Lombardi's On the Bay — Restaurant in Town of Brookhaven

I moved to Long Island nearly four years ago and used to rave about this place. Took all my guests and in laws here for what I thought to be, a great dining experience. Since moving I have had two babies and now dining looks a bit different as we go out to eat early - we don’t linger, we order quickly, tip well, and we are in and out. After not dining here for quite some time, we came as a family of four at 5 pm on a Thursday evening. We had a gift card to use for $50 and figured we would put it to use. Here are the following things that happened during my experience that made me feel SO compelled to take time out of being a mother and sit down and write this post (trust I have plenty of better things to do)

We sat close to the bar and could hear most of the servers and staff I looked up and saw two of the young servers talking to one another and when I made eye contact I could literally hear and see her mouth saying “oh my god she just looked at me right in the face” (Very much not pleasant to continue dining when I know they were talking about me/my family) I can only ASSUME it was because my 13 month old daughter was tossing her napkin/a few French fries to the ground as toddlers do. Either way, unprofessional -food was as best, sub par, my husband barely ate his meal and I developed stomach problems after eating mine that evening and the next day when I had the leftovers -the cherry on top- I present my gift card along with my credit card for the balance. It was only $50 on the card which at this point is maybe the cost of two drinks here. The server tells me their system is down and he can not run the card. I ask for the manager which I never do- I tell him my disappointment with not being able to utilize my card and my disappoint with me experience. He then replies (you could tell me there’s $100 on here there’s no way for me to know)- a nasty reply. He then proceeds to tell me that I should have complained during my meal, implying it’s my fault. I told him I have a young family, I don’t ever complain but that I’m telling him now. At this point I am a young woman sitting alone since my husband took our children out to the car while I was paying the bill. The manager proceeds to stand over me as I’m sitting down and continues to tell me I should have complained earlier and there’s nothing he can do. (My bill was not yet paid). I tell him again that the food was awful, I was spoken about by his servers and saw it happen, and he basically says that’s too bad. I tell him I will not be returning back and it’s clear he doesn’t care at all. He continues to stand over me and I slip my credit card in the check holder and hand it to him. He takes it and walks away.

I truly never ever complain about experiences, if anything I love to write a fabulous review. My server here was excellent but the experience with the manager and other staff/food was awful. We are hard working people my husband and I are educators by trade and I know my money and being a patron is not valued. He didn’t even make an effort to say, let me take your child’s chicken fingers off your bill for the inconvenience.

I’ve had pasta pasta in port Jeff give me a $25 gift card once on their OWN accord because they felt badly that we were seated closely to others. A true appreciation for customers (not that I feel entitled that compensation should simply be given).

I hope whoever owns Lombardis by the bay reads my review. You lost patrons who have been dining here for years and bringing tons of guests. Surely I will share my experience with all the mothers and families in...

