Bracco's Clam & Oyster Bar — Restaurant in Town of Hempstead

Long story short, please read Google reviews and Yelp before choosing the right place to eat/drink and spend your money. This place (Bracco's) is overpriced, disorganized, full of rude and unprofessional staff members, dirty bathrooms, and on top of that water down drinks. If I could give them a 0 start, I would!!!

I came to this spot on Thursday night 06/23/16, around 9:30 pm. I made a BIG mistake of not checking the Google reviews and Yelp as I always do before choosing any restaurant/bar/business. As soon as you get to the front of Bracco's you noticed is very disorganized, nobody is around to help you find a table, you are on your own looking for a table. Finally, after 5-7 minutes or so looking for the right table, we sat down on our own, and waited around 15 mins for somebody to approach us, and a least ask if we were being served, nothing happened, basically we were being ignored.

I had to take initiative myself and ask one of the crew guys for a menu... another 15-20 mins passed by, and nobody asked us if we were ready to order.. I had to ONCE again ask the server from the front table about who was taking our order... She said somebody will be with you in a moment. Our "assigned" server came around a couple of minutes after that, we ordered TWO drinks(water down) and one order of fried calamari with fries. The food was okay, it could have been better.

After we were done, we had to wait for the server to bring us the check/bill, it took her around 8 minutes to get it, then another 10 minutes for her to come back and get the payment. We decided not to wait any longer and go to the cashier and pay ourselves... On our way there we found our server, she just pointed the cashier and told us you can pay over there with a attitude, not even an apology. I go to the cashier, I pay with my credit card, and I told the Cashier lady, I usually leave good tips but not this time because of the TERRIBLE customer service I had here today. She did not even ask me why or what was the reason, she was just worried about me not leaving a tip. She said " so your not leaving her a tip, I had to tell her twice...

As been first time experience The food and atmosphere were wonderful however, the service was awful. Two weeks ago I had a awful acquaintance with the waiter and the owner. Me and my family decided to head to the dance floor to dance for a few min when we came back our table was taking by other people. We saw the waiter that was serving us and we had discussed with her the situation that was happening; she informed us that apparently the people that was sitting told her that they spoke to us and we let them that they can have the table that we were leaving. Also we explained her how we were gone leave if we haven’t pay and our drinks were at the table. The waiter said let me accommodate you with drinks and we will get you a new table. Another waiter came and they wanted to give us a further table from where we were that it was close to the dance floor and the bar, we explained that when we arrived we ask to be close where originally were sitting we even asked how about you guys move the people that is sitting in our table and we get our table back. She said let me see what I can do. At the end we end up speaking to the manager, who was someone’s daughter and has no experience on how to manage the waiters . The “manager” make her own rules and she said that the policy was that if we dance more than 20 min we loose the table. I was never informed that in the first place and we never had heard that before, this people were blaming us for loosing the table. At the end they disrespect us by trying to convince us that it was our fault for getting up and keep saying been away for too long. Wouldn't recommend this...

So. This isn’t new information, but this place is super basic. It does have an excellent venue, sand area with low chairs and umbrellas, an area right above the water to eat and an area to eat right in front of the stage where they have live music. I ordered the baked clams and they were terrible ( it has a piece of bacon on top which didn’t make sense at all) and it was expensive $19 for 6 mini clams that tasted gross. We were told that we had to order an entree in order to order an alcoholic drink. Which was insane, they wouldn’t even let us order fries. Each person that ordered a drink needed to order an entire thanks to Coumo. We ordered wings to accompany our drink and even that was goey and almost raw. How do you mess up wings? I had a don julio margarita which probably had 1/2 an ounce of tequila and a bunch of mixer for $15. What a waste. I’m so sad we wasted $70 here for mediocre food and drinks and terrible service. Our server checked on us twice in 2 hours. If we even wanted more drinks we couldn’t even order it. The live music was a reggae band who played reggae rockers music which was amazing!! Finally some diversity. There was someone who tried to slow dance and security rushed and kicked him out. Terrible service and people here. He wasn’t bothering anyone and yes he was white and this happened. Never coming back here. Skip...