Dave & Buster's Winston-Salem — Restaurant in Winston-Salem

Update April 2024: This location is undergoing a renovation that looks to be eating some of the arcade floor space in order to expand the sports bar end of things. I'm of the personal ambition that it's an odd choice and overly ambitious; evidently they are putting in stall-like booths with standing tables that can be rented so that people can play electric darts and electric shuffleboard?

The kitchen / this chain has had several years to improve but they have apparently used that time to double down on dried out, overly salted fare. Also, who the hell serves brussel sprouts with the stems still on? Blegh.

Old Review

Very excited Dave and Buster's is in town....the mall really needed a boost. Everything runs off of "credits", and the math is definitely kept fuzzy on purpose. A few things to know:

SECRET INSIDERY TIP YOU SHOULD KNOW:

Every Wednesday is half price games, all day. You can't use coupons or promos at all on Wednesday, though, so make sure you load up your card by Tuesday if you're planning on taking advantage! And yes, the half-price games extend to the ticket-earning games.

STUFF ABOUT BUYING AND CREDITS:

An initial game card costs $3. It's your standard gift card-esque plastic card with a swipe stripe. You can load it with various denominations - the ones they most readily offer to you are $20, $25, $50, etc, but you can do $1, $3, $5, etc at the kiosks, if you just want to top up or only play something once.

While exponentially higher card-loading will, unsurprisingly, net you additional credits, to give you a basic idea, $20 gets you 100 credits.

Games do not have even credit "costs" - everything in the place, rather than being an even number, is a decimal number like 10.8 credits (the price of the coin pusher games and the higher ticket-redemption style games). When you consider that each credit runs roughly .20 cents if you don't use any promos or coupons, that works out to a staggering $2.16 a play...so, you can see, money can go very quickly if you don't know that going in!

No matter how low your credit balance gets on a card (and you'll always have a fraction kicking around at the end, due to their decimal credit costs) you can always play a game of skeeball at one of their two classic lanes. (Sadface that they turned an arcade classic into the poverty game, lol!!)

Tickets won go directly to the card, except in the case of plastic tokens and trading cards won at the coin pushers. Be aware that the silver metal coins in the Elaut-brand coin pushers don't give you squat, just the "stuff" like the plastic tokens and cards that come out. If one comes out by mistake, you can put it back in the coin slot for five free shots, which is admittedly a kind of ingenious way to keep all the tokens in the machine.

The prizes for redemption are actually very decent at all levels - I believe they start as low as 25 tickets, which is a "consolation prize" level of tickets at some of the higher redemption machines, so pretty much every kid leaves with something. Top prizes, like the X Box One, are 100,000, and a Ring Doorbell for 50,000.

STUFF ABOUT THE GAMES THEMSELVES

They have cool, newer games, shooters, the "reflex games" that the tweens and teens can whup my butt in, claw machines that are lame and un-grabby, electric state-of-the-art carnival-esque games like ring toss and knockdown ball tosses, lots of basketball games including a cool connect-four themed one, and at least one dance-dance-revolution looking game. There's a big four-person HALO shooter, and Elaut brand coin pushers (Flintstones and Star Trek) that give you 12 shots for 10.8 credits.

STUFF ABOUT THE FOOD

Welp. It's...um...food. I can give enthusiastic and genuine recommendations for the churro dessert (it was honestly amazing and looked exactly like the picture), but the food-food was very poky about getting to our table and was a notch below TGIFridays at closing time - overdone, dried out, oversalted, and generally meh. But lets be real - ya don't come here...

