Gator's Sports Bar & Grill — Restaurant in Kent

I started not to write this, because the reality of living as a strong, educated, non-assimilating, and professional black man in the Seattle area is that writing a review is like trying to empty the sea with a thimble. These people just will not respect you. Nevertheless....

Never had a bad experience here until Monday night (10/17/2022). My colleauge and I have frequented this establishment for a couple of years now to meet and catch up.

On this particular night we arrived around 10:30pm. The establishment closes at 12am. Around 11:15pm the bartender (short, older lady with pouches under her eyes) decided to change the television channels that my colleague and I were clearly watching.

We were not asked if we were watching it. She took it upon herself to change it right in front of us with no regard. Around 11:40pm (20 minutes before closing) she turned all of the TVs off. I took this as a sign of us not being welcomed any longer. So I mentioned it to my colleague and was interrupted by the bartender (whom I was not talking to) as she explained something (I honestly did not care at this point) regarding the amount of labor required to turn off all of the televisions.

Since I don't go to a bar and pay for overpriced alcohol in exchange for a decremented customer experience, I let the bartender know that this type of behavior lessens the customer experience, which is essentially what I'm paying for. She explained something else. I responded that there is no way to justify giving customers less of an experience during business hours, especially since everything I ordered would be billed at full price. Her response was:

"I'm not justifying it, it is what it is."

Yes it is what it is - that I don't care that you're here spending your money (Gators is not cheap, by the way) and I also think that I have the right to disrespect you while you are spending said money.

I had no other choice but to feel like I wouldn't have been spoken to this way had I not been an African American. I've seen other reviews here with people of color expressing similar sentiments regarding their experience.

To end the story, we sat there for 15-20 minutes, not experiencing anything the establishment had to offer other than overpriced drinks. We paid our bill and left.

We watched as the people who left before us were cheerfully bid farewell.

Soon after, when we got up to leave, there was no salutation. Just a silent "thanks for the 60+ dollars, you owe it to us" that rang in my head.

POCs should avoid this place...

Had a drink misunderstanding with waitress and I, so she ended up bringing me the wrong drink. So instead of just fixing it, she told me that it was going on my tab because it was made. She let's us know that she'll go and ask bartender if he'll fix it. Really..... OK, super,.....coming back with my drinks and it's time to enjoy Friday evening! NOT! Places drinks on table and adds that they'll so it this time and making me feel like I don't even want to drink now.....then states that we can talk to her manager if we wanted.....and we haven't said anything about a manager. So we say,"Sure we can meet the manager!" It was like I can't be wrong and I have to have the last word and here's my manager!

Steve the manager comes out and we explain it was a simple drink misunderstanding. Clearly he backs the cute little waitress whose you know.....way younger than him. Then goes into teaching us a class on how to order drinks. He still doesn't get the point on waitress and bartender just fixing an $8.50 drink in the beginning with maybe an quick apology without belittling the customer and have that customer end up ordering more drinks, food, play pool, and maybe even feed the jukebox.....even after he finally shook our hands towards the end of our conversation and finally apologizing,.....but not sincerely to the poor when he walked away we were all shaking our heads.

What's an $8.50 investment? It wasn't like I said let me keep the wrong drink but don't charge me.....it was like I am not drinking that and I'm not paying for it. It's not my first bar, pub, restaurant, grill, or whatever that I've been too and looking back.....I had never had my drink came back wrong. Waiters, waitresses, and bartenders that weren't sure seemed to always double checked and just asked.

Waitress needs to be coached but I don't think it'll be coming from Steve who needs management training. Being a successful business owner/manager I smiled and chuckled to myself while I keep on serving that repeated customer who $10-15 meal I happily replaced with a sincere apology making my customer relaxed and at ease and where she/he should be spending their money. Something I'm sure only successful owners know especially the ones that have sales increases...

I would highly discourage eating at this location, especially as a POC.

My mom and I have gone to this establishment many times once every few months when our lunch schedule allowed. The service is subpar at best (most of the time it takes 15-20 minutes for a waitress to come back to the table even tho we have rarely been there with more that 4-5 other occupied tables) but my mom really likes their sausages and I like their fries. And they usually have a decent lunch special.

This most recent time we went. The waitress completely got my order wrong and didn’t even walk pass our table for over 20 minutes. By the time she pass back I had no time to wait for my order to be corrected. I had taken one bite out of my sandwich (which is how I knew it was wrong).

When she returned. She insisted that I ordered the fried chicken sandwich. When I know i most certainly did not because I don’t eat fried chicken sandwiches. After I repeated several times that I did not order that she went to get the manager.

The manager comes to the table and argues with me over what I said I order vs what the waitress said I order. Then proceeds to tell us the staff said we come in there all the time and complain about the food.

When i told the manager that they must be confusing us with someone else, he does not apologize, instead he proceeds with the same narrative and argues with me that we are the ones who have complained about the food the last 3 times we visited. This is AFTER he states that he is the night manager and have never seen us before.

Both of the waitresses went out of there way not to serve our table, confused us with other black women that frequent the establishment, insisted that I ordered food I don’t eat, and than manager came to our table to chastise us instead of providing a service.

It was they worse dining experience I had in years. And it’s embarrassing, belittling,...