Hugo's Invitados — Restaurant in Irving

This is the third year in a row I've celebrated my birthday at Hugo's, and I'm beyond disappointed at the experience we had this year. I had reservations with a special request to sit near a TV for the final Stars game of the series, which the manger himself accommodated for us, however, failed to mention it was a cocktail table that would require service from the bar.

We were never escorted to our table with menus and silverware, we stood around until I told our group to just go sit down. We sat around for 15 minutes without any service, I then walked back over to the same manager to notify him of the lack of service, to which he responded, "Yeah, that's the bar area, service is from the bar." Never apologized for not being greeted or helped yet, or offered to grab someone for us, just, "Yeah, that's up to the bar." He should've disclosed that information to us before offering that table. As management, maybe go and let your bar staff know you just sat a birthday reservation in their cocktail area and designate a person to take care of them. There were so many bartenders and barbacks behind that bar, there's no excuse as to why that couldn't have been arranged. I really hope this isn't yalls GM, because he seriously lacks leadership qualities you need to run a successful staff and restaurant.

Service was slow the whole night, there were mistakes made on the check that they said they would remove, never did, and then the server refused to divide our checks, which has never been a problem before. Which is a problem, because if that's the case, then that needs to be a policy across the board, not just when a staff member decides that for themselves. It's lazy, just like the service that night. Then once everyone paid their auto grated tabs, the server added an ADDITIONAL auto grat on top of the tabs, then had to wait for them to sort that out.

This was also the first time I wasn't brought a dessert at the end of the dinner. Why have people fill out a special requests or additional notes form on the reservation when you're not gonna pay attention to it. Your service shouldn't change just because you're in a cocktail area. Overall, such a horrible birthday experience, which is sad because I love the food here, but yall should really think about putting your staff, including management through additional training because yall really dropped the ball that day. It was so disappointing, I never write bad reviews, but this was so bad, I hope no one else ever goes through this on a day that was intended for...

Confused by how many good reviews there are?

24 hours after dining & thought I’d write this since it was really perturbing to my husband who wanted me to feel special after a really grueling 2 years of school with zero free time.

We made a reservation by phone - they couldn’t hear my husband so the host apparently put it under her name but didn’t note that it was my birthday. (Which I don’t care so much as that my husband was hoping I’d at least get recognized as we’re not dessert folks.) So we got there & it was a little weird & the host thought it was funny that she had it under her name.

We got sat directly behind the host stand/server computer & my husband had to pull the table out so I could wiggle in.

When our server first came up to the table I ordered 2 margaritas & he asked if that was my tab, to which I jokingly said, well we’ve been married 12 years, so I hope we’re on the same tab & then he doubled down & said he needed to know if we were separate tabs because he needs to know now so he can split it later… which was… off putting & odd since why would a single person order 2 drinks first thing planning to drink them both themself… and I just said I was married- so why double down on informing me I was required to tell him I was splitting?

When he came back next we had decided we were going to order 6 different apps because they all sounded good & we wanted to try an array of food & do that for dinner since we had never been before. I explicitly stated to go ahead & put them all in & asked for them to come out as they were ready (so they weren’t waiting for all 6 to get ready & drag in the window.)

30 minutes passed from the time we ordered to 3 apps coming out & it was about 25 minutes after that the last appetizer came out - so 55 minutes from ordering the avocado toast came out…

It was also hard to hear my husband and after all that we didn’t care to ask about any sort of birthday thing, cause again, didn’t really want a birthday dessert, but I know for my husband he was still upset today because he was hoping to spoil me & our tab was still right at $200 & he didn’t feel like I got to feel special at all & felt the server attacked me on our first interaction when I even tried to be a little silly.

Food was great, but this was probably the last time we’ll be in because we go out for the experience first before...

6/4/2023 I will start by saying that my family comes to Hugo’s regularly. We’ve recommended it to people and come any chance we get, but today we were very disappointed. Our server was Monica, and from the start there was an attitude from her for anything asked. For example the fish on one of the dishes my father regularly orders has changed and she did not come by with enough time to send it back and did not care to address our concern when asked. She walked by and did not give us a second look. We had to ask other waiters for refills/extra utensils/etc. Needless to say we wanted to get the check and get out as soon as possible but when the check came we were caught off guard. I will start by saying money is not a problem, for good food and service we know we are going to pay, we’re a family of 5 but the gratuity was already added to our check, 43$. Never was this done before. Generally it’s for groups of 6 or larger but even if it’s now a rule for tabs over a certain amount spent we were not even given the courtesy of letting us know. And we checked, nowhere on the menu does it specify the conditions for added gratuity. Had our service been different we would’ve even tipped on top of the included gratuity, we’ve all worked/work in the service industry we understand but our treatment today did not justify this. Overall we’re disappointed with the decline in service and treatment of customers and will seriously consider going back. And we think people should as well, the food for the most part is good, but you’ll be treated with much more respect...