PLEASE READ BEFORE YOU BOOK! My husband and I had our small intimate wedding reception at this location last Friday 8/11. We met with a woman months prior who I think was let go after we met since she never returned any calls or emails after she received our initial deposit. She was very spacey and had no idea of the rooms or capacity. After leaving numerous emails and messages I was finally in touch with another woman in the catering department. Once we met with her we were brought to a room which wasn’t even offered to us initially for our small party of 35, but we’re then told they have no elevators or ramps for handicapped… that in itself is worrisome for a venue. Keep in mind if they can’t get a small party of 35 right, I would be terrified to know what happens with a large reception. We were told the only room available for the Friday afternoon event was the main dining area but assured our tables and guests would be on the opposite side of the bar where no other guests would be and that the restaurant is usually very slow at that time and day of the week. Upon arriving with our guests we had already informed the staff days prior that we would be a little early and asked if our guests would be able to enjoy cocktails at the bar. When we got there the restaurant was packed. Our tables were not yet setup and there were other people in the area of our PAID IN FULL event. I was totally stressed out. They were so unprepared but that was JUST the beginning. Our guests proceeded to the bar with other restaurant goers, which was not supposed to happen. The one request I had of no glasses at the table that says “coors light” on them was completely overlooked and the linens I paid for were oversized napkins laid on the table overlapping each other. I proceeded to take pictures with the wedding party and came back to an even bigger mess. They were telling our guests that food we specifically paid EXTRA for to have on the menu was not available, then argued with me until they looked at the contract to see that we paid extra and they overlooked that as well. There was NO AC ON IN THE ROOM on a HOT august day, which myself, my husband and multiple guests had asked about and were ignored or told to ask our waiter. Keep in mind there was a beautiful room right next to us, EMPTY for our entire event, and from what I learned the entire day and night that had full blasting AC and a more private area. We were never offered that space. The only good thing about the dinner was the amount of food but then it got worse. My mother and I were served our dinner 15 minutes AFTER all of our guests had finished eating and were cleaned up. And to top that off, the manager on duty who was extremely nasty and I just learned was fired after our event, rushed me to “pay the bar tab” since it was 3 minutes over our party time. After ALL that he wanted me to rush to pay another bill. My husband spoke to him of how upset he was about everything and the manager told him to “take it out of the waiters tip” the young waiter was the ONLY one who did his job right and you could tell was trying to make up for managements lack of professionalism. Not his fault. This is management and owners fault. It is now over a week since our event and we have not heard a peep from ownership or new management. This is a complete disgrace and put a very big headache and heartache on our very special day. We will never return and urge you to look somewhere else!...

Disaster

Had my daughters baptism party at Lombardi’s on the bay June 3rd 2018. I will get right to it. Upon booking i paid roughly $83 per head, open bar was included in that price which was an additional $22 per head. We had 100 guests come to the party. Upon arrival right away i noticed they had giorgi vodka the shelves at the bar. Multiple bottles, giorgi vodka!!! My stomach turned, my family has been in the restaurant buisness for over 30 years. I also noticed they had only two beer choices sam seasonal and blue point toasted lager, great beers but whatever the light beer? Bud, BL, coors light, corona? As guests are piling in i basically ran to the matre D and he took me to the front to the sales lady who booked the event for us who btw was a complete you know what. She gave us an attitude through the booking process and through handling all of this. So i told her and explained myself why i was a little upset about the vodka choices and beers choices. She proceeded to tell me that “that’s the standard plan for open bar we disscussed and it is what it is “. Wrong, upon booking I asked her how much extra for open bar and she told me $22 per head and I said OK let’s do it at that price I am not expecting different packages of open bar, and she never mentioned that over the phone. I respectively continue to tell them they should be embarrassed for using a vodka brands that is generally used to cook with And a party of this stature should not have to have this problem, so I try to make the best of it and keep my cool to my guest as I felt embarrassed, buffet line kept having to pause because they only had two people working the buffet line and the trays of food kept running out. The carving station was empty for at least 15 to 20 minutes until my maître d’ who god only knows how embarrassed he was started carving the steak himself. Bread baskets were empty everybody was requesting for more bread the maître d’ was running around like a chicken with no head. Servers at times were nowhere to be found , I had multiple tables without cake and heard that one of the servers told one of my guess that there is no more cake so they did not have enough cake for 100 people when I paid an additional price for the cake because they wanted to charge me $600 to bring my own in !!! Making this story short the owner shows up and apparently he was phone called about all these matters and he seem to have a “it is what it is “ response to all this I saw him helping the buffet line during my party he did not try to pull me aside and talk to me at all. My business partner who knows him pretty well spoke to him and the owner said let me take a look at the contract I’ll be back and he was gone for the rest of the day. The list goes on as I am leaving out many other disappointing matters throughout the party like not being able to get espresso’s for my guests. My bottom line is this, I paid roughly just over $8000 for this buffet style open seating evenT. I fully expected top premium shelf alcohol multiple beer choices top-notch service and food. Never never never again now for parties not even for...