Saturday, February 20, 2010

Restaurant Commentary: Burger King (2116 W Holcombe Blvd, Houston, TX 77030)

As hard as it might be for a fast-food place in general and a Burger King in particular to fall short of my expectations, this place has done it.

In short, all I really hope for from an establishment of this sort is that the fries are going to be hot and that it is going to be open when it's supposed to be. I have no idea whether the fries at this place were any good -- because it closed at least two hours earlier than it should have and I wasn't able to order them or anything else.

This was especially unfortunate, because I was attending an event at nearby Rice University that kept me on campus late on a Saturday night, and the Burger King next to my hotel was the only place to eat. I got there right at midnight, read the sign sign that said it was open until 2 a.m. that day, and then discovered the door was locked. All the doors were locked. The unpleasant-looking young man behind the counter could not have missed that I was there, rattling the doors and trying to get in, but would not make eye contact and did not have the decency to tell me why I couldn't get in.

Clearly, management is pretty indifferent at this particular BK outlet; the company can run those creepy, "edgy" commercials about "the King," but it hardly matters if the stores won't let anybody in. Avoid this one at all hours, because even if they let you in, the commitment to customer service is clearly pretty low and chances are you will end up unhappy about something else anyway.