Kickbacks Gastropub — Restaurant in Jacksonville

Stay away from this place!!! The place is totally outdated, dirty and filthy. I literally had to wipe the table myself with wet wipes, because our hands were sticking to the dirty table. There was no hostess at her workplace when we walked in so we assumed that when we sit down the server would come to us but no, we waited for 10 minutes, no one came over to us. So we had to walk out and walk back in after seeing the hostess returning to her workplace, she literally said with poker face:"How many? Inside or outside" and then threw 2 menues on the table and left, me and my husband both agreed that she was high, she was obviously under sth. Our server didn't care about the service quality and we realized why only at the end, the automatic 20% gratuity after 10pm (I don't understand why your place equals itself to some fancy places like Country clubs or 4-5 Restaurants with 20% automatic gratuity). And we usually do leave 20% tip to the servers but we would like to have such an option ourselves and if not it's obvious that the service should be then excellent, but not here... My photos show how horrible and outdated the furniture looks like, I literally was seating straight in order not to touch the booth with my back. Ladies room had a broken lock, which I noticed only after someone broke in while I was inside, there was toilet paper around trash bin, and the floors were super nasty, God knows when they were washed last time. The whole place needs complete renovation, it needs deep cleaning, and dusting and if you think that by building the walls from pennies and having such a beer variety (which is obviously not as many as you advertise on your web site) you think your business will live? We came here on Saturday and the place was almost empty, which now we understand why. The food that we ordered came super greesy, undercooked. My beer glass was dirty so I had to drink it from the straw. I will give you a free marketing advice: with such a beer selection you don't do samples and you don't have beer flights, do you even have a marketing manager? This is number ONE thing you have to do if you want customers to come back! You have to have customers try your beers and then like them, and then come back for that beer, but with purchasing the whole glass how people are supposed to find a beer of their taste?! I'm attaching the photos so that you can see yourself everything. We are obviously not coming back here! We were so disappointed that night that we started to look around and there is actually very nice place called Garage, it's literally a block away, so we went there, it had a live music and that place totally made us forget our bad experience...

Update: I did speak with the manager, he said the party was not affiliated with him in any way. There seems to have been some serious miscommunications amongst the staff. Regardless, my experience was still extremely terrible no matter who is to blame in this instance. The air conditioning upstairs had apparently gone out several days prior and had yet to be fixed which is why it was so ridiculously hot so the fact that a staff member who had been "stepping into a management roll while the restaurant is understaffed" put our party there is baffling to say the least as he surely would have known about the broken A/C.

I seriously never leave a bad review unless it's warranted, my experience tonight was horrendous and well deserving of zero stars.

Let me start off by saying that the staff themselves tried their best, they truly did and they were very apologetic about the situation. Our group of 18 had booked a room in the basement a month and a half in advance with an estimate of 20 people at the time of booking, it was a surprise party for my brother's 30's birthday. We called Kickbacks last night (party was tonight 7/17) for a final booking confirmation and an exact number of guests and we were told everything was in perfect order. Tonight we arrive early to set up for the party to find that the manager had taken over the room we booked well in advance with their own private party so we were given the upstairs area, not at all what we had planned but we went with it because sometimes mistakes can be made. Let me say it must have been somewhere around 80 degrees upstairs, it was awful and very, very stuffy. On top of that, our waitress NEEDED a second waiter for our party, 18 people are a bit much for one person to handle but bless her she was trying, she just needed help badly and unfortunately it appeared that Kickbacks was very short staffed. The final straw for me were the booths, you can see in the pictures that the fake leather is flaking off the benches and it was so hot upstairs that the fake leather flakes were sticking to any exposed skin because we were all sweating, a bit disgusting if I'm being honest. We will not ever be returning, Kickbacks has been excellent in the past but the manager stealing a room that was booked well in advance by customers was so unprofessional that the average food and drinks just aren't enough of an allure to give this place another chance. 0/10 do not recommend, at least not...

I feel like I’m being extremely generous with this post. Based on my personal experience. It did come highly recommended. I will say that and my son has eaten there before and definitely talk the place up. I actually met up with him to have lunch there. The gentleman that we had as our server was absolutely amazing. My son‘s food came out good. The mozzarella sticks in my personal opinion taste like absolutely amazing and the marinara sauce was great as well. Some people may not like them because they are extra large and lots of cheese. Now we’ll get to the chicken wings. I ordered the 10 piece and the first time they were brought out a bit into one and it did not appear to be cooked all the way, so I tried a second one and the same thing. They were sauced with a garlic Parmesan and Cajun ranch. They took them back to I assume replaced my order but they brought back the exact same eight chicken wings. They just put back into the fryer and cook them longer which then cooked all of the sauce off and they tasted funny. That’s when the manager came out and took them back to the back to remake them again. She did not seem very happy that this was the third time they were having to address an issue and then when my wings got brought back out to me again. It was eight wings instead of 10??? I don’t understand how you can count for the two that I didn’t eat, but hey whatever. When they came back out for the third time, they once again where still not cooked and bloody in the middle. At that point I just gave up paid for my food. Got it to go. Got home and finished cooking them in my air fryer. I will definitely go back. I don’t know if it was a fluke or a bad thing since they do come highly recommended. The atmosphere and the place is super cool. I would definitely recommend checking the place out even if it’s for a drink and just the atmosphere. It is kind of dark in there so be sure to check your...