JB Boondock's Bar & Grill — Restaurant in Howey-in-the-Hills

My second time visiting Boondocks after I enjoyed lunch there in late January. Unfortunately, it may be the last. Went for my birthday dinner and the service was truly disgraceful. We arrived early (430ish) as my father is a chair bound tetraplegic and has a strict schedule to adhere to in the evenings. Thank God we did arrive so early because we waited about 1 hr 20 mins for gator bites to come out and a little over 2 hrs for the whole experience. Would've been 2.5 had we not scarfed our food down when it finally came out! As Midwesterners, we are pretty polite and patient. So we patiently waited about a half an hour after ordering, never once being checked on by our server and not being able to make eye contact and flag her down; it felt like we were being intentionally ignored, it was strange. At this time, we started the mumbling at the table of "what's taking so long?", "should someone flag her down and ask?", "Is she ignoring us, I can't even catch her attention!?" My wife said let me go check and she walked back towards the kitchen to get our waitress's attention and ask about the order. This was about 40-45 minutes after ordering (mind you, she still hadn't checked on us or updated us). She did intercept her back there and our waitress, Jill J, apologized for the kitchen being so slow and said she'd never seen it take this long. It's not a big place, so we could obviously view the multiple patrons that came in after us and received their food well before us. I actually saw one table that came in probably 20 mins after we ordered and had finished their dinner before ours arrived, that is not an exaggeration! It became soon apparent that she had forgotten to put the order in and that was the hold up. Instead of fessing up and apologizing for the oversight, she stuck with her fabricated tale of the kitchen taking longer than it had ever taken. Here's the thing, I work A. LOT. and I have very little time off, so I get really frustrated when someone wastes that precious time. The long dinner delay caused us to return home quite a bit later in the evening than expected and as opposed to an evening golf cart ride and possibly a quick dip, we were home bound for the evening - one of only four evenings for me in Florida for this quick vacay. Had the waitress apologized and kept us up to date it would've changed the atmosphere and attitude at our table, the "What the heck is going on?" statements would've changed to "Glad we went early bc I'm hungry now!". Totally changes the vibe of the evening. We were offered a free dessert or a discount to which I said, we'll take the discount please. We were given a 10% discount on a $110 or so check. Just a really, really disappointing experience, and it was my...

The outside location is very scenic overlooking the lake, and the food and server were good. VERY disappointed in the manager/ownership team. At the suggestion of a local wedding planner, I inquired about having this restaurant host the wedding rehearsal dinner one and one-half months ago and reserved with the manager the time and date for the wedding rehearsal dinner. The rehearsal dinner was scheduled at this restaurant for the Friday night before the wedding in Minneola, Florida. The manager gave me an idea of selecting two to three entrees from the menu and a side with dessert as an option. I told the manager my son and his fiancee' would travel from the east coast of Florida and my husband and I would travel from the west coast of Florida to the restaurant, sample the food, and make the selections. I called the manager yesterday and told the manager we'd be travelling to the restaurant, and the manager reserved outdoor seating for us. We arrived and were told the manager left and were given information for selecting the entrees for the rehearsal dinner, which we ordered each of the dishes to make our selections. As we were finishing the main entrees, the server came to our table and told us that the owner has changed the entrees to the fish fry only on Fridays and could not be accommodate any other entrees on the Friday evening already scheduled for the wedding rehearsal dinner. The owner did not come to our table and apologize after we expressed our dissatisfaction to the server. The server did apologize and provided us referrals to other venues that may be able to accommodate hosting a wedding rehearsal dinner party of 50. It was sad as a mother to see the disappointment in my son and his finacee' after they drove one and one-half hour to this restaurant and were excited about the location and liked the ambience of the outdoor dining area and nice view of the lake. My husband and I drove two hours. I wished the manager would have told me yesterday on the phone that the fish fry was the only entree option before we drove two hours to this restaurant -- it would have saved us time and a long drive. I also wished the restaurant owner would have told us of the fish fry-only entree policy on Friday nights before we ordered over $130 in food and drinks. We would have left immediately looking at other local venue options and dined elsewhere. This is...

I wish I could give this a zero star rating. I was very disappointed and would never recommend it! Please don't waste your time or money with this establishment. My family came in this past Sunday around 5:30p.m. to celebrate me and my fiance's engagement and enjoy a meal together. The restaurant was not very busy. When we walked in the restaurant that room was completely empty. The room over the lake was about half full. There were a couple tables with folks eating outside. As soon as we walked in the restaurant I immediately got a bad first impression. We watched a server walk in from taking an order from a table over the lake then come to the cooler which was close to the front door and got the salads ready by picking out onions and other items the customer apparently didn't want in their salad and tossing them into another salad without washing her hands or using gloves and then taking those salads out and serving them to that table. We had the pleasure of standing by the door for several minutes before anyone even acknowledge that we had been standing there although there was plenty of staff on hand that continuously walked by without so much as a smile or a hello or even maybe a will be right with you. Eventually, the same server that picked out onions and other items out of that salad and tossed them into another came up to us and asked us very rudely where would like to sit. We asked if we could sit out on the water since it was such a beautiful day and we were happily celebrating our engagement. The server rudely told us the outside was closed and we are not allowed to sit out there even though other folks were sitting out there. We asked if we could at least sit in the part over the lake and again rudely told no that they had reservations coming in for those tables. After that, we agreed to sit inside the empty part of the restaurant and the server acted like it was going to be a bother to her. We sat there long enough to find another restaurant on the water that was close by that we were welcomed at, got excellent service at, enjoyed outstanding food at, that had better prices at and we were even able to enjoy the beautiful sunset at, which we would have never enjoyed at your establishment since your located on the wrong side of the...