Critic's Review
When this place opened I planned on checking it out but my MVP points had disappeared, so I had to get it straightened out. The Giants stunk this year, so I had no motivation to drive out to West Boca. Today there was a Rangers vs Islanders day game, so I decided to take a drive on a nice Saturday afternoon.
The score was 1-1 when I left. I figured I'd get here mid 2nd period and get to watch half the game. Time enough for a bite and a run over to Penn Dutch in Margate on the way home.
Way too much traffic for a Saturday Afternoon. 95 was fine but Broward Blvd is a disaster and so is Glades. Season is getting into full swing and there are 3x as many people in Boca than in the summer.
There were a lot of cars at the place; kind of surprising since the NFL playoffs didn't start for 2 hours.
This was a TGI Fridays, so it's a big place. They still put the dopey helmets on the rails as if it would make a difference if they didn't; when it's standing room only during a game there's nowhere to put your drink down to tie your shoe because of the stupid helmets.
I got a seat at the bar where the Rangers game was on, and ordered an iced tea. Drinks were 2 for 1 but I didn't feel like having 2 drinks and having 1 made no sense.
The Islanders were leading 5-1. Ugh! Great. All this way and the game was already over.
The iced tea arrived and it's clear that Duffy's doesn't know that lemon is NOT A GARNISH. You can't squeeze a lemon sliced so thin.
Service at Duffy's is always a disaster; this location actually had a bar back, but 2 amateur servers for a full bar is never enough. Particularly when it seems they spend 90% of their time punching stuff in on the POS. Luckily I was right in front of the POS, so I could order when the girl was punching stuff in. I intended to use my MVP card for the check, so I gave the girl my card to scan when I placed the order.
They have mussels marinara as a dish with pasta and the "starter" mussels are scampi style; I wanted the appetizer marinara style. I'm not sure why this was difficult to understand, but it was quite a project getting the server girl to grasp it. "I want the appetizer mussels marinara style".
It took 10 minutes for the mussels to arrive.
The big salad bowl cover doubles as a garbage dish for the shells. However when I took it off you can imagine my horror.
Cheese on mussels? Seriously. And not just some cheese, a LOT of cheese. Good grief. Note the tiny piece of lemon they provided with the $12 appetizer. Lemon on cheesy mussels. At least there was an oyster fork.
This is what I get for ordering mussels in a sports bar. Cheese and tomato sauce does not make mussels marinara; I challenge you to find a picture of this dish on the 'net where the mussels are covered with cheese. Well there's going to be one now.
The mussels weren't bad as the cheese didn't make it into too many of the shell innards, except for some bits of sand. It's always fun getting a piece of sand wedged into a tooth. I finished up just as the 3rd period started. I hadn't gotten a refill on my tea yet, so I was thinking about just cashing out.
Before I could get the girl's attention (she was typing away furiously in between roaming around the bar), a runner came out with a glass of iced tea with no lemon. She asked everyone at the bar except me if they ordered an iced tea. She asked the bartender dude who it was for, but he had no idea. "Maybe that's a refill for me", I offered. "Oh, of course!" they both said, happy to find a place to put down the glass. Luckily I'd asked for more lemon for the mussels so I had some left to put into the 2nd tea; so I didn't have to fish the lemon out of glass #1. Another server who didn't put together that if someone likely extra lemon in their first glass of iced tea they might want it in the refill also.
So I'm watching the game and it turns out the bartender girl is a Rangers fan. A manager is taking care of some issue at the POS, all standing right in front of me. But nobody even THINKS of taking my empty plates and glass.
I wait a bit longer to see if they are going to take my plates, but this isn't a real restaurant. Even the managers aren't trained in restaurant basics, like customers don't like sitting with empty plates and glasses.
The girl is bouncing around the bar but its 100% clear that my plates and empty glass are of no interest to her. So I ask for my check, indicating that I wanted to use my card for the bill. She starts looking in front of me (again, the dishes are no concern) "You need the card back?" I ask. "Yes" she says with a look like I'm some sort of fool for having to ask the question.. They really can't attach the card to your check when you give it to them when you order so you don't have to give it to them again?
Of course there's no way to use your rewards for the tip, so I have to leave some cash. Duffy's isn't that cheap anymore; this was $18 with tip and I didn't even have a drink.
Receipts were dropped in front of me; the dishes and empty glass was never removed.
Conclusion
The amazing lack of understanding of how to service customers not only indicates that the staff isn't properly trained; it also indicates that none of them have ever worked in a real restaurant before.
There's no remnant of TGI Fridays left here; they've filled the place with good TVs so if you can deal with amateur service and sport's bar food, this is as good as it gets in West Boca Raton.
Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to a member function getUser() on null in /usr/local/www/sites/classes/comments-class.php:267 Stack trace: #0 /usr/local/www/sites/classes/comments-class.php(75): threadedComments->formatComment(Object(stdClass)) #1 /usr/local/www/sites/classes/comments-class.php(77): threadedComments->printParent(Array, 1) #2 /usr/local/www/sites/classes/comments-class.php(100): threadedComments->printParent(Array) #3 /usr/local/www/sites/comments.php(74): threadedComments->printComments(Array) #4 /usr/local/www/sites/single-post.php(208): require_once('/usr/local/www/...') #5 /usr/local/www/sites/post.php(22): include('/usr/local/www/...') #6 /usr/local/www/sites/index.php(172): include('/usr/local/www/...') #7 {main} thrown in /usr/local/www/sites/classes/comments-class.php on line 267