Five Points Cafe — Restaurant in Town of Islip

I am always looking for a great place for a burger and love to support local restaurants. I was very disappointed when I visited today. The restaurant looked clean and we were seated right away. I ordered a salad which was good. My daughter and wife both had a burger that were cooked correctly and they enjoyed them. The problem came when I ordered the french onion soup. It was horrible. As a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and many years experience as an executive chef I knew from the first bite what was wrong. First, it was way too sweet....How does this happen you ask? It happens when the cook doesn't take the time to caramelize the onions and cheats by adding lots of sugar. The crouton that was in it was solid as a rock...after it sitting on the table for 30 minutes I still was not able to get my spoon to go through it. When the plates were bussed they could see that I didn't eat it and I explained that it was not good. When my server returned to the table I let her know that it was really bad....the response I got was "oh yeah...Was it really sweet? We have one cook here who always makes it bad." She then dropped the check and of-course the soup was still on it. I paid and left. So...what does this tell us about Five Points Cafe? It tells you that they are ok with taking shortcuts, that when they have a problem they don't fix it. It tells you that they have a weak management team who has not trained their staff on how to handle problems on the floor. What else are you taking shortcuts on? If you can't be trusted to cook and taste soup before serving it to a guest are you temping your foods? Are you labeling your foods? Are you making sure that everything is clean as to prevent cross contamination? Can you not hire and retain qualified cooks that will follow a recipe? I will not be eating there again. I suggest that no one else does either. I hope that the management takes the time to fix what is broken....or replace the management if that is...

My family and I tried Five Points for the first time yesterday. The waitress seemed either undertrained or disinterested in serving us. My biggest complaint with our visit was when our dinner was served. Two people had ordered the Fish & Chips. We were given a bottle of malt vinegar and after using it on the food, we noticed there were fruit flies floating in the bottle. I went to the hostess and told her what happened. We sat at the table for the next 3-4 minutes without anyone coming to the table (restaurant was not that busy) and assumed they were making us new entrees. Finally someone did come over (I am assuming the owner or manager but not our waitress who never addressed the issue) and were told that "fruit flies are getting the better of us". While they did apologize, it didn't seem to be a big deal to them. The food was reserved about 10 minutes later, but by then I had eaten alone and my wife and son had to eat quickly so we could be on time for our scheduled event that evening. While things tend to happen that are beyond the control of a restaurant, checking your vinegar for fruit flies (which tend to gravitate to) is just irresponsible. There was no mention of comping anything to make up for the ruining of the dinner (after this event who would feel good about the condition of the kitchen?). When something like this happens, a business has 2 choices: 1. Do something to make the customer feel appreciated and make sure they understand the business puts their experience ahead of profits or 2. Pretend it didn't happen and go about your business. Five Points choose number 2 and now I choose to make sure I share with everyone I can that this business is not customer friendly and clearly puts profits above all else. I would never go back here and recommend that others stay...

The wait staff is usually friendly and attentive. The hostess could use some blinders - if she could focus on what's going on in front of her, it wouldn't be so difficult to get everyone some help.

But the food here is so excellent, it's worth a little prodding. The beer selection is very complimentary to the menu, great opportunity for great pairings. Sitting in the outdoor heated patio is actually the most comfortable, adorable dinner, and that plus the Cali Burger and a Six Point Bengali keeps me coming back here more often than I'd like to admit.

*Anecdote - Went with some friends one Friday evening, so it wasn't a surprise that we were waiting for a table. But then a pub crawl showed up. I've never see anything like it. Theoretically there was a fundraising component to the event but their check-list shirts informed us that the group was on their 5th out of 7 bars that evening, and all I could hear was a megaphone. An actual megaphone with a bullhorn, that they announced raffles with. Rafael opportunities, raffle prices, raffle winners about to be selected, raffle winners 1-5, the fact that they were about to leave, that they were leaving, that they had left. It was incredible. It flustered the staff so horribly it took them 45 minutes to seat us despite empty tables. I couldn't tell you if the group informed the restaurant they were coming, but damn. They weren't ready. And the group of middle-aged pub crawlers were disrespectful to the staff, to the other patrons, and actually to each other. So if you see ANYTHING like this in the town of Sayville, don't stand your ground like we...