First Watch — Restaurant in West Palm Beach

Absolutely awful! The first few times this location opened, everything was terrific. The last two times...not so much. Slow service. Cold food and then very poor quality of ingredients. Dirty silverware. Could've persuaded me to come back and try again, but the manager handled the situation poorly and didn't even apologize once for my bad experience.

A few weeks ago my husband and I visited for lunch. We both agreed that we would never come back to this location for lunch. Both of our lunches came with very low quality ingredients...probably that should not have been served because it was past its expiration. There's a clear difference between wilted vegetables, overly ripe or just plain bad vegetables. Additionally, both of our entrees were over cooked. We picked at our food, paid and left. We agreed we would try again for only breakfast items as in the past we had no trouble with breakfast.

Until today...here's how NOT to treat your customers.

1 - Do NOT make your customers wait more than 35 minutes after ordering to receive their meals. We get it, sometimes you're short staff or supremely busy, but at least come and check on us. Let us know what the hold up is. We are not unreasonable people. We get it.

2a - Do NOT give your customers 4 sets of unclean flatware. OK, sometimes these things can happen. However, FOUR sets of dirty flatware? Does anyone look at them when they're folding them into those paper napkins?

2b - Do NOT give your customers boiling water in a cup to clean their own flatware. Because, we're frustrated and decide we'll just clean the next sets of flatware ourselves...you should apologize, not bring us boiling water to clean our own utensils?!?! Um...hello liability.

3 - Do NOT bring cold food to us, especially after we've been waiting so long for our food to begin with and are now frustrated because we can't even get clean utensils to eat with. That tells me that our food has been done for quite some time and it was left to sit.

4 - Do NOT put unsightly ingredients in your remade dishes. If it looks rotten, I'm not going to eat it. Why would you serve that to a person?

5 - Do NOT let your customer leave hungry, frustrated and then angry.

OK...stuff happens, but handle it. Instead of making me feel like you could give a crap less how our experience was, empathize and just say you're sorry! It was very obvious the manager was aware of the frustrations with our meal. He walked by twice. Made eye contact twice...not once did he come over and say, "Hi, I'm aware of the issue. I'm sorry for your experience. How can we do better?" This small gesture would make me want to come back and try again.

Instead, as we were paying, the poor girl at the checkout registered asked, "How was everything today?" After, finding out I was leaving hungry she got the manager. That same manager who walked by twice before, made eye contact and didn't say a word. Instead of saying, "Hello, my name is xyz and I'm the manager." He said, "OH...you're the one with the...and the...." He NEVER said I'm sorry you had a bad experience...no sorry anything. He made mention that people eat 50% based on what they see. If that's the case why would you serve me food that looked like it was something you'll pulled out of the garbage????

How about "I'm sorry. I hope you'll come back and give us another opportunity." instead of making me feel like its my fault that I had to wait for cold food, food that looked like you pulled it out of the garbage and dirty utensils.

Goodbye First Watch. Thanks for nothing. Thanks for making me feel like its my fault you have poor service, low quality food and a...

My experience at this restaurant last Friday was the worst dining experience I have ever had. I flew to West Palm Beach to surprise my mom for Mother's Day. Based on the great reviews, we decided to try this place for brunch. I had put us on the waiting list before arriving at the restaurant and for some reason we still had to wait close to 10 minutes to get a table. The table we were seated at, was not only dirty, but had two empty coffee mugs on the table that were very clearly dirty due to wet coffee spots on the inside and outside of the cups. Besides the fact that they don't place new coffee mugs on each table like some places do. Nevertheless, the waitress came over and proceeded to pour my mom's coffee into someone else's dirty mug... during a pandemic. If I hadn't noticed, my mom would have drank out of a dirty mug. The waitress herself was in a bad mood and clearly didn't want to be working. We placed our order and about 30 minutes later, the waitress comes over for the first time since we placed the order and says it will be "a few more minutes." Considering people who sat down and ordered way after us had already gotten their food, it was obvious she had forgotten to put our order in. In total, we waited 45 minutes to get our food. I had ordered a classic eggs benedict and when she put the plate down, I could immediately see that there were two tiny hard boiled eggs on my benedict... not poached eggs with a runny yolk. My mom's veggie burger was cold. I called the waitress over and told her about the eggs, she rudely takes my plate and walks away. The audacity of this girl was stunning. A few minutes later, I decided I had enough of this place and my mom and I walked out. Over an hour of a precious weekend with my mom wasted on this horrible establishment. We left, smelling like burnt toast, and went to a super cute place downtown West Palm instead where we received awesome service and delicious food. Do yourself a favor and don't come here... spend your time and money...

This is the second time I came here and my second bad experience. The first time the server got the order wrong (no onions in the omelette). It took about 10 min for the new sever to take over to come to the table. She actually argued about the order saying the first server did not write it down. She was almost implying we did not say - no onions. She said she would remake the order but we did not want a remake as we were now 30+ min into this experience. After 3 min of debate w the server, she brought the check and we were charged for the improperly made food that was only picked through and not eaten.

Today was my second try. This same argumentative severe created and sat me a table but another server took my order. Her manners were bordering on rude. She was mostly silent and did not respond when taking my order. It was uncomfortable and awkward.

When my eggs Benedict came, the eggs were completely under cooked. I took 5 min to scoop the uncooked whites before I finally gave up. After another 5 min the server came back and noticed the plate pushed aside. When I told her the eggs were uncooked, there was silence again. ZERO apology, ZERO scan I make it better.

I asked for the check and the only correct this she did was to say I was ok to go, there was no charge.

So, I had a half a cup of coffee that was truly great, a little bit of a juice I ordered.

I am now at IHOP writing this review eating a T-bone steak with a server who is very nice and charming.

My advice to management is to really watch what is happening in the front of the house. I will never go back again and I will surely let my friends know of this experience.

I have pictures of the plate of uncooked eggs Benedict that I would be happy to...