Ferry X-ing Bar & Grill — Restaurant in Merrimac

On 6/6/23. We showed up that evening for dinner. There seemed to be a party going on, as 2-3 tables where pushed together and there was a good group of kids. But there was open tables, so the 3 of us sit down. With as busy as it was, it took a few minutes for the waitress to come over. No biggy, we saw the large party and knew it might be alittle slow. We ordered our food and drinks. Never was told that there was going to be a huge wait on the food. 10,15,30,45 mins go by. No communication as to when the food would come out. Waitress never came back to the table to see if drinks needed to be refilled. We had to go to the bar to have a coke refilled. During this time only 1 person was staffed on the grill, the other two working only where handling drinks. The cook left with tickets still waiting to go to the bathroom. She had enough time on the way back to stop and talk/play pool with a few kids. Never washed her hands once she got back to the grill. During the 45min wait several other people went up to ask about their order. We went up to ask about our order as well. This was between a 45m-1h wait. Was told we where 3-4 tickets back. We paid for our drinks and left. Should not take over an hour for a burger and chicken sandwiches. Never had anyone come explain or apologize for the wait, nor offered a basket of fries to snack on while we waited. Nothing. Zero communication. When my dinner partner wrote a review last week, the owner contacted her and basically called her a lier. Bothered her enough she took down the review. I don't live in the area so really not concerned, as I doubt I will ever be back there. We have all been to places that have had a bad night, people call in sick... Ect. As a owner you say your sorry, offer to make it better next time, and move on. I did not plan on writing a review, but his actions against my friend where uncalled for, and is poor business ethics. Supposed to have great burgers, wish we would have gotten the chance to try them....

I went with my twin, aunt and uncle, and their 3 children. We walk in, we get settled and after moving some tables/chairs around to fit our group of 7, a waitress immediately comes up and rather impolitely tells us we need to move over because we were blocking the fire exit. Totally understandable, we moved the tables/chairs over about a foot. Then after 10ish minutes of waiting for someone to wait on us a different waitress starts handing us all menus while also telling us that this is a 21 and up place and they would need to check IDs from everyone. However, kids are allowed as long as they are with their parents and it can be proven. What?? People don’t exactly carry around their kids’ birth certificates or DNA kits with them! My sister and I are 20 and our aunt/uncle clearly don’t look like our parents so we have to leave. My issue is this is not posted anywhere. It is also ridiculous how if this is a rule they enforce, why were we not told the second we walked in the door, instead we were barked at about fire hazards. We moved the tables and chairs back exactly how we found them and left. We went to a different restaurant (Varsity) less then 5min. down the road who were more than happy to serve us. They had amazing food and everyone was extremely polite! I completely recommend going there instead. After talking to our waitress and the bartender, they are telling us that Ferry Xing is not kid friendly and kick families with kids out all the time. Really bogus how their real issue was the kids, but they threw two technicalities about serving at us just to see which one would stick and get us to leave. Again, if that is the case they really should have a sign or clearly communicate that they are more of a 21 and up location. I myself work in customer service and am very forgiving when it comes to policies and laws you can’t control, but they could have handled the situation...

I’m posting this review on behalf of someone I know dearly:

“The Merrimack Ferry Crossing Bar won all of these awards for the best hamburger, so I thought I'd stop there on my road trip today. I ordered a Miller Lite, cheeseburger and tater tots. I sat at the end of the bar which coincidentally gave me a view of the cook. The cook had no clue what she was doing. She was cooking one order at a time and taking forever on it. I was three quarters into my beer and I had taken my pills anticipating the burger would come out in 15 minutes or less. She put out the one order she was working on, then there was nothing cooking at all for 10 minutes. I had no idea what she was doing. There were four tickets hanging up. I called my waitress over & asked what was going on. She said, “We're not McDonald's.” I replied, “I never said you were”. She said just a minute then went to get this little thing they had printed out. Apparently it’s an ongoing issue so they prepared written speech instead of talking to people, or fixing the problem. It read, “We are not a restaurant. We are a bar that serves good food, and that takes time. Some people wait for 2 hours or more.” I said, “Well, that's unacceptable. Cancel my order. In fact, you don't have to cancel anything because it's not even cooking.” She got a little snippy with me. The attitude, time and service resulted in her not getting a tip from me. I read reviews of other people and the replies from the owner to people criticizing how long it takes for an order. Listen to the customers!! I've had a lot of bar burgers over the years. A lot of bartenders tending bar and cooking would work circles around that place. First and last time I step foot in that...