We got here at 9:30. The waiter approached us & took our drinks at our table of 6. It was a bit awkward because the instead of speaking to each individual at the table, he would quietly wait for someone to order their drink. We weren’t sure if he was waiting, writing, or what. Awkward but polite. We ordered 3 of the gaming and entree combos. One went smoothly, he asked if she had a card, she said no & he stated he would bring her a new one. The waiter then asked if i had a physical card to which I explained I had cards on the app, but not a physical one with me. He said that’s fine and he could scan a one of the physical cards barcodes in the app and I could tap to play. Our mom ordered the cheapest combo for play/eat combo. He returned with the two cards & our mom decided to upgrade from the cheapest option to the unlimited play. The waiter said it would require a manager to come out & do that. She said that’s fine. We waited for about 20 minutes to a half hour for the manager to never show up. In the meantime, I realize my 90 minute unlimited play could not be loaded to my digit wallet. At this point it was around 10:30, our food had yet to arrive, and we could no longer utilize the full 90 minutes of either of the cards. We had to flag him down again. The manager arrived to the table & asked me to explain the situation. I recited it politely & with each pause he enthusiastically or rather sarcastically gleamed “Correct!” As if he had already known the whole ordeal or as if I were being pop quizzed on my surroundings/short term memory to evaluate whether I was having a stroke or not. I felt as if I was being talked to like a child or as if I was a simpleton who made the mistake. It was embarrassing. I honestly think the last time my face flushed from embarrassment was in elementary school. But he managed to achieve that. He handed me a new card a little after 10:30. I would’ve opted to just get regular card but I knew that would just add to the already clearly confusion, irritating situation I had put them manager and waiter in with my inferior understanding. I found myself apologizing since they both appeared to be amused at my stupidity. Our mom decided to just cancel the 90 minute card & stick to the cheapest one since they actually never addressed her issue. I’ve been coming here for years & was just exceptionally disappointed because I felt like I had done something wrong. After this incident, the manager walked to floor multiple times, as well as the server. It was odd because we probably saw them more frequently while we were playing than we were while waiting on service. Despite it being a rather large place and us being in a different spot each time, I still managed to make eye contact with the manager on 4 separate occasions within the last hour. We spent a regrettable few hundred to be treated like an inconvenience. I’ve recommended this location for birthday parties, since our daughter had hers last year & we returned today for her 6th birthday. I’ve recommended it to my company for a team outing. I feel sorry and stupid to have. I didn’t come to inconvenience anyone or make them feel like I was insulting, challenging, or testing them. I didn’t want them to do anything extra, I just wanted to eat and play arcade games with my family.

Bonus points: our family had a minor discourse regarding the celery/ranch that came with my daughter’s food. She’s not a fan, so we briefly debating just not having it come out at all. We decided to get it anyways. I thought the waiter was being cheeky in a positive way by joking with us about it. However while picking up our plates, he made sure to mention the uneaten celery on a different plate. I’ve filled out the form. I don’t have a humiliation kink so I’d rather not be contacted unless it’s regarding a...

Yesterday was my daughter's 33rd birthday and she wanted to have a little fun at Dave & Buster's to be a bit nostalgic of birthday parties she had growing up. We all met in the restaurant for a meal first. My husband and I were the last to arrive and my daughter and her crew had already ordered drinks and appetizers. The server took our drink order and walked away. The appetizers arrived, still no bar drinks for my husband and I. Our niece asked for a sweet tea and it arrived nearly an hour after we requested it, after we asked another server to get it. The server arrived to take our food order, but only took mine and my husband's. The other side of the table had to run after the server to have her come back. Service was SLOW and the server had a bit of an attitude in her delivery, never really looking us in the eye as she spoke. Everyone at our table works in the customer service industry and while we extended a certain amount of grace, trying hard to give the server and Dave & Buster's the benefit of the doubt, there never seemed to be any accountability, honesty or real customer service....when bar drinks took so long, we heard..."We're busy.", "I don't know what happened. I'll put it in again, but there are 10 tickets ahead of you", etc. We SAW the bar, it was in our line of sight. We did see the bartender making drinks, but they didn't appear to be overwhelmed with drink orders. Nevertheless, sweet tea doesn't come from the bar. Our food was delivered to other tables, we had to call the runner over when we heard/saw the order and the people at the table appeared confused. Our table was receiving orders from other tables, so much so, that when our actual food DID arrive, we said "no". The food was terribly staggered. Don't forget, the server took mine and my husband's food order first...the kids order came first, no problem, we understood that. Then mine arrived. I don't like to eat before the other adults at the table get their food, but it took so long for the next dishes to come out, my husband told me to eat. By that time, my food wasn't hot. I wasn't going to say anything b/c the wait would be longer. Some more orders staggered out a short time later. EVERYONE was finished before the 2 burgers for the table arrived. The food was not hot, you could see where the melted cheese had cooled b/c the color had changed. The kids at the table were so anxious to play and we had been sitting at the table for over 2 hours already, that we just boxed food up to take with us. It was clear there was disorganization as people who appeared to be managers were trying to sort out tables/food too. However, the managers never approached our table to ask about service or apologize for any apparent errors. Finally our server arrived, in tears, and we just asked to be cashed out. We also asked for 2 boxes. She returned with both boxes, put one down on the table, then walked off with the 2nd one. I went to the server station area and requested the box. She handed it to me without any apology or even an explanation why she didn't put it down. After cashing out, we all enjoyed the game area. Being from Greensboro, we prefer coming to Winston-Salem b/c the Cary location seems a bit smaller and Charlotte is just a bit too far, but I'm not sure we'll be eating in...