Neon Gardens — Restaurant in Lake View Township

I’ve never had a more terrible experience regarding service until I came to Neon Gardens.

Whoever the host was that night was unbelievably rude and arrogant. We had reservations for 7:45pm and arrived with a group of 6 of us for my cousins birthday. We were so looking forward to the Harry Potter experience. The minute we walked in and spoke to the host to check in we were greeted with nothing but awkward and uncomfortable attitude from the host. We scoffed at us and said we had to wait 30 mins for a table even though we had reservations, and didn’t apologize for the wait or direct us to the bar. We immediately felt like we weren’t welcome and were a burden. We ordered some drinks while we waited and sat at an open table by the bar that we assumed we could sit at and a waitress came over and told us to sit tight and she would check on our table. Then minutes later this host came by and yelled at us and said we weren’t allowed to sit there and we apologized and were going to move but then he continued his attitude by saying that the waitress doesn’t have the jurisdiction to seat us but he’s the host and the manager and to get up. Again, there is a way you speak to people but how this man spoke to us since we walked in was nothing short of rudeness and hatefulness. He then proceeded to yell at us and called us rude when I asked him why he was speaking to us like that as we were just confused on where to go or wait since we weren’t given any direction.

Understandably frustrated we asked why he didn’t even apologize to which he responded “why would I need to say sorry to you” and then proceed to kick us out and not seat us.

I’d like to thank Kyle the bartender for extending an apology to our group and offering to get us a round if we were to ever come back which isn’t likely if this host is still working there.

No host or manager should ever speak to their customers this way, especially when we did nothing to warrant that kind of treatment and response.

I’d love to speak to the owner as I imagine this person hasn’t just treated us this way and is likely an entitled jerk who is strung on power and will continue to act this way and run this place into the ground.

So unfortunate that we weren’t able to experience the food or atmosphere as we were really looking...

TL;DR Version... Skip it! It is far overpriced for sub-par food, and the "atmosphere" leaves much to be desired, not to mention most the staff is not worth the time. It'd be better off if this was self-serve.

The details: Well, we came to give this place a shot. We were intrigued by the Harry Potter theme that they had running. We had a reservation for 2, at 7:30pm, for a high top. When we checked in with the host (just about a minute or 2 before 7:30), we were told that there were still some parties ahead of us. I asked where we should stand to wait, and we were told in the bar area by the game room. The host also told us to keep our phone handy, as they would text us when the table was ready.

20 minutes go by, we have seen a few many parties get sat that had walked in well after us. I went to check in at the host stand, turns out we were forgotten.

There's strike #1

We were sat immediately at that point. The server then took about 5+ minutes to check in with us. We ordered drinks at her first visit. When she came back with the drinks, we ordered our food. Then... another 20+ minutes went by until we finally got our food. Mind you, it was a slice of pepperoni pizza, an order of cheese fries, and a pepperoni pizza puff.

Strike #2

The cheese fries were cold. The pepperoni pizza, left much to be desired. Costco pizza is FAR superior to this slice, and about 1/4 the cost. The pizza puff was also quite miserable. You get one piddly puff for $7.75. We can compare this to Little Caesars and their FANTASTIC pizza puffs. You get 4 there, and they are half the price!

Strike #3

The server did take the fries off the bill, which was the least they could do, since only about 4 had been had to realize that they were really, inedible.

2 stars.... is generous. But at least our server seemed to try to be...

The establishment was decent, it was clean, the employees were nice. My reservation was for 9pm, I got a phone call from the bar stating that if we got there at 9pm then they would be shutting down the oven and there would be no food available for us. We were driving from out of state so we were going to be an hour early anyways so I call and the woman says that's fine. We get there and the place is "ok" it was oversold on social media. After taking a look around the bar The pop up statues were damaged and run down looking, the arcade was small with only a few games so we sat down (at least we can eat right?) wrong, me and my friend sat down to order and started by ordering shots, they took awhile even though the bar was NOT busy at all there weren't that many customers. We finally get our Nickelodeon slime shots and the alcohol was pretty much non existent in the shots, we then ordered our food, just for the guy to come back and tell us that they were out of the things we ordered, chicken parm was out and pin wheels had been taken off the menu entirely. After that we asked the waiter had our food order been put in he says no, and at that point we were over it, so we just decided to leave the experience was poor and we drove four hours just to be disappointed and just ended up going somewhere else.

In short not worth it.

This is my second time uploading my review by the way. The first one...