Broadway 50/50
You know a lot of my friends give me grief for always writing what they call “cheerful” reviews. They think that I am pretty easy going and not very critical. In fact, they ask me if I have ever written a bad review. The fact of the matter is I have written one scathing review, a few lukewarm reviews, but they are right, for the most part it has been pretty friendly. Well this is definitely not a good review…
So Broadway 50/50 opened a new location at the Colonnade off of Wurzbach and I-10 and a group of us from work decided to go visit it. As we were entering the restaurant, we encountered a pair of coworkers, one of whom was a guy named Will. I asked Will, “So is the food any good?” Will responded, “I would love to tell you but I really don’t know; we sat at our table for 15 minutes without getting any service so we got up and walked out.”
Now this is kind of funny, because if you have ever met Will, you will know that this is a man that is not easily overlooked. He is a pretty tall individual who is built like a rugby player; in fact, his stagename in some of our Rock, Paper, Scissors tournament is El Gigante. We should have just listened to the man and not gone in, but we were stubborn and decided to give it a try. Let’s just say that Will was a harbinger of what was to come…
We ended up sitting down and waited like 15 minutes before anyone talked to us. Doing a little math, this would have amounted to like 30 minutes that the staff ignored this table. When someone finally did talk to us (I think it was the manager), he asked if we had been helped. When we said “No,” he left and it took another 5 minutes to actually get our waitress.
We all realized that there are two types of people, the quick and the hungry, and we vowed to place our order as soon as the waitress asked us for our drink order. We did so and had to wait another lengthy amount of time to finally get our drinks and later our food.
Now, I am all about giving food a fair shake; some of the best food that you can get comes with the slowest service. But by and large, it is service that engages and talks with you (we haven’t even got this at the Broadway 50/50).
I ended up getting the Pulled Pork sandwich. Yes, I know, I know, I know. I have vowed that I would not order pulled pork outside the state of Tennessee ever again (I ordered pulled pork in a previous post). However, having lived a summer in Memphis, I have quite the inclination for pulled pork and just the thought of the possibility of getting a pulled pork sandwich that could be on the same level as Memphis is always enticing. Quite frankly, can you blame me when the menu even states that, “We put a little homemade coleslaw on the sandwich just like they do in Memphis.” This one line suckered me in…
The waitress dropped off the plates, said the obligatory, “Can I get you anything else?” but scurried off before hearing a reply. Yes, as a matter of fact, I did want a side of ranch dressing. I finally caught her and asked for it, but never ended up getting my side of ranch dressing. This normally would not be a problem, however, while the waitress forgot to bring out the ranch she was able to remember to charge me for it — I paid $0.50 for my phantom ranch dressing.
Note to Self: When you aren't in Tennessee, do not order pulled pork.
As you can probably tell by using your context clues, I was disappointed in the meal. Again, I probably shouldn’t have ordered it in the first place as it is probably impossible to meet my expectations. It definitely wasn’t bad, but after all the bad service that we had received, it was not good. The other thing that stunk was that the lunch with a tip (yes, I still gave a tip) ended up being $12.50. I don’t know about you but that is pretty sorry considering it is mediocre food and terrible service. For that price, I would rather go build an insane Order Up burger and have $5 left over…
Finally, I would like to say that while the service was terrible, I don’t particularly blame any of the waiters. They are just in a situation where they are destined to fail so no matter what they do, they are not going to succeed. There were not enough waiters for the amount of tables and they all seemed a little green. Granted, I shouldn’t have been charged for something I wasn’t given, but most anyone starts to make mistakes when they get flustered. If I were them, I would definitely look for a new job.
Hopefully you heed Will and my advice and don’t bother setting foot in this restaurant.
Value: 3/10 ($12.50 with tip for lousy service and a mediocre meal)
Atmosphere: 7/10 (pretty neat atmosphere with TVs and bar games)
Service: 1.5/10 (pathetic)
Taste: 5.5/10 (mediocre at best)
Website: www.five0five0.com
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