Cock & Bowl Belgian Bistro — Restaurant in Occoquan

Horrible service. I called before noon to place an order for pick up. The guy on the phone rushed me through my order the entire time. He said it would be ready in 20 minutes. I called 45 minutes after placing the order to confirm it was ready. The person who answered stated they had misplaced my order ticket and they were running behind but to repeat my order - in other words, they would start working on it now. I allow for some additional time for them to complete the order that had ample time to have been completed twice at that point. I arrive to the restaurant just before 1pm to find that not only is my order not complete but that there appears to be such a lack of order in the establishment itself. I spent another 15 minutes at the restaurant waiting for them to complete my order. I had to keep reminding them of the things I had ordered so they didn't forget, which of course they did. I realized I may have come at a busy time however after over an hour of waiting I felt I needed to say something. I spoke with a man who stated he was the manager and let him know of my issues. All he had to offer were excuses, "oh wow well our kitchen is fully staffed, I'm not sure how that could happen", "oh we don't ever get pick up orders". I was confused why 1. there was no sympathy for time spent waiting for them to get it together and 2. why any of those issues are my problem as a consumer. I was offered not even verbal consolation let alone compensation for my time. Horrendous experience. I witnessed a person who had been seated but not even given a menu in the amount of time I had been there. Small but ridiculous issues, that all added up to a horrible experience. Make sure you have nothing to do for the rest of the day if you plan to come here because they will make sure the experience takes up most of your time. The food was pretty good, but considering all of the trouble I went through to get it, I would say it was not even slightly worth it. I spent almost $90 on a meal, which is steep for two people just grabbing breakfast/lunch food and drinks, but I assumed if they had the audacity to charge these prices that their service and food quality would be up to par with said pricing. I was served mimosas in a styrofoam bowl. When I tell you I can't even begin to articulate the depths to which this experience disappointed me, especially as we head into another potential lockdown due to covid - a restaurant that takes your order via phone and then their excuse is that they don't take phone orders. Ridiculous, atrocious, and by far the biggest disappointment I have experienced in a...

Food is good but the service is EXTREMELY slow. Was told the waitress left to move her car half way through service. Took nearly 1.5 hours to be served meal, which was missing some items. Please hire better wait staff.

UPDATE Response to "Owner": As someone who has been a server, I consistently (almost always) tip 20%+ . Sometimes as much as 100% tip for truly outstanding service. (Head on over to Le Bistro Hermitage if you don't believe me. I regularly leave $100 tips for their INCREDIBLE service. In fact, I also tip their hostess $10 to $20 each visit, because of their superior atmosphere).

With that being said, I NEVER tip under 20% unless the service is truly abysmal, which in this case, it unequivocally was in my opinion. Insinuating otherwise is misleading and unprofessional. Moreover, the server did NOT "step out for a couple of minutes." That is a complete mischaracterization of what transpired. The response from the owner is absolutely inappropriate, condescending, and inaccurate in my opinion. I honestly do not recall how much I tipped, but given the complete absence of service, I have no doubt that I tipped under 15%.

With that being said, I know several restaurant owners and do realize that short staffing is an issue. I am absolutely empathetic to this, but transparency and communication is warranted. If you don't have enough staff, please seat fewer tables or make customers aware before they sit down that they will be waiting for 1.5 hours for food. We were in a time crunch and honestly didn't expect waiting 1.5 hours for the meal to be served (which again was missing several items). How is that for constructive feedback?

In conclusion, I was completely reasonable with my comment and my initial three star review. I have updated it to one star due to your, in my opinion, poor and unprofessional response.

NOTE: My review is consistent with the other "one-star reviews" for this restaurant, commenting on the exceptionally slow service. The "owner" or manager attacking anyone who gives less than positive feedback is not appropriate, in my opinion, and is a sure way to lose business. My personal opinion and recommendation is to anyone looking for a nice restaurant in this area to go elsewhere. There are so many options. I see another reviewer mentioned a neighboring restaurant, I HIGHLY recommend Le Bistro Hermitage. Customers are treated SO wonderfully and the staff actually care about our experience. Obviously, things may go awry in the service industry, but I promise you the response is exponentially better at neighboring establishments,...

I was so excited to eat here after reading so many positive reviews, however I had a less than delightful experience. The beer menu is pretty decent, they have beers from Belgium (of course), Germany, Canada, etc. Definitely worth trying a few. The menu is moderately sized with the star of the show being the mussels. There are about 10 different ways/sauces you can have them prepared in. Our waiter came around after being seated for 15 minutes. It took an additional 15-20 minutes to bring us drinks. We placed an appetizer order for the asparagus wrapped in prosciutto and the pretzels with mustard. We were served 5 asparagus and if you know good prosciutto, this was NOT it. Definitely not the imported stuff. Besides the prosciutto tasting like salty ham, the asparagus were tough and drizzled with a balsamic glaze you could find anywhere. The pretzel was dense and tough, it honestly tasted like a grocery store freezer section pretzel you throw in the oven. After being served the apps we placed an order for the Meniere mussels (classic white wine and garlic broth). We waited half an hour before the waiter came back to our table to announce that two other tables’ orders of mussels had been incorrect and remade so we would be getting the last of the mussels, approximately half the amount of a typical order. The waiter said they would be on the house so we obliged. Other tables continued to be served mussels while we waited for ours. Finally our serving came...and the mussels were COLD! Not only were they cold but I would say about half weren’t fully open (as in they had been deceased before being cooked - never eat these). I decided to give one of these bad boys the benefit of the doubt and boy was that a mistake; it tasted like rotten seawater. I had such a craving for mussels and was so completely disappointed by this place. It may be worth trying again but the long wait time in between service and the almost inedible mussels make it hard to seem worth it again especially with so many other restaurants around. We actually just ended up going to...