Dough Bar Restaurant — Restaurant in Punta Gorda

RE: Dough Bar response 2 my review. We live approx. 20 min from the restaurant & we opened the meals immediately. We did NOT wait ONE hour let alone 24 hours and we did NOT store the meal improperly. I have also worked in food service industry off & on as manager, server, & cook- I KNOW what BAD SHRIMP smells & looks like & now unfortunately, I know what it tastes like. IF, Sir, you would have responded more appropriately to my polite call just wanting to let you know the shrimp needed to be checked better, this review could have gone rather well. Instead, you were belligerant, hostile, & flat-out tried to lie 2me about all that happened. IF you had simply said to me on the phone: "Thank you for calling and telling me of your experience. I will definitely go and check the shrimp immediately. I appreciate your wanting the restaurant to be successful". But NO. Here you are now trying to blame ME for your rotten shrimp. Your lying poor attack lowers the rating. **I give 4 stars for the service & 2 for the food. Sabina (spelling?) is a kind and competent waitress. Last night she had her beautiful 9 year old daughter help by staffing the phones, hostess desk and register. There were a few hiccups with our interactions but we dealt with it all and it was fine. Her daughter is very intelligent and capable. She truly wants to give her BEST and will succeed in life. There was a bit between me and the staff wanting me to pay for the food before it was even in our hands- in fact, as soon as we walked in the door. 3 people asked us to pay bf receiving the food. Every other restaurant we order from, the food and money are exchanged at the same time. We DID pay for the food! Moving on- When we got the food home and took off the lid- the stench was overpowering. Everyone knows shrimp will smell a "bit fishy" but this was extreme. Still, I refused to believe it was "bad", so I proceeded to cut the tails off. The tails were black. The meat IN the tails were mushy and had dark spots. I took one bite but stopped. The texture and smell were too much. No other way around it- the shrimp were BAD. We wrapped it up and threw it out. It took 5hrs for the stench to dissipate. This meant 2 orders were impossible to eat. We also had a chicken fettucine alfredo and that dinner was excellent. I was really conflicted on whether to call and let the owner know, bc I had talked to him, too. He was a nice guy and cares about his restaurant and people. So, the more I thought about the rotten shrimp situation, I decided he would probably want to know that his cooks used old or bad shrimp. So I called tonight. I asked to speak with the manager or owner. The waitress asked me what it was about. I told her I would prefer to discuss it only with the owner. She then came back on and insisted that I tell her what it was about. So I said it was about an order last night. A man then came on the phone. When I told him about the shrimp, he said he does not serve OR have bad shrimp in his restaurant. I calmly said, well last night you did. The smell was over-powering, the shrimp tails were black and when I cut the tails off the meat had black spots ON the shrimp and the meat was mushy and slimy. He repeated that he does not serve bad shrimp. I said, "Look- last nights shrimp was spoiled. I just wanted to let you know so that you can check it and make sure no more is served. " He was pretty belligerant and full of attitude about the whole thing no matter how calm I tried to be. Maybe b/c I wouldn't recant my experience? Was it really the owner or manager? Someone pretending to be the boss? At the end of the talk, he offered more food. I reiterated that I was NOT calling to get a free meal, but that I was trying to help HIM by just telling him so his restaurant didn't get people sick! I refused the offer of any other food- that wasn't why I called but also, his attitude was so bizarre that I want nothing more to do with this restaurant or the owner. I wish the staff every success in life. I did add some pix, but I couldn't see how to attach them to...

