Night Shift Kitchen + Tap — Restaurant in Natick

The food at this place is amazing. I shared a bacon ranch pizza, house chips, Bavarian twist pretzel, and the brownie sundae with the Black Rose sangria. All things I would recommend again, especially the chicken bacon ranch pizza. Although the brownie is marketed as a Mexican hot chocolate brownie when in reality its more of a dark chocolate and coffee brownie However the manager at this location is mostly the reason why it didn't get a full 5 stars. My friend and I were playing in Level 99, decided we wanted to sit down to enjoy some food and drinks, so we went in to the restaurant through the opening between level 99 and Night shift kitchen where there was no indication that if you wanted to sit down you had to go to the host so we spoke to a waiter who took our order and told us if we wanted to sit down we'd have to speak to the host to be sat so I did. After we were sat by the host the manager came up and told us that told us that if we had gotten food from the dining area in level 99 (where we got the pizza) they want people to keep getting food from there instead of ordering food from the sit down restaurant area. He also insinuated that we sat our self, told us us that the seating area was for people who were paying to eat there (we had already ordered food by this point), and told us we would have to move cause there is a reservation coming for the table we were sat at (again we were sat by the host, had menus, and were looking at the menus to get drinks) and made it seem like he was doing us a favor letting us sit at the table. At no point did he come ask us if we were sat by someone or if we were going to order anything else. There also wasn't any signs, notifications, or were we told by the 2 employees we were speaking to before him about anything he had mentioned. The waitress also did not have much information to provide about the cocktails they offered or what they tasted like. Again the good was amazing however the service (mostly the manager) left such a bad taste in my mouth I would return to this...

Overall, the food and service were good. I feel like the menus could be organized a bit better. We kept switching between brunch, lunch, kids, and seasonal print menus, trying to see what was different and making our choices. We are not a drinking crowd but if you are, there is an additional drinks menu too! The food menus seem carb-heavy and I wish they had a bit more variety in that sense. The Detroit pizza was good but I honestly ended up not eating half because I avoided the doughy middle of each slice. Personally, for the price, we are paying for a lot of dough. The kids mac and cheese felt like it was just pasta with melted cheese on top and it dried up before the meal was finished. Truffle fries were a big hit. Caesar salad was too salty but the flavor was there so maybe we would order it with dressing on the side next time. The french toast uses a thick bread or maybe their pizza dough because each slice was about an inch thick and had the texture of a dense cake rather than bread. It was interesting. I felt the maple syrup that came with the waffles and french toast was excessively sweet. Good thing it came on the side with the waffles but the french toast soaked up a lot of it and ended up being too rich for us to finish. Funny enough, a few of us felt like the water tasted weird and ended up ordering sodas. One commented that the mandarin orange soda didn't taste like anything other than "sweet". Missed the waitress a couple times when we wanted to get service but she was patient with us, checked on us, etc. I think a manager walked by and checked on us as well. I hope to come back and give this place...

When the server dropped a glass bottle of water on the table that smashed and showered us with cold water and glass, I was actually pretty impressed with how swiftly they moved us and comped us fries and popcorn.

Then they mentioned that those water bottles shatter all the time and that was a red flag.

We were a big group and put our drinks and lunch order in at the same time. 30 mins later the drinks had not arrived though they assured us on 2 separate occasions they were being made as we speak. They then came to ‘confirm’ our food order which was missing 3 separate items. When they finally started bringing our lunch out (drinks still hadn’t arrived), they asked me what I ordered. Why they only thought to clarify my lunch order after others were starting to eat, I’ll never understand. I told them it was the BLTE from the brunch menu with the optional burger patty. They almost didn’t believe me, claiming there was no such brunch burger. (I think there were 3 separate menus.) By this time, my friends were eating and I waited another 25 minutes before my sandwich came out, missing the egg and barely warm. I was not able to eat most of it - an underseasoned and lukewarm beef patty is not appetising.

Our server removed items from our bill and acknowledged how disorganised the service was. I was grateful for that. Other staff were less gracious, telling us repeatedly that there was only one bartender (even though the restaurant was 2/3 empty) as if we were being unreasonable.

From what I saw, the pizza and salad seemed good and the mimosa was tasty. But the lack of any operational expertise was almost shocking. Will...