Piggyback Barbeque — Restaurant in Whitefish

Owner's reply to review below: "You may be referring to an experience from last summer, if so I sincerely apologize. This review has just showed in the last 5 minutes. I Would like to extend our sincerest regrets for not meeting your expectations. I would like to assure you that everything we offer is cooked within our 4 walls. As we truly try to please everyone, we do ask that any issues with food or service be addressed with the manager on duty at the time of your visit, so that we may resolve and respond appropriately I’m more than happy to make this right for you if you will just contact us. Always have always will. I hope the remainder of your journey in Montana was a complete success. As a note this review showed up on Valentine’s Day , far from the time that we experience Glacier Park Tourism." In regards to the owner's reply: Thank you for the apology. The waiter didn't even offer one. It was from August but it doesn't matter when it happened. It should never happen. By all of the one star reviews that have been left, I see it has happened a lot though. I didn't imply food wasn't cooked there but most items at a BBQ place are prepared before hand and there's no reason for a 2 hour wait for precooked meat and already prepared sides! Giving a refund doesn't make it right nor would it mean it would change our experience or recommendation. Hopefully, all of the terrible reviews motivate management to hire better waitstaff and train staff adequately. It would be an amazing place if the staff wasn't so terrible. My original review left then, before leaving the establishment, is nowhere to be found now which is why this review was left today. Original review: Waited almost 2 hours for food. Walked inside to ask our waiter how much longer it would be after waiting an hour for our food and he was short and rude. "The order the items are cooked on the griddle is the order they come out and we have a small griddle!" Was his reply. It was ridiculous. However, we hadn't even seen our waiter since placing our order and getting our drinks, which he didn't even bring one of them to us! I told him we had no idea what was going on because we hadn't seen him in over an hour and only got 3 of our 4 drinks at that. He backed off then and brought our drink. No refills offered though. Almost 2 hours later we got to eat. We were vacationing at Whitefish and had spent all day at GNP. If there had been another option at such a late time, we'd have left. We ordered nothing special and most items at a BBQ place are premade! Overpriced food and...

I don't even know where to start.

I really wish we had the experience that others did in some of the more positive reviews, but we didn't, and neither did other patrons in the restaurant.

We went last night (Friday, September 3rd), around 8:15. It took the waiter a bit to offer drinks, and while he brought some of them, failed to bring the others, and forgot to put our appetizer in.

We waited about 20 more minutes before he came over and took our order. Keep in mind that at this point, the restaurant wasn't particularly busy, with maybe 5 total tables (two servers on staff). Takeout orders were flying out of the kitchen, but at about 45 minutes, we were still missing drinks and hadn't received our appetizers.

The table next to us also had seemed to be there awhile without much service. We were chatting with them, and found they had been waiting over 1.5 hours and hadn't received their food or even been offered more drinks. They ended up getting up to complain, and learned their food wasn't close to being done, and ended up paying for their drinks and leaving.

We eventually did the same, about an hour after arriving (still no appetizers, missing drinks, and no refills). When we went up to complain, they had just barely started our appetizers, meanwhile, the cook is yelling at the servers, not using gloves, wiping his sweat and then touching food, and several times, came out with a dirty cup and poured himself a beer.

We're patient people who have worked in the service industry, and I understand staffing is a challenge lately. The servers seemed to be doing their best given the support they had from their management, and it's sad to see them both lose tables over $200 in less than an hour because the cook was lazy and not doing his job. This place was not doing the bare minimum at all, and really, it's quite gross to see the way the cook handled the food. It doesn't surprise me that others have said they found beard hairs in their food (he had a beard). No gloves, no hair net, no hygiene really.

By the end of this ordeal, we were forced to eat fast food because the service had taken so long, and things in town had closed. We really wanted to like the place (it was cute and really smelled delicious), but that wasn't in the cards. A second chance isn't really something we're willing to give it at this point either.

Do yourself a favor and stay away. Management/ownership...

This place is disgusting. House flies galore. We ate there on August 11 for dinner based on the great reviews, I’m not sure who’s giving these 5 star reviews. As you park your car, trash is literally falling out of the garbage cans on the side of the building. Walking up the stairs, there were fly strips filled with dead flys. My wife didn’t want to eat outside due to the amount of flies on the tables and food left from previous guests that were not cleaned up promptly. We sat inside and the young woman was being chased by an 8-9 year old boy who continued to interrupt her as she tried to take orders. He was snapping a wet towel at her as they both laughed and acted like this was acceptable behavior. The taller gentleman behind the register was drinking a draft beer while he told the young waitress to go out and handle complaints by the “older adult” customers. One had been waiting for his beer and another family for their food.

Once our food arrived after 45-50 minutes of excuses, it did look good. My burger was good and my wife got the turkey sandwich. We ordered the side of Mac and cheese which looked and tasted delicious but as I finished my last bite, I realized there were two dead house flies at the bottom of the bowl. The young woman apologized and said they “try” to handle the fly problem but when you don’t handle the trash properly, leave your doors open and leave food out on table for long periods of time, you probably have more bug problems than I even know of.

This place is run by people who don’t seem to understand food safety or cleanliness. The windowsills are filthy, the walls are filthy and I would suggest you close at least one day to do a through cleaning of the entire establishment. I would caution anyone eating here as if the front of the house is this bad, flies in the food, I can only imagine what the...