BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse — Restaurant in San Antonio

We had a wonderful time and experience at the 281 Stone Oak location earlier this month where they REALLY took care of us. So my friends and my family organized another dinner at the I-10 RIM location to celebrate my daughter's birthday. There was 14 of us and we used the call ahead to arrange a table. We only had to wait 10-15 minutes or so, which wasn't bad at all. The location wasn't very busy as it was a Tuesday night, so we were in luck.

It was after 9pm when we got there, which was by design to take advantage of the reverse happy hour, which has amazing deals. We asked the waiter for that menu, and he first told us that they don't have reverse happy hour, which was the reason for us showing up after 9pm. I asked him to confirm after which he did finally bring us the menu.

We ordered a bunch of appetizers, pizza, and kids meals. The food itself was fine, although some items were a bit colder than we would have liked. But the service this time was pretty poor. We didn't see our server for a LONG time after getting served the food. Refills on drinks were very slow. Toward the end of the meal, when we wanted to order Pazookies, we must have waited 15 minutes, before the server showed up to take our Pazookie order. I had also indicated that it was my daughters birthday and I had ordered her a special confetti Birthday Pazoookie.

Again waited another 15 minutes, and the server comes out again and says that the pazookies will take longer as another group put in their Pazookie order ahead of ours, but they are working on it. Pazookies finally came out, but one by one, which made it really hard to share one Pazookie at a time with 14 people. They also brought the birthday pazookie but no candles and no special song or anything to make my daughter feel like this was her celebration. I then asked another server for some birthday magic, and she indicated that they ran out of candles. So, our table them sang to my daughter to make her feel special.

This location doesn't seems to have customer experience on the forefront. 281 location went all out to ensure we had a good time and good experience. Since it was a large party, they assigned 2 dedicated servers to us, where as the I-10 location assigned one server, which was pretty un-attentive to our needs. All in all, the food was okay (although cold), but the service this time was not up to par and led to a less pleasant experience for everyone...

I hate to write a bad review because I never do this and I am a long-time fan of BJ's. However, the service last night was really off-putting and made me re-consider ever going there again.

We arrived around 10 pm with a small group. We were told that there would be a wait for the dining room but that we could sit at the bar high top now. Sure, no problem. We sat and nobody came over to us for about 15 min. Not a huge deal, we figured they were busy. We quickly ordered apps, and then didn't get re-visited by our waiter to order food for another 30 min or so.

The apps took a bit, but they came out and then we finally ordered. After we ordered, we literally did not see our server again for an hour. Nobody checked in on us and our food was not coming. We all had to work the next morning and were getting very tired, on top the frustration of seeing all of the other tables that had arrived after us getting their food.

We finally asked another server if she could just request to put our food in to-go boxes because we did not have time at that point. It was 11:30 and still no food. When we finally saw our server, we asked if we could just pay then. We were excited to order Pazookies but didn't feel like waiting another hour for that so we decided against. We were totally paid out before we FINALLY got our food around 11:45. When they did bring out our food (in boxes) we did not get one single apology or explanation, even from the manager! He came out with our food. Nothing. No offer to make it better in any way. Really all we wanted to hear was "we're so sorry, the kitchen was backed up." Our guess is that he forgot to put the food in. That's fine....just be honest and tell us that then. We got nothing. We left 2 hours later at midnight with togo boxes of our food and ate in the car.

Super disappointing customer service experience that so easily could've been made right. We've all worked in the service industry so we understand busy nights (not that it was busy in there....but it's fine) but the lack of effort from any staff to remedy the situation was unacceptable and really put a damper on...

Okay this was probably one of the worst dining experiences I've ever had in my life. We went to celebrate my brothers 21st birthday and not one time did the waiter ask if we were celebrating anything or even seem to care which honestly wasn't a big deal but it gets worse. So our server comes back and we get our drinks and put in a order for an appetizer. Mention he's coming off really impatient and rude with us because we're all sort of chatting and taking a while to decide what to eat. After a while we all order our food and continue talking. We start having food runners come up and bring our dishes. Every single person who brings the food is so rude that me and my brother are literally laughing because it seems so unreal. One guy drops the plate on the table and walks away, the others start showing up and delivering the dishes as if they have the worst job in the entire world not even providing the fakest of smiles. Again we're dying at how miserable everyone seems it almost feels like a prank. Then we realize wow we never got the appetizer. We let one of the food runners know and says she'll talk to the manager. The server comes back and says he's sorry and he'll check if it's ready. A food runner is literally behind him with it. What kind of messs?!?! He lets us know he'll take it off the bill and get our refills. The manager walks by and asks if we're doing okay, now we're all pretty chill for the most part and the appetizers free so we go on with our meal, say yes and shrug it off. We finish up the meal, pay the bill, debate the tip and head out. As soon as we get home my boyfriend starts feeling a little sick and starts throwing up, soon after I do too. We both got food poisoning. 😩 So here I am in bed writing this review to warn all of you other nice people DONT order a burger from BJ's or you will be out sick from work the next day. I honestly wouldn't go there for anything but a pazooki. Get it together BJ's. Oh but the server did compliment my boyfriends sweater so that was pretty nice. Other than that...