Mad For Chicken Bayside — Restaurant in New York

Good Evening. The beauty is that on a Friday night parking was ample behind this restaurant. The only interesting thing to me was the keg urinals in the men's bathroom. My intention was to treat my son to a nice Friday evening dinner. Its not my policy to talk, write or comment poorly about anyone nor a group or restaurant. Im not a disgruntled customer. But perhaps this could be advice for youth to a new idea of a restaurant from a lifetime resident of Bayside. The inside of the restaurant is warm. For me the wooden style bench seating reminds me of seating at some ski lodges or campsites. The cushioned perimeter in back is lean on cushion. Now to the menu. I guess for a new idea for a restaurant you have got to start somewhere. Tremendous selection of beer , do for date night the twenty one and up crowd should be pleased. The wait staff is quite nice and I felt very eager to please...so that is great. When I finally could order a meal from the menu, that's the point where it went downhill. My son was excited and powered drumsticks he didn't mind at all to be told the wait for that would be about 30 minutes. Cool no problem. When I ordered a Philly Cheesesteak meal, I was told its not available. Very frustrated to find out its a new restaurant and they already have problems with vendors. Their words, not mine. So I then asked for chicken breast meal . My experience with a meal like that i personally prefer some kind of sauce with that. Since I saw they offered salads on the menu, I figured one of those salad dressings might do. When told of only two selections with a salad: one with soy sauce with something else or the other very spicy i felt let down. Then when told Corporate policy was absolutely no side dishes allowed, that was the nail in the coffin. I chose diet coke for dinner. Happy at least my son had something to eat, glad he could eat. Through him wooing down his meal he kept repeating: yuck, this is all breadcrumbs and not to his taste.. only could he eat 4 of the drumsticks. Asked for a means to take remaining home. Paid the bill and left. Gee wiz, what a shame. I dearly hope they can improve. Bayside is know for fabulous restaurants. Please don't...

The hostess was nice, the cocktails were good, and the food was decent, but the service was very poor. The bussers are more helpful than the servers.

The appetizers came out quickly, but the chicken took 40 minutes to come out. We ordered it at 8:58 and it came out at 9:45. That's understandable though because it's Friday night.

We waited 30 minutes to get our water refilled after asking two different people.

A couple minutes after we asked our waitress for water, I watched her pass by our table with a tray of waters to take to another table. I guess she couldn't bring three more to drop off at our table on the way.

15 minutes into waiting for our water to get refilled, I noticed that our waitress was sitting at a high top table taking a break to eat. I understand that servers work long hours, but at least ask a coworker to check on your tables for you if you need to take a break.

The service issue was not limited to our server. We kept looking around for help, but no other server or manager came to help us. There doesn't seem to be a sense of teamwork.

We had ordered a second round of drinks. We asked for beer and soju, but 10 minutes later, it still wasn't out. The bar was not busy. We assume our server never sent the ticket because she went to a POS after we asked if the drinks were ready (10 minutes after we had ordered the drinks). When my brother in law asked her to cancel it, she was snappy with him.

In our server's defense, she got double sat around the time we ordered our second round, so it could have thrown her off. She had quite a few credit card receipts, so she could have been tired after working a long shift. Maybe she had a bad day. It's possible that the restaurant is understaffed, or that someone called out for their shift and left the other servers hanging.

Overall, the food was decent, but the service left a bad taste in my mouth. The staff needs more training, and that's on the management. Kudos to the bussers for being the only people to help us get refills, and kudos to the hostess for being nice and helpful.

I cannot recommend dining at the restaurant as it is right now, but I would recommend it if the service improves. Carry out...

Mad for chicken has been on my family's bucket list for a while. It's definitely a really chill and fun atmosphere, and I liked the unconventional lighting scheme. The first thing you get is a bowl of popcorn, which is like the bread you'd get at a normal restaurant. The popcorn was seasoned with a bunch of spices, but it was very stale. It tasted alright. For drinks, their mocktails are very yummy, I enjoyed the margarita one. The Shirley temple drink was good too. The starter nachos were sooo good. The half and half chicken was amazing too. The spicy half were definitely spicy and delicious, so my table ordered another plate of just those. As a fan of spice, I ordered the mango habanero tenders (meal #5) as my entree. I was super excited when our server gave me a heads up that it was gonna be "mad hot". Unfortunately, the tenders were way more mango than habanero. They weren't spicy at all. The chicken from the half and half was spicier than the mango habanero, which was pretty disappointing. At least the fries and other entrees on the menu were good, and the rest of my party was pleased. After we got our to-go-boxes, packed everything up, and had our plates taken away, we had to wait almost 15 extra minutes for the check. Our server basically vanished and we were sitting there at a near empty table wondering what to do, which was...