Al's Pizza — Restaurant in Jacksonville

My son, for his 6th birthday wanted pizza. Not wanting to do the Chuck-e-Cheese thing, my mom and I decided to take him to Al's pizza located at 14286 Beach Blvd. because we had never been there before and wanted to try it. We went on Thursday 02/18/2016. When we walked in the door the hostess asked us how many we had in our party. I said "We have 5." She wrote down "3" then asked my name. I tried to correct her and re-stated that there were "5 people in our party'. She nodded as if she had heard me the first time and asked me for my name again. I told her and she wrote it down next to the number "3" she had originally wrote down. She informed me that it would be a 15 minute wait. There was not much room to wait inside so all 5 of us went outside. While outside I noticed two booths with people sitting apparently waiting on their check to arrive. A few minutes later I saw the hostess seat the people who were in line in front of us and she returned to her hostess station and looked around like she was looking for us. I went inside and asked her if it was my party she was looking for. She stared at me blankly and then said "No, I was just looking around, What was your name? and how many are in your party". I told her again "5", she still didn't correct her list. We decided to wait just inside the door because the hostess didn't really seem like she was all with it. After 20 minutes or so of standing there I checked back with the hostess to see how much longer she expected the wait to be. She pointed at a couple booths in the corner, with the same groups of people seated in them STILL WAITING FOR THEIR CHECKS, and said "as soon as one of those booths are clear I can seat you there". Another 10 MINUTES roll by and at this point I asked a girl standing behind the cash register for to-go orders if I could go ahead and place my order for pizza while we waited for a table to open up to save some time. She was really rude and said that "We don't do that because your pizza could come out of the oven before you get seated." I informed her how long we had been waiting and that it shouldn't be much longer before we get a table but she was unwavering in her statement. I went and stood by the door starring at the SAME POOR PEOPLE waiting in the SAME TWO booths in the corner STILL WAITING ON THEIR CHECKS and thought about just leaving and going somewhere else. But no, we had already invested about 35-40 minutes in wait time and it was getting late. So we were stuck there. Another painful 5 minutes passed and I decided to just order the pizza to-go. I walked back to the to-go registers and placed my order. As soon as I paid for the order the hostess said our table was ready. The waitress came to the table promptly and I explained the situation with the pizza and that we just needed to order our drinks. She was nice but REALLY ditsy. She did apologize for the wait time and said that she would give us my son's drink for free, which was nice but then she followed that gesture of kindness up with this: "I would give you all free drinks but I'm too broke, I can give you the kids drink because it's only .99 cents". ??? The pizza and drinks came out quickly and I will say that it was REALLY GOOD pizza. We ordered the Greek pizza and a pepperoni pizza. Both were delicious. The waitress came back to check on us and I thought the bad was over. Every restaurant has a hiccup every now and again. Boy was I wrong!!! After that the waitress disappeared!!! We waited for the tab for our drinks. Finally she came by and gave us our check and offered to-go drinks that never came. The waitress was too busy hanging out at the table of 7 guys. We walked out. The waitress saw us leaving and didn't bother leaving her table of boys but yelled out "Oh wait for your drinks!" We said "DON'T BOTHER!!!". We will NEVER go back. The pizza is good, yes, but it is not worth the EXTREMELY poor service we received. The only reason I rated it one star is 1.)Because I have to and 2.) Because the...

We visited on Sat, Sept 26th. Entered, not greeted and had to ask the cook where we should sit. He looked at me like I had 3 heads. Finally a young girl told me where we could sit. We sat. Took a few minutes for someone to come over, even though there were 3-4 waiters/waitresses standing around doing nothing. Lizzy comes over and greets us. She had the personality of a rock, no smile, no pleasant greeting, nothing. She takes our drink orders and delivers them. I ordered a Riesling and my boyfriend a beer. The wine was the worst tasting Riesling I've ever had. I asked LIzzy about it and she got a little snippy about it but came out with a small sample "from the same bottle". It tasted the same. Not impressed. I drank it but declined her offer for a second glass. We order a LARGE ceasar salad and she brings the SMALL. Whatever, we eat it and don't say anything. We ordered a large pizza and it took a while for it to come out, kitchen appeared very busy with to go orders. Pizza was delicious! Lizzy came to check on us periodically. We then ordered dessert, Zeppoli's (spelling?). They were SO good and I always get them when we visit Al's. I placed a to go order for my daughter and it took over 35 min to get the to go order. After eating, Lizzy hands the bill to me. I give it to my boyfriend and, forgetting I had a coupon, ask Lizzy to apply the coupon and give us an updated receipt. She does and my boyfriend pays. We were going to leave her a cash tip so when my boyfriend filled out the slip and signed it, he drew a line where the tip was to go. I normally put CASH but he drew a line. We didn't think anything of it as I had the cash tip on the table and fully intended on giving it to her when we got our to go order. She comes to our table, shows us the receipt, points to the tip line and says "did i do something wrong"? I was completely flabbergasted. My response to her was "we are finishing our drinks and waiting for the to go order (which seemed to have slipped through the cracks) and i showed her the cash tip on the table. THE NERVE! Proper etiquette would have been for her to wait until we left, picked up the receipt and she would have seen the cash tip attached to the receipt with the pen. I am completely stunned that a waitress would ask such a thing. I have NEVER had a waitress ask me that....EVER. The food was good but the waitress, not being greeted was a complete turn off. Plenty of other pizza places to try...

My wife and I chose this establishment to eat because we’ve heard good things about their food especially their pizza and wings. Upon arrival and being seated our waitress took our orders for drinks and appetizers, after our appetizers came out our waitress proceeded to charge her phone and text instead of taking our order for the entrees. She noticed we were ready 10 min after finishing our bruschetta (if you can call that bruschetta) it was triangles of garlic bread surrounding a bowl of seasoned tomatoes with mozzarella sprinkles. After the waitress took our entree orders we ordered spicy garlic chicken wings which were cooked well but not spicy at all just garlicky with a creamy sauce, not too bad, while my wife and I were eating the wings we over heard the manager Amy speaking to one of the cooks, she was saying something along the lines of,

“do not speak Spanish here, this is America we don’t speak Spanish in here, if you’re in here you will speak English” I am African American and my wife is Ecuadorian so we found this comment highly offensive, if we had not already ordered our food and committed to paying we would have most certainly walked right out, upon paying for our meals my wife asked the man (in Spanish) Amy had been talking to if that is how she usually speaks to the workers there ( most of who are Latino or black) to which he replied yes she does.

After speaking to the man my wife spoke to Amy and let her know that we found her comments highly offensive to which she tried to justify by saying “My babydaddy is Puerto Rican so it’s fine” basically trying to say it’s fine that she make those comments because she has a child with someone who is Latino.

We will not be giving our business to any of Al’s Pizza locations anymore, it was our first and last experience, if that establishment is fine with Amy’s treatment of the workers of color that goes to show the philosophy and views of the business and we will not contribute or support...