Hoppin' Vines — Restaurant in Madeira

This is one of the worst dining experiences I have had a quite some time. Beyond the fact that everything is self-serve, you have to order at one place, pick up your plates at another, wait at table for a group of delivery people that didn't seem to care that all of the food came out of different times. The last of our pizzas came out nearly 30 minutes after the first ones had arrived. The basket of french fries we ordered never arrived until we approach the kitchen and ask them about it.

I ordered two appetizers, one which was promoted as baked mushrooms with bacon and fresh basil and a cream sauce. It came out it's just a cold wet damp bowl of mushrooms with soggy bacon in them and not a sprig of fresh basil to be seen. It was inedible and we left 2 hours later with the whole bowl still sitting on the table as no one ever comes to clean your table or take away dirty dishes. I also ordered the three count meatballs which had a pleasant flavor but we're so overcooked they felt like they've been sitting under a heat lamp for about 2 days and we're about the consistency of eating cardboard.

My wife ordered the Philly cheese steak submarine, which was brought out as a wrap in error. It was literally a small tortilla sheet with about a few ounces of beef and a couple veggie slices, it was stone cold and it was $15.99.

Later the server, delivery boy realized that the wrap actually belonged to the table next to us and finally brought the correct submarine to our table, but never corrected the issue with the table next to us and when we left that person was still waiting on their wrap.

The cheesy garlic bread was the only hir of the evening. At the end of the evening I paid $59 for one meatball, a small wrap and some cheesy garlic bread. Everything else we left sitting on the table is it was inedible or cold.

Since there are no servers there is no one to share feedback with so we left very dissatisfied and hungry.

I will never go back and I will never recommend that any of my friends ever go there again.

And as if all that was not bad enough, the entire reason we went was for the ducktail bowling which we couldn't even do because it was close to the public due to a private party, so rhe four young ones with us just had to sit at the table while the adults talked and finished their dinner or what little bit...

We had planned to come here for weeks to celebrate my husband’s birthday who used to go duckpin bowling as a child and loved it. His birthday rolled around today so we gathered our family and went to check it out. We knew from the website it was first come first serve but found it peculiar that large areas and quite a few tables of the restaurant were “reserved” and sat empty while many people stood around waiting for a table to open up. We were put on the waiting list for duckpin bowling and told it could take about an hour. That was around 6 PM. At 8 pm and with four tired and pretty bored children we still had not been called. My husband checked with the desk twice (after an hour of waiting) and was told told it would be another 30 minutes. After two hours of waiting, I went to the counter and another lady (who came in a few minutes after us with 6 children) and I were told that there were some big parties that had “paid $300 for some of the lanes” so it would be a while. If they had told us this when we came in and they put our name on the list we would not have chosen to stay and eat there. We ended up leaving very disappointed with our evening overall.

You order your food at the counter and they ask if you would like to leave a tip. We left a 20% tip as we always do and ended up having to bus our own table, multiple times. Hindsight, zero tip was deserved. The food was brought out, pizza before the appetizer, there was no room to put any of the food on the table and the people who brought out the food did not help clear any space and seemed confused and without personality. My husband or I had to stand because there were not enough seats available in the restaurant. It was rushed, cluttered, stressful, there was poor communication, we ordered a non-dairy cheese pizza and got a regular Cheese pizza. When we told the person who dropped off our pizza this, they just left the pizza and disappeared, not communicating to us what the plan was to remedy the situation. I had to stand in line behind other people ordering all over again to ask what was happening with this pizza. In the meantime a 10-year-old little boy sat there without any food.

At the end, a gentleman did apologize for the miscommunication on the duckpin bowling but it was a big...

Generally don’t like negative reviews but feel like this one is more necessary constructive criticism.

To begin, I love the concept and the food is good. I went here for the first time a month ago in recommendation and it was great. Thus I made the 35+ minute drive with more family and was excited to do so.

First issue walking in sign at the front says Duck Pin Bowling broken. I truly do get that stuff like this happens. It’s no one’s fault. But I checked the website and social media pages and no mention of this. Thats something that should be communicated via online in todays age. We may have waited until another weekend had we known. But we can deal with this. There’s still pizza and beer.

Secondly, part of the appeal the first go round was they had a couple pizzas that were “different.” I showed them to the rest of my family before we went on the online menu. They were excited to try them. When we look, we find the menus have been reprinted and those taken off. Ask if they still make them. No. Okay. Again, not the end of the world, but it is easier to update things online than it is to reprint. Confusion.

We decide to build our own pizza for one of the items we wanted bc most of items are still listed under create your own. Go to order. “We’re out of steak” But you still have steak bites as an appetizer? “Well yeah but…” and they’re on your menu? “We’ll…” At this point yes I’m frustrated. It’s kinda a three strikes thing. One thing was not in their control, but the two others were.

I will give them this, after a big discussion, the manager instructed to make the pizza we originally wanted anyways. Which was appreciated but also frustrating bc we had to take such a roundabout way to get there.

I guess the biggest point is the product and concept is good, but the communication with customers and execution of the plan struggled multiple times. When one of your main attractions like the bowling is off, there should be an overemphasis on customer satisfaction otherwise and that was missing.

Again, the product is good. But it was a frustrating...