showed up.

Well the food certainly wasn't worth the wait. My chicken wrap was luke warm and very generic. I could have gotten this thing at any cafeteria.

Overall it seems like they're still working out the bugs at this place because everything seemed to be a little off. Service was slow, the waitress seemed very scattered, just an odd experience. Maybe things will get better once the employees have had time to really learn their jobs. Probably the best thing about this place is that it has a TON of TV's. I could see this being a great place to watch a game.............................................. as long as you only order drinks...

We have been to this location a few times and service is always slow, but not as bad as it was last night. We waited 30 minutes for fried pickles and pretzel bites. Finally were able to get our order in: wings(traditional and boneless) and fries. When our waitress took our order she said she was going on a 30 minute break and that the other waitress would be helping us (didn’t specify who). Well after waiting another 30-45 minutes for wings (mind you there were only 5 other tables in the restaurant and 2 people at the bar), I had to flag someone down to check on our order. Not surprised, our food came out RIGHT after and we could clearly tell it had been ready for awhile… sauce soaked into breading on wings, stale fries. Not to mention, we were missing half our wing order which took another 10-15 minutes to get.

When we got our food, we had asked for another round of beers. I could see the bartender just standing around for about 15-20 minutes…I had to flag someone down yet again to check on the beers and I ended up just canceling mine because it was taking way too long.

The entire meal, I watched the staff. At one point, there were four of them huddled in a corner just chatting. At another point, zero wait staff were seen in the restaurant…eventually 6+ waitresses ALL walked out from the back together and, again, just stood in the corner and chatted.

Our waitress finally came back from her break and didn’t even check on us ONCE. I ended up going up to the bar and asking for our check and, when asking for a paper check (because we had to split it and didn’t want to wait another hour to have them split it), I was greeted with hostility. Was told since I didn’t want a paper check I had to go to their pickup order section with a manager. I ended up telling her how terrible our experience was. She seemed to know it was an issue and I felt as though she just brushed it off, comped us $15 on a $100 tab. There are so many reviews of this location with the same stories so clearly nothings changing.

This was literally one of the worst dining experiences I’ve had in a long time. When you come to Buffalo Wild Wings, you usually expect quick service (especially when not busy). We were there...

Wings were hot and classic B-Dubs taste. The onion rings and popcorn shrimp were done well too although $9+ for popcorn shrimp was excessive. Restaurant itself was standard B-Dubs with huge TVs playing sometimes tacky programs but mostly sports; nothing wrong with that. Space itself was a touch crowded but that's a minor issue too.

Biggest problem was the other customers and I took two stars off for this. Normally I don't take stars off for customers since there's often nothing the restaurant can do but in this case it's partially because of B-Dubs' intentional branding and partially because of this restaurant's inability to control large groups of people. First there were A LOT of guys there on their lunch breaks. They were broken into two large groups on our side of the restaurant but not enough wait staff was assigned to the table so they slowed our half of the restaurant down. Thing is B-Dubs encourages this kind of lunch break gathering so I'm not sure why they seemed so unprepared for it. Second these guys had some colorful language that got louder and more colorful the more tall beers wait staff brought to the table. Despite this, and the fact that we have two small children, we were sat right next to these groups along with a few other families. Not great customer management since I'd rather my children not learn every part of speech the F word can be used in. Lastly they never cut these guys off. To be fair most at the table drank responsibly but there were a few at the end of the table visibly drunk (at lunch) and they just kept the tall beers coming. Not the kind of environment I'd like my kids to be part of. And again, these are the sorts of experiences B-Dubs caters to so you would think they'd manage them better.

Bottom line: if you have a family, come only for lunch and ask to be seated away from big groups. If no kids, check out the bar and enjoy a solid Buffalo Wild Wings experience.

Update: We went again during a less busy time and everything was much better. Food was great, service was great, and we really enjoyed our visit. Still not 5 stars though because if you hit a busy time things can be less than ideal...