BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse — Restaurant in Taylor

I have brought my family here a few times and had pretty average experiences overall. Never particularly great, usually pretty slow, but bad enough to not come back eventually. That was until tonight.

Tonight I went in with my wife and 3 year old and we were able to be sat right away. Immediately my wife gives me the "it's going to be a long night" look about the aggressive techno music blasting. I'm usually not too sensitive to the music in restaurants, but this was inexplicably loud and annoying. Eventually some different music came on but it was still too loud and obtrusive... we are at a brew pub not a dance club.

The waiter takes our order and then the wait begins. We wait for a while, have our drinks refilled once or twice, all while our waiter keeps checking in and saying, "it will be right up," or, "they said about 2 minutes left," intermittently for probably an hour. Eventually our waiter was getting noticably irritated with the kitchen and maybe manager... he had mentioned arguing about trying to get us comps for the inconvenience. With credit to our waiter, he seemed to be well aware of why we would be unsatisfied and at least brought out our daughters food before it was (completely) cold.

Eventually a manager shows up at our table, he does not mention comp or offer us anything additional in the meantime, he simply says that my entree was prepared wrong and he is sorry it is taking so long to remake it. I am pretty sure most restaurants with a kitchen of this size could make my entree 4 or 5 times over in the time we waited, but we said OK and he left. Several minutes later, he brings out my wife's and my entrees... Finally.

My food is looking not very presentable, but at this point i was so hungry and it was almost time for my daughter's bedtime, so I just dug in.

This is were it went from annoying to extremely uncomfortable. After several bites of my food, the manager walks back out with another dish. He picks up the one I am eating while I am still holding my fork in my hand from taking a bite. He sets down the new dish, and makes a comment along the lines of, "I don't want them shorting you on portion."

I sit there for a second and think about what just happened. I realize the plate I was eating before was not just a "smaller portion", but it was cool. It was also mixed together, which isn't how the "correct" dish was presented. I start to ask myself, "If this was my new dish, what the hell was I eating before?"

Once this thought entered my head, I had lost my appetite. Was I eating a dish someone had sent back? Was there a bad ingredient? Was it contaminated with something? Something was definitely wrong with the dish in comparison to the "bigger portion" I am sure of it. I will never know what, and that makes my stomach turn just thinking about it.

I never got to tell the manager this, by the way, because he never came back.

No one asked why I left my new dish almost completely untouched. I would have told them about this. I also would have told them about the bite I took of the new dish that included nearly a tablespoon of solid, cold butter. All of this gave me serious hesitation that my food was even prepared correctly, and if there were shortcuts taken that the butter couldn't even melt in parts of my dish, it gave me pause that the rest of the dish, containing poultry, seafood, and sausage, was actually cooked in a safe fashion.

In the end, they comped mine and my wife's entree, but I never even got to eat mine. No amount of comps will give me an explanation of what was wrong with that dish that the manager abruptly took out from in front of me.

Also my wife's entree was cold and missing ingredients, but those are like, normal bad restaurant problems.

Definitely bad enough to not go back there for us. Good luck to...

Not what it used to be. Food continues to be subpar. There was a time I ate at BJ's twice a week and the food was ALWAYS on point. NOT ANYMORE! Ordered their new appetizer garlic shrimp with PARMESAN toast. The shrimp are pretty good but they serve you two small pieces of garlic bread that look like they came out of the freezer section at Aldi and that's $15?! I sent it back and mentioned that this was supposed to be PARMESAN TOAST not plain garlic bread! The server first asked if I wanted her to bring out shaved Parmesan for me to sprinkle on it? (WHAT?! SO I WANT COLD CHEESE JUST SPRINKLED ON MY TOAST?!) Then, once I said no, claims she was having the kitchen remake it. It comes back out the EXACT same way with garlic butter drizzle on it and she says, "he said the Parmesan is baked in but he forgot the butter sauce!" UH NO! I know what Parmesan looks like and NO IT WASN'T BAKED IN! My friend order her burger and started eating. Her fries and burger were lukewarm, not hot. So then, I had ordered the Bacon Guac burger with the veggie patty. I specifically asked BEFORE ordering if that was a black bean patty or like Morningstar veggie? The server said she would ask and if it was the black bean did I want that? I said, yes but if it's just veggie then no! So after the appetizer nonsense our food was taking forever to come out! 40 mins to be exact! She never came back and said anything about the patty, so I assumed it was indeed black bean. When our food arrives, I cut my burger and bite it. It's regular veggie. Corn, soy and rice... Blah! The bun WASN'T toasted, it was literally cold like he took it from the fridge. I showed the server smh... Then, I say to the server this isn't black bean I specifically asked about that. She says, she's going to ask the cook. She comes back and either he lied, or she was lying just thinking I would eat it, and said, "He said, 'that is a black bean patty it's mixed in there'." I said, "honey no it's not, it wouldn't be so light colored for starters and I've looked at the patty and tasted it, no beans!" So, at this point the manager comes over and he directly says they got rid of their black bean patty and the veggie patty was something new. He goes on to basically say what I already knew, "it has corn, rice and soy no beans." He said he was taking the burgers off of our bill and apologized for our experience. This is a regular occurrence now even though I rarely go to BJ's anymore. I try to be positive and expect a good experience and they keep falling short! It's now become that I go maybe a couple times a year because someone else wants to go, not the twice per week I intentionally visited in the past. I used to really rave about this place but can't...

Outright food was pretty decent all things considered. The main reason this is getting a 3 is due to the lack of attentiveness of our server.

We ate there yesterday for Father's Day and understandably so it picked up a bit as we were sat. Our hostess had told us that they were short silverware and napkins. No problem. Figured that either she'd bring them after they were ready or our server. We were dead wrong.

He greets us and asks if we want to start with any drinks or apps. We had just been sat so we needed to take a moment but I informed him we'd just be doing water for the table. He leaves to get them. Few minutes pass and he returns with the waters. My mother asks him if they have the Bone-In Pork Chops because she had ordered them in the past and was told that they might be out. He informs us that he'll check with the kitchen and he'll be right back. We ask to put in some apps while he checked. Leaves to enter the kitchen and checks on other tables. Again I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt that it's busy and he has other tables, but you should NEVER have to flag down your server to say you're ready to order. Marks off there.

First question we ask "are there Pork Chops available?" He says no. I'm willing to bet he either forgot or just lied to us because of how busy he was. Order gets placed and apps slowly arrive after.

Everything else was fine EXCEPT the fact that he was not attentive to any request made. Here's what they were in order:

-Can we get forks / silverware? Brings us just forks, no napkins. -Brings out apps. No plates? Have to run and get plates. -Can I get another water? Rather than just asking if I need a refill. -Side of ketchup for the fries? Never got it nor was asked how the table was doing until the meal was basically over.

I'm not ragging on the guy he might have had a bad day, or just something was off, but you don't bring that energy to a customer service position and expect something in return. I've had good service & bad service, but I've never had non service. This was basically an AI generated waiter that needed to be reminded of EVERYTHING and still got it wrong.

Food is fine and atmosphere is just a industrial theme but pray and hope you don't get this guy as...