Cantwell's Tavern

Write a Review302-376-0600

OPEN NOW - Closes at 9:00pm

My wife and I just moved to Middletown. We have been trying new restaurants in the area to get a feel for what's good and what isn't. We do take out or go out to dinner 3 to 4 times a week. We have 6 kids so cooking is too much of a pain. We left orientation for our kids school starting tonight and I decided to give this place a try for take out for our family. I called in our order and tonight was $5 tapas night, we like tapas because you can try several different things in small sizes, fun right? When I picked up the order the manager "mack" came out to let me know that their specials are for dine in only for future reference but he gave us the dine in price for tonight because the server who took my order didn't know (no big deal I get that, I wasn't upset at all) I get home and the rice for my jambalaya dinner is missing so I have jambalaya soup basically. (Still not upset). I called to let them know about the mistake and the first person I spoke with put me on hold for a couple minutes then mack gets on the phone. I tell him what happened and he said sorry he didn't personally pack my take out order. Then he proceeds to tell me he isn't sure what to do. Now I am starting to get irritated. I told him I lived on the west side of middletown and I didn't feel like driving all the way back, even though at this point he hadn't even offered to correct it. "Mack" continued to act very confused and unsure of what to say or even how to talk to me on the phone. He then said its kind of a small incident, and that sometimes these things happen (yeah I'm getting more upset, the best is still to come). I finally said to him this call is very awkward, mack what do you normally do when someone's order isn't right? His answer... We would normally just ask someone to comeback and we would remake it. Then He tells me well it was a minor incident and he did give me the dine in tapas price. I responded with your employee didn't know your policies and it's not my job as a patron to know and my order wasn't right, don't you normally take down my name and give me a credit for the future towards our next visit? His response we are not in the habit of giving away food (now I am a charity case?) and Mack said he wasn't sure if the jambalaya was on the tapas menu or the dinner menu, we might not have it again. (how does the manager not know his own menu and the people taking the orders don't know the taverns policies and the manager doesn't know how to handle a customer complaint? (Keep in mind this was a $130.00 take out order) The lack of customer service, training and professionalism leads me to believe that other areas such as cleanliness, freshness, and food safety are probably sub par as well for what is suppose to be an upscale pub/ tavern type of eatery. I finally said mack let me make this real easy for you don't need to do anything for me because I won't be coming back. His response was a dial tone in my ear, yup he hung up on me. The rest of the food was decent, nothing we got was bad it wasn't great either. The lack of normal customer service expected combined with a manager that is confused at a restaurant 101 competency level, makes this place a 1 for me. My family of 8 and I will not be returning to this tavern. If the owner gets a chance to read this review, you could have a much more successful tavern with a trained staff and a customer oriented manager. I could care less about the 15 bucks for the jambalaya. I took the 20 minutes out of my night to write this because of how completely irritated I was after my extremely odd and disappointing interaction with mack the manager that also banged the phone on me. It is a shame because the building has appeal inside and out, bar looked nice and the food was decent in an otherwise hard to dine in town.