Backyard on Broadway — Restaurant in San Antonio

I first heard about this restaurant from the Facebook Group "San Antonio Restaurants". It was recommended to me when I asked for suggestions for a restaurant for my son's 3rd birthday dinner. I said we needed a location that was for mostly adults but yet kid friendly. So we selected Backyard on Broadway because it met the criteria we were looking for and we were not disappointed!

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We had a wonderful experience! Dre. was the person who I engaged in communication with pretty much the entire time and was amazing to work with. All of my questions were answered and very timely! As soon as my toddler and I walked in their establishment we were greeted by the hosts who exclaimed, "You must be the birthday boy!!" I knew it was going to be a great experience from then on!

We had prime real estate seating up on the patio overlooking the playground. Our food was brought out hot and very quickly after being there. Our servers were hustling back and forth and did an amazing job of making sure our guests were happy. They took all of our special requests and made everything seamless. We had elderly that needed chairs with backs, dietary restrictions with gluten free crusts, small children and we were in the shade. They kept our cake and goodie bags with meltable candies inside their walk-in fridge until needed. Their PBJ pizza (pepperoni and bacon jam) was the hit of the party! Their chicken tenders were as well! They were not your basic tenders. These were super flavorful and oversized.

They said we could decorate the space, but I am not the decorating type so we just had a big banner and called it a day! It worked great on their space. After our dinner was over we had to make a quick dash to the Scobee Education Center because I had gotten all our guests tickets to the Planetarium. We broke down our sign and boxed up our cake and the restaurant said we could leave our stuff there and come right back and pick it up after the show! 🥹 They were life savers!!

I could go on and on about how happy we were. I just wanted to let everyone know what a great time we had and that it was a great choice for us! Sharing a few pictures for reference. Thank you again to the ones that were helpful and recommending this place to us! We will definately be back.

If I had to say something negative it would be that their cups of salsa for their chips are too small. We need more salsa because they were...

This place has so much potential but not sure it will reach it.

Location: Great location. No doubt Broadway is bringing in customers on its on without marketing. Parking wasn't a problem.

Service: Service was very underwhelming. Especially when we reserved for a birthday party. Sat down and 30 minutes later still had nothing but 2 jugs of water. Had to grab another waiter to find our waiter. She was OK but not as helpful & cheerful as anyone else seemed.

Atmosphere: Excellent atmosphere. Very inviting for the most part. Music was a good mix of Top 90s, 00s, 10s, etc. Other customers were very friendly also. Playground was a nice addition too. Great to have it boxed in for safety. TVs were visible and well placed. Chairs might've been the only downfall as they weren't quite comfy for taller people.

Food: The food was mid-tier at best. For the prices it was definitely NOT worth it. Starting with the pizza, it was decent. Along the lines of a mall pizza. Cheesy bread was bland. Imagine a decent crust topped with Dollar Tree ingredients. Whatever the marinara sauce was supposed to be was terrible. Wings (Hot honey) were good. Sauce was good. Chicken could use a salt bath or seasoning of some sort. For the price, I'd buy frozen. Chicken tenders were good, but no bragging rights. Not sure what kind of ketchup they use but it was more vinegar than tomato. Not my preference but maybe somebody likes it. Fries were ok, could've used salt. Probably would've been a good idea to have salt and pepper shakers but I'm guessing this place is a bar more than a restaurant. With that being said! Alcoholic drinks (Paloma and Valentine special) were watered down. Easy to drink I guess you could say. The green tea shot was on par. The pink lemonade drink was terrible. Water was good. Sweet tea, terrible.

All in all, these are all very fixable things. Improve the staffing. Increase knowledge and skill of bartender. Improve quality of ingredients or maybe change vendors. Improve recipe of current menu. What's there will work if improved upon. This place can not afford to have too many experiences like mine as it has enough competition around to have it go unnoticed and out of business. I don't believe I will return but I guess its good enough for anyone to try. Just expect a good time but not to get your...

I rarely feel the need to leave a negative review, but I cannot stress enough how incredibly UNORGANIZED and CHAOTIC this place is.

1.) We asked THREE different servers if someone could help us at our table since nobody came by to take our drink/food order. Each one asked where we were seated, but nobody came by! There are NO sections, so the waitresses were running around in every directions. I honestly would have felt so bad for them had someone just been straight up and said that they couldn’t help because they were swamped instead of making us wait and ask so many times for help.

2.) We have kids playing on the playground and didn’t want to leave otherwise we would have, so the only plus was that they were distracted while we waited. So we decided to order at the bar instead. The poor bartenders DO NOT need to be taking food orders while also managing a busy bar.

3.) They gave us a pager to let us know when our food is ready. So not only did we have to run to the bar from our table, but we also had to do it MULTIPLE TIMES because they gave us our food ONE AT A TIME! It makes more sense to keep the food warm and give it out all at once, but once again…DISORGANIZED.

4.) Zero respect from waitresses/servers. You see a customer carrying out their own food to their table, the least you can do is hold the damn door open so we can get out with ease. Not once, but three different times with three different servers, they opened the door for themselves, let themselves in and fake smiled as they walked past us with all these items in our hands. They either had no common sense or really just don’t give AF.

The only good thing from here was the food and bar drinks. So props to the bartenders and cooks.

I wouldn’t come back simply because of the...