BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse — Restaurant in Manchester

This place needs to get its act together regarding their online ordering system. It took me a couple of take-out orders before I realized this is just normal for them. Ordering online seems to default to a ready for pickup time 30 minutes from the time of placing the order. One of my earlier experiences involved me being held up at work longer than usual and realizing I couldn't be at the restaurant on time. The online ordering system provides no means to cancel and the employee who picked up when I called said they couldn't delay making the order and they couldn't cancel the order. This is despite the fact that I called within 5 minutes of ordering. So I got around that by ordering a duplicate order, picking up only the second one, and asking for a refund on the first the next day. Even the duplicate order was ready before I arrived. My second experience didn't involve me being held up at work, but I was still 15 minutes away from the restaurant when I got a text saying my order was ready. This order took only 10 minutes to make when the online system gave me a pickup time of 30 minutes after ordering. I called them before even arriving and spoke with a manager who offered to remake it. However, I'm pretty sure they just brought the food back into the kitchen and made a show of taking it out of the kitchen in front of me to make it look like it was fresh. That's a guess based on how lukewarm the food. The third time and every time since then, I basically don't order until I'm already at the restaurant. I'm trying to eat my food as fresh as possible. I would like to count on the time estimate provided by the online ordering system. I already have to deal with a 10 minute drive home from the restaurant, so making sure the food isn't just sitting on a shelf for 20 minutes is important to me. If it's important to you too, I recommend treating this place like a fast food joint. Don't order until you're already there. I probably should be ordering out less overall, but so long as I'm doing it, I would definitely be using other options late at night if there were any. Unfortunately, this is one of the few places in the area open as late as it is.

EDIT: Had to take a star off due to a recent experience. I ordered a medium rare ribeye steak to go and it was awful. Two mistakes were made (made rare and didn't have the topping I paid for) but it also had one single taste and that was of char. The grill marks were so aggressive. No beef flavor, no salt flavor, no other seasoning flavor. Nothing came through except the taste of burnt. How does that even happen when the inside was rare?

Another thing I wanted to mention as a follow-up to my original review is that they might have decided to "fix" themselves with the shortcut method. Instead of getting a notification way to quickly, I got one at the time I expected based on the online ordering system. However, after this experience, I believe that the person in charge of the notification updates is just delaying when they do those updates. I was parked in their lot before I was notified and went in immediately after getting notified. I tried the fries before leaving and they were luke warm and floppy. The fries, and probably the rest of the meal, were clearly sitting around for at least 15 minutes prior to the notification saying...

Went with my daughter for Fathers Day. We made a reservation and saw place was sold out except for 8:30pm. No problem, we were looking forward to the experience as it had been a while since we last visited. When we arrived we noticed that about 70% of the tables were empty and we ended up at a high boy in the bar area. Outside tables were cleared of dishes but not wiped down and food was scattered below, so we moved inside. Service was slow for how empty it was, and server was ok, but seemed tired and not into it (probably a long day). We got the avocado eggrolls which were spot on and very tasty. My daughter got pasta and I got the steak and shrimp stack on mashed potatoes and asparagus. Shrimp, potato and asparagus were cooked just right, but the medium steak was rare at best with a single piece cut from end. Showed server and she brought it back for additional cooking. Daughter's pasta was ok--just a bowl of pasta and sauce. Beer was very good. Steak returned and seemed better: next cut was perfect medium, but one or two more bites in was getting more rare so I boxed it and took it home. It was a nice steak and I am guessing that it was too cold when they cooked it--which happens. We passed on dessert at that point and got bill: $100 bucks for an overall disappointing experience. Red Sox were doing great though and I wish now I had just gone to the bar for beer, snacks, and the game. As we were leaving around 9:30 there was nobody at the bar and place was about 90% empty....So I don't know if I just has some bad luck or if the lack of customers on what should be a very busy night is saying something. My recommendation is to get the staff to perk up and be more personable, and see what is going on in the kitchen. the food itself seems high quality, but the cooks are doing something...

*I have never left a review but this place was so bad I just had to. **

The only reason there is even a star on this chart is because of how sorry the waitress was and how hard she was trying to do her job. My friends and I, a group of 6, got here at 620 and didn’t leave until 9! We waited 55 minutes for a drink which came after our apps, we immediately ordered a second round because we just figured they were busy however, that was not the case. We waited another 45 minutes for the second round and I personally waited over an hour even though we all ordered at the same time. We notified our waitress that if there was cheese on our meals to please keep it off, however, the salads ended up both having cheese and had to be sent back. Other servers came by and passed out food (which took an hour to come), yet it was not ours and once they realized it they asked if anyone had touched anything and before we could answer they took it and passed it to the other table (EW!). A friend at our table did order a salad that they passed out so he started to eat because he was hungry since it had been over an hour and they took it to the other table to serve! Apparently, you get a free “ pizookie” if you sign up for their rewards. Well before we could sign up to get the free dessert that they offered us they charged our account and we sat there for an additional half-hour while our waitress and the manager canceled our orders and redid the entire transaction which we appreciate however, if we were notified that we had to sign up before paying like we originally asked we would have done it prior saving us a lot of time. It’s safe to say you’ll be wasting your time and money if you go so just do yourself a favor and get take out or go somewhere else until they fix...