BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse — Restaurant in Huntington Beach

If You're Asian, Please Don't Come

So, I was pretty much a frequent visitor to BJ's up and down California when I used to live there. I moved away for about 10 years but still have family in Cali so I visit from time to time. This time, it was little nephew's birthday so I brought the family there, this was 7/10 or 7/11. We walked in, the hostess was a younger lady who didn't greet or even looked at us, but yet continued to greet everyone else as they were walking in (mostly older Caucasian folks). So we helped ourselves to the little Ottoman bench they had there. Waited a very uncomfortable 2-3 minutes until I decided to ask for service, that's when she looked as us with a "Why are you people here?" type of look. My sister and niece were there too and they made eye contact with me that maybe this wasn't the place for us. But it was for the kids, and personally I love their pizooki ice cream and I'm sure the kids did as well and so I wanted to be patient and thought maybe the hostess was just having a rough day or maybe something else was on her mind. My sister, who is usually pretty calm, made a comment to me that maybe she (the hostess) must have had a fight with her husband last night or this morning or something. We wanted to sit outside because we didn't want the kids to run around bothering anybody, she asked us to wait without explaining what she needed us to wait for. There went about another 15+ minutes of uncomfortableness until she came out and told us that she was waiting for a patio waiter, which I did not know was a thing. Sure, we were the only Asians in there, but I'm old enough to read her facial expressions that we were in the wrong place. Again, all for the kids. A waiter came, a guy named Daniel (360 degree opposite of that hostess), his energy was great, contagious! He had a service attitude and was very accommodating. This restaurant is in Huntington Beach, you're literally a freeway divider from Westminster, which is pretty much all Vietnamese and this is how you conduct yourselves. Very disappointing. I have been to this very restaurant in the past with co-workers and we had birthday parties, etc. and etc. there. I get it's tough to compete for customers especially there are so many good Vietnamese restaurants on the other side of the 405 and now more and more of their customers are getting a bit more adventurous and are experimenting Vietnamese food, but this business conduct was not it. Our Vietnamese community need to call out this restaurant. This was not cool. Our people are very peaceful people and we typically just mind our own business, going to work, coming home, law-abiding citizens, we don't start or want any trouble, we don't even go protest or anything. Outside of maybe broken English, there is no need to look at us like we don't belong in your restaurant @BJ's. As for cleanliness, we asked for 6 plates for our pizza, chicken tenders and fries, and this was one of the plates. Please see attached picture. When Daniel came back around, I showed that to him, he apologized, brought us a new set of plates, I think this time like 3 if I can remember correctly, and guess what??! The last plate on the bottom was unwashed, just like the one I handed back to him. I only took a picture of the second plate. I only did it because I was like...really? again?!?! Please do...

I came here with my dad and the wait was about 20 minutes to be seated. Once we were escorted to our table, we asked if we could sit somewhere different due to the volume level coming from the bar. When we arrived at the new table, we politely said actually it's too loud in here and we will just go back to the car and order takeout, no big deal. We ordered two pizzas online, and it said it would take about 35-40 minutes to prepare them. (And yes, we tipped upon placing the order). On the website, it has a little meter that tracks the progress of your order. Throughout that time, the meter was moving along the steps and about 40 minutes later, it said my order was being packaged and would soon be ready for pickup. When we went inside, we found out they apparently never put the order in. They asked my name and eventually found the order I placed prior and said I would need to continue waiting for them to actually get started on the pizzas.

Now, I understand that mistakes happen, but the front staff took no accountability. We asked "are you sure the pizzas never made it into the oven? Because it doesn't make much sense that the meter would move if the order was never started." The front staff answered that it's not on them, and it's the kitchen's responsibility so they don't know. I know that's not their primary responsibility. But having experience in customer service myself, I would have gone back to the kitchen and at least communicated the customer's concerns and the information they gave, in order to provide some clarity on what went wrong. They ended up bringing the pizzas out, one at a time, and because we were so hungry, we dug into the first pizza standing in the corner of the restaurant.

It was disappointing that no sincere apology nor compensation was given. The staff did not even offer us water while we were waiting for the pizza the second time, much less offer a discount or throw in anything free to say sorry for the wait. The entire visit for two takeout pizzas took an hour and a half. I am giving this location two stars because the pizza was tasty. However, the wait was unideal, especially because my dad does intermittent fasting and is not supposed to eat past 8:00. I am not holding the situation itself against the staff, just the way it...

I am very disappointed with my service today. I order lunch for my office staff every week so this week we decided to try BJ's. I ordered 3 pasta catering combos on Tuesday morning for Thursday delivery. I ordered one more of the same pasta catering combinations on Wednesday morning to make it 4 total. The staff had more than 1 whole days notice for the largest part of the order and 24 hours to prepare the additional pasta I ordered. The website states they only need 2 hours to prepare these combos. My order was scheduled to be here between 11:45-12:00 on Thursday in which I did not receive my first part of the order until 12:15 and the additional order until 1:00pm. I also asked for plates, serving utencils and cutlery which I only received the cutlery packets on the first delivery. When I called the restaurant at 12:00 to ask where my delivery was I was placed on hold for over 6 min and then when they finally picked up, the person I spoke to only said "I'm sorry there was a miscommunication between us and doordash". They never offered me a discount or a gift card or extra item at no cost. This was over $600 of food not to mention I left a $78 tip on my first order and $26 tip on the second order.

Needless to say I will never order from this restaurant again. I formerly owned a small town Italian restaurant and have learned that customer service is what makes or breaks a business. I will continue to order $600+ dollars of food every week with the small businesses who take care of...