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July 17, 2006

Bertucci's Sucks

Ok, this maybe isn't so much of a rant... just a strong complaint.

There is a Bertucci's not far from where I live in Cambridge, on Main St (they call it their Kendall Sq. restaurant, but it is really in Central Sq. ... I suspect it is wishful thinking on their part) . At one point in time, long long ago, it was your basic run of the mill Bertucci's. I.e. it served something along the lines of better-than-your-corner-pizza-shop pizza, salads, beer, and the service was OK. We, the young family, would go on occasion if we didn't feel like cooking and wanted something simple in a child-tolerant setting.

Then the service started to go down hill and the food quality suffered. Things would happen like your server forgetting about your order as it sat getting cold on the counter. Or pizzas that were under-cooked with raw dough in the middle. So we stopped going for a couple of years. We started going again a while back because we had activities in Central in the evenings, tried it again for a quick dinner, and it seemed to work OK (decent food, OK service at times).

Tonight though, it just completely sucked. I already wrote a bunch of feedback which I submitted to the Bertucci's website, but I figured I might as well dump it here as well to share with potential Googlers. Here is what I said:

I just had what has to be one of the worst dining experiences I have ever had at the Bertucci's on Main St (#002 Kendall) in Cambridge.

When we arrived the person who seated us (who I later heard referred to as the Manager) neither greeted us nor even asked how many of us were dining. We just received a silent escort to a booth.

Shortly after we ordered we noticed that the restaurant was getting rather warm. We asked our waitress about this and were informed that yes, they were having problems with the AC and that the staff were taking turns in the walk-in cooler. Our food arrived, but it was so uncomfortable that we stopped eating 1/3 through.

By the time our waitress made it back to our table to check in on us the AC had come back on, but we were to overheated to enjoy our food anymore, which we said to her and asked for it to be wrapped up to go. This earned us a huff from the waitress as she whisked the pizzas away. We paid promptly and left.

To top it off, when we got home, no more than 5 minutes later, we discovered that we forgot a Nalgene water bottle in the booth. So we went immediately back to get it. When we got there and asked about it we were told "Oh, we'll have to see if we still have it." The we were told that "It is being washed right now" and could we "wait a few minutes for it"? Then we were told that they normally throw they find like this away. All of which together sounds like "We were hoping that you weren't coming back for this and planned on keeping it ourselves".

I have had my share of slow and inattentive service at this restaurant in the past, but returned because I considered this to be outweighed by the predictably reasonable quality food and environment for the price. This evening though has pretty much finished it for me there. I really have to wonder what is going on with the management of this Bertucci's. They must be able to get by on something other than their in-restaurant level of service.

I may be willing to give a different Bertucci's a try eventually if the need arises, but for now I have no plans on returning to one... especially this one.

Posted by delgado at July 17, 2006 9:14 PM