Area Restaurant & Lounge — Restaurant in Providence

Save your money and your time. This establishment is a textbook example of poor service hidden behind flashy promotions and an owner who responds to valid criticism with sarcasm and denial. Instead of addressing legitimate concerns, he resorts to passive-aggressive comments and gaslighting, all while refusing to take accountability for a completely failed dining experience. If this is how they treat paying customers, imagine how they handle everything else.

The owners response says everything it needs to about how you handle criticism, and more than enough for anyone reading to form their own opinion.

You weren’t “attacked.” You were held accountable and your inability to accept that without sarcasm or deflection isn’t a reflection of me, it’s a reflection of your leadership.

There’s nothing more to argue. I’ve shared my experience truthfully. The rest is for people to judge for themselves, and trust me, they will.

Best of luck with your "viral" vids. You’ll need it.

Original review: Came for Love Island based on the advertised $1 wings and $5 drinks. When we arrived at 9 PM (right when it opened), we were told there were no wings available. Drinks were not $5 — we were charged $15 each, including for two drinks we didn’t even order. The server told us to keep them and assured us they’d be removed, but we were still charged.

We ordered food at 9:20 PM and waited over an hour. At 10:30, we asked for the check, only to be told the food hadn’t even been started. When I brought this up with the owner, I expected an apology or accountability. Instead, he argued, deflected blame onto how “slammed” they were, and insisted the service wasn’t unprofessional.

I understand being overwhelmed, but dismissing customer concerns and denying obvious missteps is unacceptable. Extremely disappointing experience — I won’t be returning.

EDIT: Per the owners response to my review and all of the fake reviews they are posting, do with my review as you will. Never have I experienced anything like this at other slammed bars, and I told him, the one thing I needed was TRANSPARENCY AND COMMUNICATION. So yes, you are UNPROFESSIONAL and should NOT be in the restaurant business. And yes, you did comp the drinks, the ones that were INCORRECTLY brought to us, and just left there after telling the server we didn't order these.

EDIT 2:

I appreciate your response, but your tone and language reflect exactly the kind of unprofessionalism I experienced firsthand. Attempting to downplay my concerns by calling them a lack of “self-awareness” or “empathy” is not only dismissive, but it also borders on defamatory. A guest voicing legitimate complaints about false advertising, being charged for unordered items, and a complete failure of service is not seeking a “pound of flesh,” as you put it, it's exercising their rights as. a consumer.

You admit the establishment was “super busy,” which only underscores that you knowingly operated beyond capacity and could not fulfill what was advertised, a potential violation of consumer protection laws around false advertising and deceptive marketing practices. Additionally, you had security outside ensuring that people pay, why not have them make sure you're not over capacity?

Moreover, encouraging me to “move on with life” and publicly referencing footage you took without permission or consent to discredit my dissatisfaction is both unprofessional and a potential privacy issue since it was done without consent, and is up on your social media. Your claim that I was “seen laughing and clapping on camera” is irrelevant to the substance of the complaint, that we were misled, overcharged, and ultimately left without receiving the food we ordered. Also, your video was taken within the first 10 minutes of us being there, obviously we had no issues at this point in time.

This review stands as an honest reflection of my experience. I will not be intimidated into silence, and I encourage others to carefully read and consider all reviews, both positive and negative, before forming their...

I wasnt going to leave a poor review but getting food poisoning from this place was the straw that broke then camels back. Everyone in my party of 3 got extremely sick after eating here . We went for the Sunday brunch and was a few minutes late so we couldnt do the brunch special which was fine . Took about 10 minutes for us to be seated so they can clean our table. When we got seated we had to wait over 40 minutes for a menu. I guess the manager seen we were displeased so he offered us free hookah (which literally took another hour and 45 minutes to come. ) We never got a water for our whole duration of being here which was about two hours. After about an hour the manager made an announcement about people coming late and how we (the general crowd) shouldnt be complaining because we got here late which doesnt even make sense because its a restaurant so arent yall selling food regardless of the brunch?? Extremely confused by this announcement on the mic thinking who is he subbing, a guy from another table starts yelling at him saying “dont sub me over the mic” and they started going back and fourth. The argument got heated. I was also confused because that party of people was there before us. A waitress didnt come to our table for about 45 minutes after we sat down to take our order. About 30 minutes later our margaritas came which were TERRIBLE. We had to ask for additional shots for our drinks because it was just strawberry syrup and that still did nothingggg for the amount of syrup that was in our drinks. One of our party got the fried cheese and mofongo so that came out relatively quickly but she wanted to wait for our food to come so we could eat together. We told her to just eat because we dont know when our food is coming. Good thing we did. So after we finished our drinks we had to wait another 30 minutes for the free hookah to finally come. We waited about an additional 20 minutes after our hookah here she comes with the food. We both got the steak and eggs platter. So now we have fresh hookah and food WITH NO FORKS. We ask her for the forks. This lady doesnt come back with forks for 20 MINUTES and says sorry i forgot. So now our food is cold. We both literally couldnt eat our over easy eggs because they were rock solid and cold. I dont know how thats possible. The amount of food i got was so small and i waited for so long i was still starving by the 5 minutes it took for me to finish my steak and potatoes. We though maybe since the margarita was just syrup the expresso martini shouldnt be that bad and we were very wrong. That was an even worse decision. We didn’t finish our drink. We just paid the bill and left. If i could give this place 0 Stars I would. HIGHLY...

Me and my girlfriends are experienced brunchers. We decided to go here for the bottomless brunch and had an awesome time. John, the owner, was awesome. He was very attentive and hilarious. He definitely made our experience fun. So I'll start from the beginning. We got there a little late and he joked about it, which broke the ice. He sat us down and provided us with menus. The way they do the bottomless brunch food is definitely different from what we're used to. So you can get entree after entree all for $20!!! Say what??!!! I wanna try them all. Lol. We started with the steak and eggs. It came with steak, salad, hash browns and eggs. The steak was cooked medium well (my preference) and my friends wanted well done. It was kinda tough but still good. The eggs were sunny side up. Not my favorite. The waitress didn't give us an option so when it came to the table, I was immediately like ummm ew. Lol. But John came over and asked if we wanted to change it out. We decided to just try it and not send it back. Next we got the chicken and waffles. Those came with fresh strawberries on top with powdered sugar. Amazing. Definitely ordering those again. The mimosas were delicious. It was premix bottles. The flavors we tried were pineapple, mango and strawberry. We then got a plain bottle with orange and passion fruit juice on the side to mix it in ourselves. My daughter was with us. She's not a drinker. Johns wife came over and gave my daughter options of mocktails that she could try. She went with a dragon fruit drink. Presentation was on point. My daughter said it was really good. The music was good, 90s RnB and little of new RnB as well. Had to ask if they could turn it up though. Once the music was up, it was bumping. Definitely a good vibe. Good job John. You will definitely see the brunch...