Back Porch Drafthouse — Restaurant in Temple

Much needed update!!

The staff/service were definitely different this time around. I met a group of ladies here to celebrate a birthday. You would think the young lady attending the table worked on commission 😂😏😉! She was full of spirit, knowledge and laughter. Don't let her convince you to do 🥃 like she did us 🤣...just kidding! Loved her suggestions. We enjoyed her as well as our time! The other patrons were just as lively as we were adding to the vibe. From the moment I entered the establishment until we closed it down... literally. We didn't realize it but, the staff were already cleaning up around us. They never said anything to us. They let us enjoy US! I was super hungry and was pleased with my house salad for a start. Surprisingly, it wasn't a basic bowl of iceberg 🥬. If you haven't been to the Backporch in Temple...GO!

3 stars for food and ambience only.

(1)We were promptly greeted and sat. As with a few other establishments you have to pull the venue's menu offline. However, unlike other establishments, this venue doesn't offer WiFi. Surprisingly enough, it was my son that noted this issue. The venue offers the perfect ambience for a sport's bar. We sat on the side opposite the bar. Its walls are lined with televisions. After about 5 minutes, another party was placed across from us. The tables are separated by a 2-ft-gap. The server immediately greeted the table that had just arrived. I noted at that time that our server hadn't come over to us. Their drinks arrived but still no service for us. Now remember, the gap between tables is to the point of which that server should've acknowledged us and assisted even if she wasn't our server but she did not. After about 10 minutes or so, another female walks around checking on all of the tables. I flagged her down and asked her where my server was. She apologized and assisted us. Here's the catch, the same server that was at the other table comes over afterwards and gives a super lame excuse for not realizing that we were sitting at one of her tables. But here's the other funny part...she never came back to assist even after she found out we were her table. (2)my burger was delicious. Nice and moist but my fries felt and tasted as though they'd been under the lamp 15 minutes. My son said his chicken Philly was good. The ticket was reduced because of the timelines but I just don't think this was enough to get me back into this establishment. The server blatantly ignored us and for that, I won't encourage anyone to eat at this establishment. Read the other low ratings and deduce your...

BUYER BEWARE! I love the food at Back Porch, however the service is hit and miss. I’d like to share my experience ordering through their website using Toast. They use Toast for dine in, pickup and delivery at this point. For delivery, Toast uses Door Dash drivers and they only service the delivery portion of this process. Toast will tell you that only the restaurant may perform cancellations or changes to your order so everything is handled by the restaurant. I’d like to preface this by saying we’ve ordered and had food delivered this way many times before and aside from some missing condiments we’ve never had to contact the restaurant for issues. We placed a delivery order at 5:11 with an anticipated delivery of 6:03. We understand this time frame is usually wrong and we tacked on an extra 20 mins to the time for our own expectations. We were notified the restaurant was preparing our order right away. As the time approached to 6pm we were not notified that a driver had been selected and we tried to contact the restaurant through the Toast number directly and through the number they have listed with Google and received no answer. We began to drive to the restaurant at 6:24pm. About 5 minutes from the restaurant I get a notification that a Door Dash driver is waiting for our food and when we pull in to park I called him right away. I met him in the front of their restaurant and got the food and took it inside. The takeout containers didn’t feel warm to the touch at all. A manager came over to assist us and after I explained the situation and asked for a refund they accommodated me right away. They engaged with me very politely and took care of what I asked. My problem lies with what this manager said to me. When I told her that we ordered the food and had been waiting over an hour for delivery with no response from the restaurant, she told me she noticed that the food had been sitting back there for awhile. This means that they knowingly and intentionally were going to send me cold food. I was completely appalled. The time at this point is almost 7pm. We got to a restaurant that we enjoyed eating at only to be completely disappointed and they didn’t so much as offer any apologies or explanations. I was genuinely so sad after...

First impressions - I’ll never come back.

Our server (Julisa) ((spelling?)) was incredibly sweet, matter of fact the entire staff was really sweet.

I don’t know what was going on in there - but 10 minutes in, everything was going south. & to preface this review, I am and have been in the service industry for almost 10 years now. So I am not ignorant to the fact that things take time, and people get busy, and that sometimes you just have a bad night.

However, our experience tonight was laughable. It took well over 30 minutes to get an order of fried pickles. They were super greasy and tasted horrible, don’t order them.

Our margaritas came out wrong twice. I had to go to the bar the clarify with the bartender what I wanted because our server said we couldn’t order a margarita with casamigos?? Again, she was really sweet. I’m not sure if she was fresh out of training, but if you put staff on the floor who clearly need more training - that’s just a recipe for disaster.

It took again, almost 30 minutes for a draft beer because “the bartenders were washing dishes” but several people in our section were being brought draft beer so I’m not sure what that was about.

One of our appetizer's that we ordered before our meals - came out with the meal. Which took an hour and a half to get.

I mean I can’t even go into crazy detail about how many things went wrong throughout our service tonight, because we’d be here all day. And the fact that a manager never came to our table to try to figure out how to rectify the situation or figure out what was going on is insane.

I hope that this review doesn’t come across as hateful - because I don’t want anyone to get in trouble. But considering the most recent reviews of this restaurant - something needs to change. Probably management. The food wasn’t good - everything took literally forever - there was no accountability on anyone’s part. But the servers/bartenders/host(s) were really nice and pretty. I think they are trying their best - but have no support where they need it and there’s clearly a lack of communication...