Bungalow Oceanside — Restaurant in Town of Hempstead

Honestly, I was very disappointed with my experience here. My fiancé and I live close by and we were so excited at the prospect of having a good bar within walking distance from us. We decided to try out the bungalow grill and hopefully make it one of our frequent spots. However after our experience we won’t be returning.

The positives were: the wait staff was friendly, the decor is awesome, and the music was great!

The negatives were: the food was subpar, we got an appetizer to start but it was so bad we didn’t bother ordering dinner. They got all but one of our drinks wrong. Over pouring of alcohol was a running theme with our drinks however this isn’t a huge deal if you’re someone who is looking to get plastered on only a couple drinks. Other drinks like the paloma were brought out with missing ingredients. Lastly, we ordered a hard iced tea but were brought a hard lemonade instead. It was pretty busy and the waitresses seemed short staffed so we waited about 20 minutes before we just told the manager we had the wrong drink brought out. The manager then proceeded to ask us if we were old enough to be drinking instead of addressing the mistake. At this point we had already ordered 3 drinks. I asked if she wanted to card us and she hesitantly said “noooo but you both do look very young”. In response I gave her my license and my fiancé did the same. She stared at my license for a good 3 minutes before taking my fiancés license and then condescendingly saying “yeah well isn’t that crazy though”. We both understand and have no issue with being carded. However, we were not carded by our waitress to begin with and instead of treating us like patrons, the manager made us feel as though we shouldn’t even be in the establishment because of our appearance. After that whole ordeal, she brought us our hard iced tea that was noticeably different from all of our previous drinks in that it had just the slightest hint of alcohol in it. We finished our drinks and left.

We spent $85 in total on four drinks, an appetizer, and tip. The entrees may be better but the appetizer we ordered was a miss. The wait staff is friendly but hard to get a hold of on a busy night. Overall the experience would have been okay if mot for our encounter...

My server and management are my chief reasons for this review. I brought my 5 y/o daughter for dinner. My server was inefficient to say the least. I had to ask for water and a drink 6 times. It seemed like I was intentionally being ignored.The server spent most of her time busying herself with chit chat amongst coworkers rather than attending to the needs of the 2 occupied tables. Not a very difficult task. When our drinks (a water and an arnold palmer iced tea) finally arrived my daughter ask for a sip of my tea. She took 2 sips and said "this tastes funny". So I took a sip and it didnt taste like Arnold palmer iced tea. I complained to my waitress and she informed me it was an alcoholic beverage which I DID NOT ORDER as I am a breast feeding a newborn. How in gods name did I get an alcoholic drink??!!! How little attention must you be paying to make such a tragic mistake? Apparently these drinks arent made this way and they are spiked with vodka behind the bar. Seriously? I asked for the manager. Who I was told was coming but never showed. The waitress apologized and said she would take 15$ off the bill. After some tongue lashing she finally admitted she would pay for the whole meal out of pocket. Ludicrous. I am extremely upset at the way this establishment...

I don't always take the time to write reviews but this food was so good I thought it was worth my time. We ordered Bali Calamari as an appetizer and scraped the plate. The chef left no crumbs and neither did we. Just make sure to ask for more sauce!

I ordered Chimichurri steak as my main and the Elote on the side was actually the highlight. The steak was good but I wish I had an extra plate with more Elote it was seasoned nicely.

All the dishes were presented very beautifully. Our waitresses did forget to bring us a drink but she made up for it by giving us a dessert on the house. So we had Oreo ice cream cake which was also delicious!

The place is very small and if it gets more popular they will end up with long waits for a table. They do have outside space for more seating but the weather isn't warm enough yet.

One thing that stood out to me was that the calamari, which is fried, did not taste overly greasy and I couldn't stop...