Ray J's American Grill — Restaurant in Woodbury

We are in town for my husband's school and this place had good reviews and it was nearby where we are staying. It was a Thursday night and it was busy, but all the tables were not full. We got there about 6 pm and were seated right away. We were attended to by our waiter fairly quickly, but that was the end of it really. My husband had to use the restroom and found out that they were being worked on. Women's was now the mens and the men had to go outside into a trailer. Let me add, it was REALLY cold and windy that night, this was not impressive. All the while he was gone, I wanted to order an appetizer, but could not because our waiter never came back. About 5 minutes later after my husband came back, our waiter brought our waters (still havent received husbands beer), husband had to ask for it. We said we were ready to order and we got 2 kids meals, 2 adult entrees (mine came with a salad) and an appetizer. My husband gets his beer a couple minutes later and about 10 minutes later we still had not gotten our appetizer. We were thinking it wasnt ordered, or that it would come with our meal. In about 2 minutes they brought my side salad, just after that, they brought my daughter's meals. We were thinking that our app would soon be following. No, it wasnt. Our girls finished their meals and had time to spare before our meals came...WITH the appetizer. At this point, we did not want the appetizer, its just too much food at once. I noted to our waiter that I would not have ordered if I knew it was coming at the same time. I got a reply that was very dry and unapologetic, he said its happy hour and there is no telling when food will come out. I was thinking that would have been nice to know at the time of ordering. He said he could take the app off the bill and take it away if I wanted...and the "If I wanted" was very much in a tone like ."really....lady"..I said no it was fine. My meal (mac and cheese) was very good and my husband ordered the wings. These wings are HUGE!, nothing like I have ever seen. So our girls are trying to entertain themselves and my husband decided to get a manager. Meanwhile, I could not get a refill on my water for the life of me. In between the manager coming over and and still eating, a man came over and cleared the girls plates and I asked for 3 boxes. The manager comes over and our waiter came with water and 2 boxes. He appeared, wow..he didnt disappear...interesting. It was awkward that our waiter was there while we wanted to discuss our service. He left and we noted to the manager that the kids meals came very early (though I know sometimes that is appreciated because kids get restless...but this was REALLY early). Her reply was this 'our serving times are not good, we have had this issue for awhile'. Uh...ok. Our app was taken off our bill and after I got the additional box I asked for we left. If that was not enough, my husband spent the rest of the night with food poisoning. He had to go to school that way and had to spend a lot of the time in the restroom. We were fine, and we did not eat anything he did. So, to sum up this place, we can not go back and cant give you a go...

I used to love this place but after my recent 2 visits, I think we'll pass. I had the chicken pot pie and my boyfriend had the pork chop special. We each ordered 2 drinks. Our server was friendly and attentive but our food was terrible. My pot pie tasted like it came out of a can, it was pretty flavorless. The veggies weren't good and the chicken was basically non-existent. The crust was good. My boyfriend's $20 porkchop was chared so badly that it was all we could taste. The pork was dry and tough and lacked seasoning. He was also not allowed to make any substitutions to the sides, which seemed crazy since his diet does not allow for the fries it came with. When asked if he could sub a side salad for an additional charge, he was originally told yes but the server came back to the table to say he couldn't make any substitutions so he had to charge the full price for the side salad. Dumb, but whatever, we just agreed to pay for it. I had an old fashioned and he had a CC & diet coke. My old fashioned was possibly the worst drink I've ever tasted. To start... it was a cloudy YELLOW color rather than carmel colored. I asked the server what it was when he set it down and he confirmed it was an old fashioned. I tasted it and the only thing I tasted was orange bitters. Suddenly the color made sense! As a former bartender, I don't send drinks back, I just drink it and then choose something different if I didn't enjoy it. This drink was so awful that I couldn't take another sip. I brought it to the bartender who ignored me until another patron had to tell her to serve me first before serving him. I explained what I ordered as I raised the yellow drink and told her this definitely wasn't an old fashioned. She argued with me and said that's how they make theirs. Oh. Well. It's awful, so can I just have a regular one? Another customer at the bar chimed in and agreed he's never seen a yellow old fashioned. She rolled her eyes, threw in ice, one shot of whiskey, a cherry & and orange. That drink cost me $10.75, no muddling, no sugar, no bitters, just a whiskey on the rocks (basically). At least it was drinkable and at least I now knew she's not skilled at her job so I should just stick with something much more simple for her. Our bill was $120. For that amount with that level of quality, its...

I’m not sure where to even begin with how bad the service was at this restaurant. For starters, I made a reservation for 12 people. We show up at our reserved time, and they had given our table to a different group. The only 2 options we were given is they could move us to a different section but we would not be sat together (which was the whole point of the reservation, so we could sit together) or they could sit us in the same original section but they only had one server there so our food was going to take longer. We decided to go with the first option and were sat almost 20 minutes after our reserved time. Once we sat down, our server took a while to take our drink order and even longer to bring our drinks to us. He forgot drinks that we had to remind him to bring. Once we put our food in, 2 orders were of appetizers, nearly 50 minutes passed and they finally brought 2 main dishes out, our appetizers still nowhere to be seen. When we brought this up to the server, he gave some excuse about the main dishes needing to come out first and the deep fryer being backed up and no apologies were given for how long we’d been waiting at this point. I also didn’t know you needed a deep fryer for artichoke dip or nachos. Our food finally came out after waiting for nearly an hour. During our time of waiting, drinks were not refilled, we asked for crayons for a kid and those never came, we asked for napkins and we got 3 (for 11 people), a water was spilled, no one ever came to clean it up so we sat at our table full of water the entire time. At the end, we told the server how we wanted the bill split and that was wrong too. From beginning to end, the entire experience was probably the worst I’ve ever had at a restaurant. The manager never came to check on us after we were sat, and no apologies ever came from the server that continuously got things wrong. It’s such a shame because I’ve always been a fan of Ray J’s Minneapolis location. I’m not sure how the Woodbury location for everything so terribly wrong. Avoid this location all together if you can. Worst...