WIBTA if I left a negative review on a restaurant I got a free meal at?
TL;DR, WIBTA if I left a negative review on a restaurant we had a really bad experience at but our meals were comped?
I (23m) went out with my bf (24m) to a restaurant that opened 2 days ago. Their website and a newspaper article I found about it described it as a smart-casual Italian place that interested both of us.
Placing the reservation was a rough endeavor as the website never brought me past the spinning wheel of death but I was able to place a reservation over the phone. When we get there two waitstaff and who I think was a manager talked back and forth on where to put us as we stood there awkwardly. The interior of the restaurant seemed confused as to whether it was a fancy Italian place or a 50’s themed place with pictures of Elvis, Johnny Cash, and Marilyn Monroe. The song choices were also bizarre as most of them were 80’s pop-rock covers. Despite this, the prices were absolutely attune to a fancy Italian restaurant (no idea if that’s relevant but whatever now you know.)
When we sat down, the waitress asked if we were there for a special occasion and I said it was my birthday. I wouldn’t have mentioned this if she didn’t ask. When we ordered she said they were out of what I wanted and she apologized for not telling us what they were out of earlier. Annoying, but whatever. We then proceeded to wait 15 minutes for our drinks and 30 minutes for our Cesar salad appetizer. All of which ranged from tasting fine to kinda bad. After 90-ish minutes our entrees still hadn’t come out and I asked the manager if we could just get our checks and leave. a couple minutes later our server came out and apologized for the wait, saying the food was on the house and we were two tickets away if we were ok staying, as she really wanted us to get our food especially since it was my b-day. My bf and I agreed and our food came out 10-ish minutes later. His salmon tasted good but my pasta was so lemon flavored my bf said it tasted like lemon meringue pie and he had no idea how I was getting through it. Whats really amusing is after we got our food a different waiter we hadn’t spoken to yet said “Finally, right? Enjoy!” which was definitely well intended but still an insane thing to say. They then brought out a free tiramisu which I’m assuming is for my b-day as I didn’t order it and it wasn’t on my bill.
We ended up spending at minimum 2 hours there which I know because our parking is free for the first 2 hours and paid by the half-hour after that and we had to pay for parking. Overall our experience was really bad based on the wait, restaurant atmosphere, food quality, and price (even with us only paying for drinks it was $$$). I wanted to leave a bad review just 30 minutes into our dinner, but the waitress was super apologetic, we didn’t pay for most of it, and the restaurant is super new so a few bumps are permissible. So with all that in mind, WIBTA if I left a negative review?
Posted Aug 21, 2026, 2:29 AM UTC · locked