Boscos Squared — Restaurant in Memphis

For the life of me have I ever thought of writing a review even remotely as scalding as the following description of a truly nasty experience we've had in Bosco's on March 1st.

We've been coming to this Bosco's location ever since the other one in Germantown was still open, to give you a perspective. Never ever have we been treated so disgustingly by anyone, not just in the restaurant, but anywhere else on the dining scene.

I called Bosco's on Feb 21 specifically to reserve a table for 4 adults and 2 kids for the Mardi Gras Brewmaster's Dinner. The reservation went smoothly, and on Feb 28, I got a text with a confirmation. On March 1, I showed up early and asked to change the time from 6:30 to 7:15. The girl at the front happily did that; however, when all 6 of us gathered, we were told that our reservation was for just a regular dinner, not the special.

I clearly remember asking for the special dinner when I called on Feb 21. So, a confusion and a failure on part of whoever picked the phone on that day - it happens, never really constitutes the end of the world, and is NOT the reason I'm writing all this.

We politely asked to speak to a manager to get a clearer explanation as to why this happened. We had no intention of coming across the city, dragging two small children with us, just to have a dinner made up from Bosco's regular menu that hadn't changed in 15 years. On Monday. During the rush hours. We'd happily dine closer to home, now that, thankfully, there was no shortage of nice places there.

Jennifer The Manager (let's call her Mangifer, rightly) floated to our table and, in front of our children, began to insult me and my wife by first claiming that, NO, we didn't reserve the right dinner, and then asking to open my email and show it the message about the special as well as other proofs - all as if it didn't really believe that I had actually received the email in question and thought that I had just made it all up on the spot!. It then asked the worst, most degenerate question a manager or any rep of a company can ask a customer - who did I speak to when I called to make the reservation?

Seriously, Mangifer? Do we have to write down the name of every pimple-face who answers a phone at every greasy joint like your place just so that we wouldn't be accused of lying? I asked it to please extract this info from whoever was usually taking phone calls. Mangifer blatantly refused to admit it had clearly been the booking person's fault for entering my reservation in the regular roster instead of the one for the Mardi Gras special. Gathering my last bits of politeness, I showed Mangifer the date and time of the call. It couldn't care less.

Not once Mangifer said that it was even remotely sorry for the experience, nor provided any way of accommodation, or showed any sign of regret, or gave a single apology. We couldn't believe our eyes and ears. The kids became restless, so we stood up and left, ending up having a nice dinner right across the street (thanks so much, Babalu!).

We'd been coming to Bosco's - and brought numerous people with us, both friends and family - for over 20 years. I really wouldn't want to make the visit on March 1st our last but feel as having no choice whatsoever. People like Mangifer shouldn't be entrusted to manage anything with a possible exception of a sewage treatment plant in Russia, where it can be as septic as its heart desires and disrespect, belittle, and be rude as much as it wants. Certainly by having it work in a place like this - in any food establishment, for that matter - and allowing it to mistreat the customers to such an abhorrent degree besmirches Bosco's reputation to no end. It's plainly sad that such a great and solid relationship between all my friends and family and this place may have just come to such a...

My friends and I had a very disappointing experience at Boscos tonight. We were there to celebrate a birthday. We waited at least 20 minutes for out table. When we started waiting the waiting area was full. It had completely cleared out, even from the people waiting outside, by the time we finally got seated. It was fine though. We were in good spirits as we sat down. We gave our drink orders and chatted. We ordered food and chatted. We drank all our water and chatted. Then we realized we still didn't have our drinks. About a half hour later, we finally got our drinks. We'd ordered before that. One of my friends decided she wanted to change her order. We flagged the waitress down about ten minutes later. Come to find out that changing our order wasn't a problem because she hadn't put it in yet. Fine.

You know, we understand that restaurants are always short-staffed and we didn't even mind the over an hour wait for our food until the food came. One of our friend's dishes came out ice cold, probably because it had been sitting in the window for quite some time. She wanted to return it but the waitress said she'd have to get rid of the whole salad, not just the cold chicken. She asked for a pizza and the waitress said that there were 25 tickets ahead of her. No offers to make it right. No offer to just give her the next pizza. The waitress was not the best and the experience was quickly going downhill.

When the check came, my friend did not want to pay the automatic gratuity. By the way, that auto-grat is not advertised anywhere on the menu. You're supposed to notify people before they get the bill. The waitress huffed away to get the manager, Rachel. Manager Rachel came over with a fake smile. She listened to the situation and said she was not aware because of some excuse. There was no apology from Manager Rachel. No offer to make it right. Instead of comping my friend's drink, like she should have, she decided to use her benevolent powers to do us a favor and remove the automatic 18% gratuity. She said "it's ultimately up to her discretion" but she would. Wow, thanks, Rachel. It's very very LEAST you could do to provide somewhat acceptable customer service in a busy restaurant where you're supposed to be a manager. She's lucky the rest of us didn't ask for the gratuity to be removed. And if the business depends that much on an extra five bucks on a bill, you have bigger problems. We just paid our bill and left after that.

My food was good but then again, I think I was just hungry. The rest of the meals were reported to be very mid. Boscos is in the middle of a busy entertainment district with a lot of restaurant options. Do yourself a favor and go...

HORRIBLE TREATMENT BY MANAGEMENT. Do NOT eat at Boscos in Overton square. HORRIBLE HANDLING OF FOOD POISONING SITUATION. I and 5 others celebrated the Memphis marathon weekend at Bosco's last night. Within 2 hours of dinner I and 2 other party members (who all ate the same dish) became extremely I'll, and I became so dehydrated I had to go to the hospital. Everything was ruled out except extreme food poisoning. The 3 other party members had different dishes and all have had no symptoms.

This is sometimes an unfortunate occurrence when dining out, but my main concern is the lack of compassion by management staff when we called them to let them know of how ill we had become. The manager on duty tried to say it was my fault for eating spicy pasta after a half marathon. She is not a nutritionist, nor has she run a half marathon, as she told us. She is not qualified to say what is okay to eat or not eat after such physical exertion. Also eating pasta wouldn't cause me to lose all of my bodily fluids over the course of three hours before heading to the hospital. She also tried to say we are all probably were sick with something else like the stomach flu (this has nothing to do with influenza and is a general term for stomach illness. this includes food poisoning. I also tested negative for everything else at the hospital, and our symptoms all began within two hours of each other. She is also not a licensed doctor able to give suggestions as to why me may be having medical issues.

We would have been happy with a simple "oh no, we hope everyone is feeling better and we're so sorry!" The management completely disregarded us and disrespected us, and we will do the opposite of recommend this restaurant to anyone who visits us in Memphis...