First Watch — Restaurant in Texas

Worst experience ever! My son and I arrived this morning and the restaurant was about half full. There were plenty of staff working. After sitting down we waited for about 10 minutes and no one ever greeted us. During this time, I saw 3 other tables get seated, get greeted and get their drink orders. Finally I stopped someone and asked who my server was. She said she didn't know but could find out and take my drink order in the meantime. I asked for a kids water and kids orange juice for my son who is 3, and a water and coffee for me. She brought back two waters in plastic cups. I thought this was odd. Why give an adult a plastic cup? I then waited 5 more minutes and finally asked the server who was greeting and waiting on tables around my section for a Manager. The Manager arrived and was was less than empathetic. He said he could take my order. Never apologized and had a more "Let's just get this woman out of here" attitude. I could sense the tension and I had a nice disposition. In fact, I was trying to be overly nice because I have seen how these things end when servers and management think you are just looking for a fight and to complain. Not here...I wanted to treat my little one to pancakes and have some mommy and daddy time. He took my order and then told me the lady who I had saw serving all the other patrons around me would be my server. She was disconnected and short for the rest of my meal. My food arrived and my plain pancakes were blueberry pancakes which again, I said nothing. At this point, I just wanted my son to eat and leave. He was happy so I kept quiet. I had ordered food to go (a single pancake) and she brought me that along with my check before we even finished our meal. I hate to go here but the thing that bothered me was that I did not look like all the other patrons that were being served. I do not like to assume this and never go to that place but I could feel the bias on how I was treated. Even the table next to me said something. One woman said she could see there was a difference in their service vs. mine. They were one of the tables that arrived 10 minutes after me. I have never felt so disrespected and disregarded in my life. I will NOT be visiting this location or any other First Watch location again. Reputation matters and I will be mentioning this to anyone that asks me about this chain. Hire proper staff that understands all patrons should be treated equally regardless if you don't think they deserve it. And don't assume that if you treat someone who you think doesn't have a voice, that they will not speak up. I have been a server in the past and would never do this. And to the Manager - next time please do a follow up to see if things were better. They were not. He did come back at the end to take my payment which I again found...

Absolutely has to be the worst First Watch in all of Texas. I was so appalled and disappointed with my first experience at this location. If you are seeking the proper treatment as a patron...by all means visit the HWY. 90 location in Sugarland with Manager, Oscar and his team. They are properly trained and far more welcoming at that location. I purposely went to this location today to experience the new location at what I thought would be a great time.....avoiding the crowd and any delays. It could not have been further from the worst experience. I was never greeted when I walked in at 1:30pm. It may as well have been 2:29pm, for the non greeting and look on the hostess face (and as it turned out) she was indeed my waitress. After ordering my food it was not made to order nor according to the menu. I also asked for lemons to accompany my water, that I never received. When I asked about the unanticipated change...she returned with the feedback from the chef....."what is the difference?" I should have known then to just leave...wanting to allow for redemption... I summoned for the Manager...when he arrived the very first thing out of his mouth was verbatim; "I'm very busy!" The restaurant was near empty.(????)....he then advised that he was "joking"....which I did not at all find funny.  I began to offered him my feedback about the meal and how I was greeted.....he then abruptly interjected and said "why is is always our people?" Implying that "black people" always complain. I then was livid...but in an effort to educate him...that my experience is valid and had nothing to do with my race as he too is the same race....he then said "you right, I'm sorry I"m upset because of Sunday."  Informing me than he received negative feedback from the Sunday before.  Apparently, still in need of correction (unabated) since here it was Tuesday 10/5/21 and there was no improvement. He then became more annoyed that I was continuing to advise him on his missed opportunity to improve MY experience and was more upset that the waitress gave me the honest response from the Cook.  Still not acknowledging the focus of this visit nor offering to correct it.....he scurried away with a meager apology as if it was my fault that he and his staff were scathed by the recent and valid comments. I paid and left and will never ever, ever go back again. I will continue to campaign for other locations and encourage all of my neighbors and friends to never visit or even order take out from this location. Never have I ever been in the position to have to defend my race, because I was offering honest verbiage and concern for my own experience as a guest, especially when race had absolutely nothing to do with the feedback. But to be nullified by someone of my own race was too much for a sandwich, soup...

A disappointing and honest review. I have been to other locations in the past but this was my family’s first time at this location. We went during brunch time and surprisingly it was quite busy and there were so many people that made it feel uncomfortable due to the minimal table spacing. Shortly after we were seated, our server came around to take our drink orders. He had a hard time hearing us over the loud environment (loud due to people talking and background music). It felt like I was dining at a chuck-e-cheese. As the server walked away, we noticed a foul odor. Come to find out our server seemed to have serious body odor. We stayed optimistic and made our food order quickly, trying to avoid drawing any attention to our server so they wouldn’t return to our table. We then received our coffee which was extremely bitter, so we had to ask for a freshly brewed pot. Immediately we noticed that the coffee was better and it was apparent that the previous coffee pot provided must have been old and sitting for hours. Once we received our food the disappointment continued, we ordered a chocolate chip pancake which felt like we were eating a chocolate chip cookie. The pancake was hard and had an excessive amount of chocolate chips. We also ordered the french toast and sadly it was mushy and undercooked. They had a kid menu which we ordered from but be warned, the food here is not kid friendly. We ordered yogurt granola and fruit for our kiddo and the meal barely had any yogurt making it difficult to eat for my daughter. My wife ordered the farm house skillet, which we asked for over easy eggs. The eggs were clearly well done and we noticed that an exaggerated amount of oil was used to cooked these eggs as they were overly greasy. After all the negative food experience and foul smell coming from our server we decided to leave. We spent over $60 on a brunch that was poorly delivered, unacceptable food quality and an environment that does not look to care for COVID-19 prevention. I would have possibly received better food and better quality service from an IHOP or Denny’s. I will no longer recommend this restaurant, let alone this location. You are better off spending your hard earned...