The first time we came here we had a good time and no issues. Tonight was one of the worst experiences we’ve ever had in any dining facility and we will never be coming back. When we arrived around 7:00pm, we were told there was a wait for indoor seating or we could sit outside and a server would be right with us. We opted for outside. The hostess sat us and we waited for over 10 minutes with no server. The server walked by us MANY times and never asked if we wanted drinks or anything. She was too busy serving ONE table outside that we overheard from her and the guests who were her family and kids. She went back and forth to their table at least 3 times and still we hadn’t seen a server. After 15 minutes, my boyfriend went inside to the hostess table to ask. Shortly afterwards our server came out and apologized, but what was off-putting is that she repeated that no one told her that we were her table and kept shifting blame up front. She even complained to another server in front of us. It made us feel like we were an inconvenience and it was so weird to bash coworkers in front of us. Honestly, as a customer we don’t really care whose fault it is, we just wanted to move past it and order. We put drink orders in and immediately ordered dinner along with the drinks to help expedite the process. At this point it was around 7:15pm. We needed to leave by 8:20 at the absolute latest to make it for a scheduled appointment/activity. Quickly we got salads and our drinks and a complimentary bread and dip. We were happy, everything was fine, except our entrees never came. Our server came up to us at least 3 or 4 times saying our food was “almost done”… however at 8:10pm we still had no dinner. We were a party of 3 there’s no reason it should take almost an hour. In the mean time, the server kept checking on her family and even eating with her family and our drinks were never refilled and were empty. We told her multiple times we needed to leave by a certain time and wanted to either get the food to-go at this point or we can pay for the appetizers/drinks and that’s it. We were trying to be flexible and offer alternative solutions to THEIR issue. She was frazzled and we were literally calming HER down. She assured us AGAIN that the food was almost done and that the owner was walking it out now and will speak to us. We asked for the bill to try to again expedite the process. 10 minutes go by and still no food and no bill. We said multiple times we had to walk out the door at 8:20pm no matter what. Instead of anyone helping, we just kept getting ghosted and we eventually had to leave. The server was spastic the entire time, running around yet doing absolutely nothing at the same time. This experience was absolutely terrible, unprofessional, and I can’t figure out what in the world was going on with the server. I’m beyond irritated that instead of helping, she kept freaking out saying it wasn’t her fault and to please not be mad at her. We were not rude, did not yell, were respectful, and remained calm. The situation was handled so poorly that there is nothing in the planet anyone at this business can say to ever convince me, my family, or my friends to come back ever again. I still can’t get over witnessing the server eating with her family while we still had no drinks like hello?? LOL it was just so bizarre and weird I’m still processing that this actually happened. I literally never leave reviews but this was so genuinely terrible and infuriating it’s worth my time. I can’t even fairly rate the food because we never got what we ordered. Again, we never received any straws for the drinks and we never received a single refill. We tried and asked to pay MULTIPLE times, but instead of actually bringing a bill, the server kept asking us to wait because the food was “on its way out”. At the time of this review it is currently 11:12pm and I bet the food is still “on its way...

We used to come here all the time. It was the best pizza spot in town, loved the management, loved the staff. It was great. The ownership of the establishment changed hands last summer and in good faith kept attending a few more times. The results were disappointing in quite a few ways, and we stopped going altogether.

The food used to be top notch and high quality which you could clearly tell when you ate the pizza and many other dishes there. Since the new owners took over last summer, they changed everything from how they make the pizza and sacrificed the quality ingredients by cheapening the ingredients. It’s now unfortunately bland and chewy. As a result, what was once the top pizza in PG is now at the bottom.

To add insult to injury, the customer service has gone downhill as you can see in the many one star, lowly rated reviews on here and on yelp as well. When low star reviews are posted, the owner tends to gaslight their reviewers anytime time critical feedback is given. You’re in the restaurant industry which thrives on feedback to improve the menu and experience. If you can’t handle receiving feedback from your customers, then you’re not meant to be in this business period. It is blatantly evident by the amount of gaslighting that is done by the owner anytime there’s a bad a review.

I’m sure, just like the other bad reviews on here, the owner will chime in, give excuses, and gaslight my true experiences. Just know no matter what they say, myself and all of the other Google/yelp reviews are real. I hope someday they will learn and grow from this and what all of the others have said. I do not have faith in that and that’s unfortunate. One can only hope.

Case in point: see their response below. I told you they gaslight their customers. Actually it’s “Johnson and Wales” - but someone who went there would actually know how to spell...