I’ll Tell You What I Won’t Say

Published 7/24/2011

I’ll Tell You What I Won’t Say

The Retired Cooks Diary

By Suzette Pennington Munson

When I began this Diary I said that I would not write negative reviews about restaurants that were mention within the column. So today I will tell you what I won’t say about a particular restaurant and then you can make up your own mind.

Friday night after a wonderful Vacation Bible School program at Silver Lakes Church in which three of our grandchildren participated, Doug, our Daughter Jennifer and Son in Law Ronnie, I and three children chose to go to Sweet Boys Restaurant in down town Bowie. We chose Sweet Boys because it has a kid friendly menu.

Well I have reviewed Sweet Boys before and mentioned that they were new, going thru growing pains and had great potential. I think they still do. Now I will tell you what ”I Won’t Say” about them.

I won’t say that they are continually striving for customer service. Why, you say, because after waiting 1 hour and 15 minutes and asking about what was taking so long the “Cook” or “Manager” I never could find out which, told our server, “Their order has ONLY been in for 33 minutes!!!! Now I won’t say that waiting for handmade, gourmet food is not worth waiting for BUT really now, we are talking “truck stop” level food at best!!! 33 minutes, what happened to our server, she took our order and never came back to the table. Two other servers ended up taking care of us. I won’t say we were the only table in the place, because we weren’t’ it was busy and that is a good thing. Friday night and every table was jammed.

Friday night was all you can eat fish night and that is always a great way to get customers in droves, add to that “Free Beer and Margareta’s” (Bowie is a dry ) you have the potential for a great draw. I won’t say that you also have the potential for a nightmare of too much business for say, your kitchen to handle!

The table next to us was a table of four who came in probably 15 to 20 minutes after us when their food, with the orders mixed up came, we realized the time. (They happened to be readers of this column and knew who we were!) One of the girls said jokingly, “Do they not know who you are? As if it would make any difference, and I do not expect it to!

When our food did arrive it came in “bits and pieces” first 2 adults, then 2 more adults then the teen’s food but the seven year old and the three year old were still without food and folks it was by then 8:45. These two little guys are usually in bed by 7:30. I was duly impressed by the children they weren’t acting up our complaining which is unusual but they did really look at the lady bring their food. Especially when after serving all the adults and bringing the seven year old a plate to “split” a meal with her Granny then taking another 10 minutes (now 9:05) to bring her a bowl of macaroni and cheese. Now at my house she makes her own pre-fab mac and cheese in less than 5 minutes and believe me she knows pre-fab from homemade. So I won’t say it was the worst dining experience but I definitely won’t say it was at the top of my list!

If we had been at Chili’s or I hop or may be even Yesterdays I think the Management staff would have been out on the floor correcting any mistakes and making sure the old premise that “The Customer is always right” was happening so that they would have return business. I won’t say that the Manager came to our table, and he/she did not apologize for the poor service. The Wait staff however did, though they were not the wait person that started the whole problem. There was no discount or coupon to try and get return business. NO there was a $75.00 check, which I will say I put a note with asking them to read this column, TACKY? May be! But I don’t charge for my opinion, and my opinion is don’t go when there is a crowd. That means if there are more than 4 cars on the street in downtown Bowie don’t try Sweet Boys!, I won’t say that I think they can’t handle a crowd, I won’t say that all you can eat anything is a bad idea, I won’t say that free alcohol is a bad idea, I will say that if there is no crowd they are a pretty good alternative to Dairy Queen or Sonic but that is as far as I will go!!!