Broadway Oyster Bar — Restaurant in St. Louis

Pretty unacceptable experience. I’ve waited two months to post this because I kept hoping the staff at Broadway Oyster Bar would finally do the right thing and fix the double charge they made on my tab but they refused to contact me and never attempted to fix it.

Food is decent, dessert is good, and the place is cool, but damn the service has been consistently so bad that i wouldn't bother returning. The service is atrocious enough that I have taken my money elsewhere, since they basically, at this point its safe to assume, stole my money. Let’s start with the service: slow, dismissive, and rude. Our server took 10 minutes or more to bring anything we asked for;; water, condiments, silverware and more. She looked visibly annoyed every time we spoke to her. On top of that, no one ever cleared our table. Dirty dishes just kept piling up. We were literally surrounded by empty stacked plates for the entire meal.

But the huge issue was that she charged us for a random table's tab as well as out own. Our actual bill was about $200. We ended up almost $450.

When we questioned it, she said we’d get a refund but claimed she couldn’t print another receipt for it. Instead, she told us to “check back if it doesn’t go through.” After two months of trying to get them to refund me, and them deciding not to, I am now writing this. And I’ve been trying to get that money back ever since.

I’ve emailed them 12 times total to two different addresses, one which according to the server i spoke to was "not supposed to be given out", filled out their contact form about 5 times, called the place (they never answer), and even physically went there four times times. Every single time, it was a new excuse: “No manager here,” “We’re slammed,” “The only manager who does refunds got fired,” etc. Each time I was told someone would reach out after i would leave a note with the details of what happened, and my contact information. No one ever reached out.

This isn’t just bad service at this point they just don't care and are keeping the money. They stole about $200 from me and refuse to take responsibility.

If you go here, food is decent, but damn the service is trash and you're basically robbed if the waiter "accidentally" charges you multiple times, because the managers nor anybody in their staff care to help you.

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Update: Ended up making a complaint with the BBB (Better Business Bureau) after the last email I sent which stated that if I got no response within ~3 days I would do so. Went one last time to see if I could find a manager (after filing the BBB complaint), and I finally was able get one to talk to me. I mentioned the issue and told her that the refund on one card had gone through (because the charge was gone from my statement) but the other card’s reimbursement had not been processed. Thankfully she communicated with me at the very least via email. Told me she couldn’t see anything about the charge in her system, that “it simply put, does not exist.” But she did mention she would reach out to the POS company to see what was going on, which I appreciated. The restaurant (maybe that manager, maybe not) responded to the BBB complaint alleging that I was lying about one of the charges because “I couldn’t show evidence” for it, when in actuality I had mentioned it to her that the refund on one of the cards had gone through already and we were still trying to Figure out what had happened with the other card’s charge.

Update 2: Finally got the refund on the second card. A little wild that all I got was an email from the manager with a photo of the refund receipt, with the text “thank you for your business.” Not even a “sorry about that”. Maybe at this point I’m just being petty. (The refund receipt shows it was initiated in the end of June which means they did in fact not refund me ~3 months ago when the incorrect charge was done). Oh well. This Odyssey comes to an end. Lesson learned, good food, great dessert, but abhorrent customer service. I hope they have DoorDash partnership. Thanks for coming to...

I will note right off the bat that I am unsure of what the norm is here so am trying to balance two vastly different experiences with this review. Our first time was phenomena; the second was one of the worst dine-in experiences my wife or have had in a long time. I originally wrote a rave review and will that at the bottom because I’d like to believe that is the norm for this establishment. However, service and staff in general were so unpleasant and unprofessional upon our return (1 week later) that I think it’s likely that the norm is in the middle, but leaning towards our second experience. Below is the review I wrote on OpenTable for this second experience (and based on it I would give the service a 0 but James was so great I adjusted to a 2):

OpenTable Review: I want to note that James Chitty served us last week (Friday 6/14) and we had a spectacular time - to the point where I tipped him almost as much as our meal cost. We had plans to make your restaurant our Friday night destination but our experience last night makes us question if we ever want to come back. Our server was incredibly inattentive and rude throughout our meal. We wanted to order food and drinks here and there to make sure we didn’t get over stuffed or overly inebriated. However, the waitress made it quite difficult to accomplish this and we left with a very and taste in our mouths. It took us over 20 minutes just to get her attention so we could finally pay and leave. We also asked another staff member if we could get our check so we could pay: she coped a huge attitude and told us our waitress was busy (even though she was casually chatting with other guests) and to sit down. We had such a wonderful experience with James - he made us truly feel at home, welcome, and made sure we enjoyed ourselves - and the food is good enough we might be willing to give the restaurant another shot, but we hope the guest experience is what we will find - rather than finding that’s actually more of a fluke at the Broadway Oyster Bar.

First experience review:

My wife and I went here on the day of her brother’s memorial (he passed away unexpectedly a week prior). We wanted to celebrate his life and our ability to memorialize him through living our lives to the fullest.

Our experience here was beyond being exactly what we needed. Everyone was incredibly friendly. Our server in particular (I believe his name was James Chitty (spelling?)) was incredibly gracious during moments where we both had a bit of a hard time, and he was incredibly gracious with letting us take our time and making us feel just welcome but like we belonged - we just moved to STL two weeks prior. Everything we ordered was delicious, tasted fresh and of high quality, beautifully presented, and beyond what we expected. The atmosphere was fun and vibrant without being too loud or remotely overbearing. Decor fits the scene of a fun lively restaurant/bar, but without being gaudy or tacky.

We plan to patronize this business on a weekly basis and I cannot recommend it...

So I originally went there two years ago and things were pretty good. I made reservations for 10 people. A young lady named April assisted with this because it was for my daughter that had just passed away a few months before. We were celebrating her birthday. They even brought out complementary dessert service.. that time was great… fast forward to last night for my other daughter‘s birthday…smh.I called for two days to make the reservation because it was for eight people, and you can't make a reservation for more than six online. The phone line doesn't seem to work so had to drive from Belleville to St. Louis just to make the reservation. That’s where I was told that the phone lines are basically trash. But the young lady that made the reservation for me was nice.It was a simple process. The only issue that I had is that nothing was posted or mentioned about an automatic gratuity for more than six people. The menu says 20% suggested, but ours was automatically added. I won’t post as to why I feel ours was automatically added, but it does sit in the back of my mind. Our server also stated that she couldn't split the bill, but when we were there before, and there were many more people, the bill was split, and there was not an automatic gratuity. One of my daughters ordered a purple haze(The cocktail) But they brought her the beer, purple haze. We were told that they could not take that off so that was irritating. We ordered her another drink that took a while. We only got it then because I asked about it. So we wound up having to order another one because that one had a gnat bug in it. It didn't come until right before we were getting ready to leave. She didn’t come to check on us,anytime we needed something we had to call her over. The crawfish didn't have much flavor. It had spice to it.. the shrimp Poboy basically just tasted like shrimp on bread. The oyster bienvile was almost fishy and not flavorful. I was raised in New Orleans, so this was a little disappointing considering our bill was $520, and no complementary dessert, no ask if we wanted to order dessert, nothing. Then on top of the gratuity, there was a food, tax, a liquor tax and then a non-alcohol beverage tax???A lot has changed since my first post two years ago. I’m really not sure if I’ll return. It’s a little disheartening because this was my daughter that passed away favorite place to go and I cycle through all of her favorite places to go eat...