Famous Dave's Bar-B-Que — Restaurant in Grand Junction

Story time!

We begin the day before Valentine's day by placing a reservation on Famous Dave's website. We enter the premises ready to be seated at 6:30pm. After waiting 10 minutes for someone to come to the counter, we inform the server that we had a reservation. The server then informs us that they don't take reservations (the very reservations that you can book on their website) anymore and wait times are 45 minutes or more.

Feeling as though we were simply being lied to, we decided to start heading out to find anything that could feed us and our 18 month old daughter at 6:30pm on a Sunday. Before we were able to walk out of the door, another group told us that the staff was simply telling anyone who walked in that wait times would be 45 minutes or more but they were the last ones to come in stated that it would only be 15 minutes. They told us that nearly all of the parties had walked out because of what the servers were telling them. This is what we can call a "customer deterrent", as in, the staffing of the restaurant was actively deterring customers away from the establishment so as to not feel overburdened.

We decided that we were going to stay because, well, what else are we going to find at this point in time other than some delivery option. We turn around and head back to the front counter waiting for the server to come back... and we waited... and waited... We ended up waiting about 15 minutes just for the server to walk back to the counter. Finally, we have our name added to the list and wait about FIVE MINUTES before being seated.

Once being seated, we order a couple of drinks, an appetizer and our entrées (which had to be changed once because they ran out of one of their main menu items). The drinks and appetizer came out about 5-6 minutes later and tasted good! We give the kiddo some of the food while we wait for our meals to arrive because she's getting fairly hungry at this point. Lo and behold, she ends up eating most of the appetizer because the wait begins to drag on. Then, we end up feeding her ALL of the snacks that we brought with us for her. Once those were gone, she begins to cry because she is still hungry and we are still waiting on food, an hour after ordering.

Finally, the server comes out, who is clearly overworked, and tells us that only two cooks were scheduled to work today... on Valentine's day. After sitting there for an hour and a half, the manager walks out, but not to our table. Nope, she decides to walk up to the table that was seated only 10-15 minute ago to apologize about the wait. The manager never actually came to our table to see if things were fine.

Once 8:15PM rolls around, our food FINALLY comes out. Yes, nearly TWO HOURS after walking into the establishment and WAITING we received our food. Parts of the meal had clearly been made a while ago, with some pieces of food being hot, and other pieces of food being lukewarm. Our 18 month old daughter, who is now over-stimulated from being awake too long and feeding on cheerios is starving, exhausted and crying her eyes out. This caused us to simply pack up the lukewarm food that we received in to-go boxes so we could get home and try to get her to eat before falling asleep. Our server brings the to-go boxes to us and we pack everything up. Oh, and by the way, here's your $70 bill for all of your troubles, thanks! (The meal clearly should have been, at the very least, partially comped.) I mean, what was even the point of coming to the establishment if the people who were ordering to-go were being served faster?

Once we were home with the food, our 18-month old daughter was so exhausted that she couldn't eat food anymore and ended up going to sleep on a partially full belly of cheerios.

Please, I beg anyone who is reading this, do NOT eat here. You will be disappointed, I promise. Nearly everyone who was seated ended up waiting an absurdly long time for food and virtually all of them had no managerial service given to them.

Server was...

There is a reason this restaurant isn’t busy. Terrible food. Terrible service. We arrived and were told there aren’t any crayons for the kids menus (not a big deal) then family of 5 seated in a booth ( we hardly fit at all AND the table was BROKEN) I went to the hostess and mentioned this to her. She basically argued with me and suggested placing some napkins under then broken side and I said no and we need a larger table. She sat us in the rear of the restaurant at a larger table one with (5) chairs. Remember there were 5 of us. The table had not been wiped down and she never arrived with a wipe to do so either. Anyway, now that we were seated we looked over our menus and waited for our waiter to come. We waited and waited. Sever of the wait staff had put eyes on us but no one came to see us. I finally stood up and asked one of the ladies if we could have a waiter and they began to scramble. The hostess hadn’t told the gentleman assigned to the area that he had a table. Once he arrived he was great. Once our food came out we were once again disappointed. To make it look like I had a nice sized portion of pork in my plate, they place a HUGe piece of Texas toast (not toasted) under the mean and then place a tiny scoop of meat under the bread. Very disappointing. My daughter received the wrong burger and it was beyond well done, a hockey puck if you will. My youngest received the wrong order in which we waited forever for yet another burnt burger. The chicken tenders that both of our boys received, one was from the adult menu, were over fried and burnt. My husbands rib tips were tough and cold when received. Our $80 meal was a joke and very disappointing. This establishment shouldn’t even be allowed to serve people. Where is the manager or the franchise owner?Do they not know how horrible this place is, or why they aren’t busy when every other restaurant in town is packed. Save yourself and your money and just go to...

Visit was on a Saturday evening around 730pm. They were not very busy yet it took 15 mins for the waitress to check in with us and ask us what we wanted to drink. We order the food and when it comes out it is luke warm, our forgetful waitress is most likely the cause. I ordered the baby back ribs and they were so tough and dry I sent them back. WORST ribs I have ever had, it was as if they had microwaved them to warm them up after smoking them. My bf had the smoked turkey on a piece of toast. Flavor was okay but his food was not hot when it came out and they served it on a thin piece of waxed paper so when he tried to cut it and eat it he had to pick the pieces of waxed paper off. Presentation was not thought out. After I sent back my ribs, they did take them off the ticket, I ordered some buffalo wings. Like the other food they were not hot when they arrived at the table and they did not have enough sauce on them to give them flavor. The restaurant was dirty and during the entirety of the visit, you could hear dishes dropping in the kitchen and loud cursing and slurs in both English and Spanish. Very unprofessional. When we asked to speak to the manager, he apologized but used the excuse that he was in the back doing prep work so he didn't know what was going on. Then he admitted that the baby back ribs were not a good product and he himself would not order them from here. He did not give us his name. As far as we could figure out there was no front of the house manager they at the time of our visit. Will...