Brickhouse 40 — Restaurant in Granby

Updated: Everything started off fantastic... the young woman who sat us was really friendly, the atmosphere was good, and our drinks came out quickly. The woman who sat us turned out to be our waiter as well, and she was awesome. When it came time for my 15 year old daughter to order, she asked if there was a grilled cheese option. The young lady said "I'm sorry, we don't have toast to make that." My daughter replied "no problem, can you just do a kids cheeseburger without the meat, or do a grilled cheese on a hamburger bun?" She replied, "yeah, we can make you something." We all got our food, and it was great. After a while we realized our waiter wasn't around anymore, and someone else started helping us. I believe his name was Johnny. He was wearing a black beanie and was a little older (50's?). He was good too, until we were paying. That's when our group was so horribly offended! I said "thanks, everything was delicious." His reply was "that's good, especially since we had to make a custom grilled cheese." We laughed, thinking he was joking, but he continued. "We don't do anything off-menu. Our cooks are over worked, and we don't throw them curve-balls!" This is when we realized he wasn't joking, so I said "are you serious about all this?" His response..."Absolutely! That's why you don't see your waitress anymore. She's gone. (Implying she was let go). First off, kids menu isn't for kids over 12 (as he pointed at my daughter), and second, we don't do custom orders! Those cooks are working 60 hours per week and can't handle that" I said "it's a grilled cheese!?" He then went on and on about how bad it was for us to expect off-menu orders from the cooks, and how our original waitress failed because she took the order anyway. My daughter was happy to have something else, but the original waitress was incredible and understands that in a restaurant, making a small accommodation can make life-long customers. It was a very small ask, and we would have gotten something else if Johnny had just come out to tell us that a grilled cheese is not an option. We told Johnny that we were pretty upset and were offended that he would blame this all on us His response was "now you know how we handle things." He didn't care! My daughter cried when we left becaause she feels guilty. She feels like a waitress got fired because she asked for a grilled cheese. To be honest with you, that pisses me off! This wasn't a case of a restaurant not doing a good job, or having bad food, or a lousy atmosphere...all of that was great. This is a case of one staff member that was so rude, so insulting, so completely out of place that he's turned us off 100% from this place.

Update: I was contacted by the GM, who took appropriate action and made me feel very valued! It was refreshing to hear from her and took the sour taste away from the experience. In time, we will return to...

If you love good service, not even great service, just good service, I highly recommend checking out another restaurant. When we joined our party, it took over 20 minutes for anyone to even come and take our drink order and another 20 minutes to get our drinks. In the meantime, I ordered some onion rings, it took 30 minutes for those to come out and when they did, they were cold. So, I sent them back, when the new order came out, they were hot, but I only got half the order (although I was charged for a full order).

We did try to flag down staff for various things, but either no one was around or if they were, they actively avoided making eye contact with any customer. When we were ready to leave, it took us 30 minutes to find anyone to get us our check. We handed our credit card to a server for our bill, approximately $45-, when they come back the bill for the $45- was in there, but so was someone else's bill for $218- (which they charged to our credit card). Spoke to one of the staff about the error and almost 30 minutes they came back and assured us that the error had been corrected, but refused to give us a receipt for the refund. It was late, we were tired, so we assumed that it had been taken care of. Going over our bank statement almost 2 weeks later, we find that not only were we charged the $45- for our food and drinks, but the $218- charge had not been refunded as we were assured that it was.

I have worked various jobs in the the restaurant industry and I am well aware how hectic things can get on a busy Friday night, but when you have 4+ floor staff members gathered in the manager's office starring at their phones while paying customers are waiting on food and drinks, that is completely unacceptable.

REPLY TO OWNER:

We were there on Friday May 10, 2019. from approximately 7 p.m. until about 9:30/10 p.m. Yes, it was a busy night, but that is still no excuse for the extreme lack of service given that any time one of our party went to use the restroom there were 3-4 staff members in the mangers office looking at their cell phones, for staff members actively avoiding looking at any table as they walked to and from the front of the house to the back of the house, or for the fact that we were charged for not only what we ordered but for another bill of $218+, which we were told was refunded and were refused a receipt showing the refund, and still have not...

I've never posted a negative online review... about anything. So, this is a true first, but I think people should know. We were really excited to try this restaurant - looked really cool and the food - at least what we saw- smelled amazing. We were sat at 6:30 and noticed quickly that maybe we'd been forgotten and no server seemed to have our table. No problem, we weren't in a big rush, so we flagged one down and she took us. We were seated near their expo station and could see on their screen that the kitchen was backed up, so we ordered apps and meals figuring it might take a bit for the meals. 90 minutes later (literally, we checked our location app on our phones), we didn't even have the apps! The table next to us had a similar situation and got their meals for free after the server brought over meals meant for another table and said "i stole these because yours still aren't up". Our kids noted that that table had actually been waiting even longer than us. Anyway, no apologies, no assurances that we might get some food eventually, just the manger and our server jumping into the kitchen to try to help. They couldn't. When we eventually gave up and started considering Dominio's pizza, the manager finally came over to ask if there was anything she could do, we were still ready to give it another chance, so we asked if our apps were coming, and she truthfully said no. What s mess. We nicely asked what in the world was going on (we'd truly never seen a worse restaurant operation), and she admitted that the TWO people in the kitchen had zero restaurant experience and were there as part of a foreign job training program. We wish we'd had a chance to eat because the chicken piccata sounded great (actually, everything did - really an awesome menu). I hope the owner gets their situation straightened out and others don't have to settle for corpoate pizza because they can't get...