My wife and I went here twice. Bad experience the first night, but we liked the atmosphere so we decided to give it another shot. The next experience was worse.
The first was on a Wednesday night when it was dead. When we arrived, there was a party of four sitting at a table, and us at the bar. That's it. We arrived, the bartender gave us menus and took our drink order, and delivered the drinks. After that, another older gentleman sat down at the bar. We were debating ordering food and definitely wanted another drink, but unfortunately the bartender was too busy talking to the older gentleman for a HALF HOUR before noticing that we put our long-empty drinks on the rail of the bar to signify we were very much done, and ready to go. Had the bartender been more attentive to the only other people at the bar, we would have ordered food and more drinks, but we left and went somewhere else.
The second was on a busy Friday night. We first went downstairs and ordered drinks from a very attentive waitress (I didn't get her name, but she had long hair that was shaved on the sides.) We then proceeded to play some Connect Four (we would have played other games like bubble hockey or air hockey but we didn't bring any cash!)
An aside -- if after reading this review you decide to come to Bonfire, definitely check out the downstairs area. They have the above games, Nintendo, Jenga, and Golden Tee / Big Buck Hunter. Pretty awesome.
After getting our first round, the waitress checked on us again but we hadn't finished. After about ten more minutes we decided we wanted to sit and grab some food so we went upstairs to the hostess and got sat outside. By then our drinks were pretty much done, so we waited to be contacted by our server. And waited. And waited. After about 15 minutes, the hostess checked on us and asked if we had been checked on. She then tried to give us two explanations as to why we hadn't, but she stopped mid-sentence each time (apparently she wasn't even buying her own explanations) and after a couple of minutes our server finally came over.
Full disclosure -- we had started a tab downstairs, and when we went upstairs we assumed that that tab could have just been transferred upstairs. I think we were wrong about that, because after we ordered our next round of drinks and food, the original (attentive) waitress from the downstairs area delivered our next round of drinks and after about 15-20 minutes, delivered our food as well. We ordered the chicken bacon ranch sliders and the buffalo chicken flatbread.
About 20 seconds after the food was delivered, we noticed the flatbread we ordered was the wrong one and our sliders were barely warm. At that point we were STARVING and two drinks in, so we reluctantly ate the sliders (which were served with tortilla chips and salsa, an odd combo). Normally, the waitstaff checks on a guest after a couple of minutes to see if everything was OK. Did that happen? No. Furthermore, there is no dress code for staff here. We had no idea who to flag down.
15-20 minutes after our food was delivered, the manager (I think? She was wearing a jean jacket and cutoff shorts) checked on us and we informed her that the flatbread was incorrect. To her credit, she did her best to make the situation right, offering to cook us the right flatbread (in the Turbo oven?) and when we declined she offered us a round of drinks on the house but at that point we were pretty done with Bonfire. The waitress (attentive and dressed in all black, like traditional waitstaff) apologized and told us that's what the initial server had written down (re: the wrong flatbread), and delivered the check (which had the flatbread removed). We paid and left.
I want SO MUCH to like this place -- it is definitely our vibe with the country decor, red solo cups, good music upstairs and fun games downstairs -- but the horrible service the only two times we had visited has very much turned us off.
In closing, this bar definitely has a management issue. It would take a load of consistently good reviews to get me to come back. And at that point, I would want to. read more