Southside Tavern

Few GF options but good enough for me to have continued to eat here. I’ve been coming to this restaurant (Southside Tavern in Braintree) since they opened and have spent hundreds of dollars here on food and drinks. After the experience I had this past Sunday, though, I will never be bringing my business here again. My friend and I walked in, and someone checked our IDs at the door. We were sat by the hostess, and the waitress asked for our IDs again before we even asked to order drinks. I planned on having a cocktail, my friend wasn’t planning on drinking. The waitress asked if we had “backup” for our IDs, so we both handed her our debit cards, at which point she disappeared with them into the back for about 10 minutes, doing who knows what. It felt as though we were being profiled from the very beginning, and I was very uncomfortable that she was gone with our debit cards and personal information for so long. Then the manager comes over and puts our IDs down on the table and smugly says “these are fake”. We told him to check them again because they’re 100% real, and he replied that he “feels” like they’re fake so they won’t be serving us. I let him know that I’ve been served here many times, and even offered to show him photos of me and another friend drinking there two weeks prior (I had the SAME waitress that time, too). I said he could even google us and see what year we graduated, check facebook, take a look at any of our other credit cards that had our names on them.. he wanted none of it. He stood there speaking loudly enough to embarrass us in front of a restaurant full of people, treating us like children and outright calling us liars. I told him I didn’t appreciate the treatment we were receiving and asked for the owner’s information, to which he refused. I asked for his name and he sheepishly replied that it’s Ian and he’s the general manager. I have never been treated so poorly by someone who is supposed to be a customer service professional. He is a sad representative for Southside as an establishment, and should be embarrassed about not only his behavior toward us as guests, but the fact that about halfway through the interaction he absolutely knew we had proved him wrong and didn’t have the decency to admit it. His reasoning then turned to “well we won’t be serving you regardless because you’re so upset and that proves that they’re fake”. You bet we were upset at being belittled in a public place, to which I have brought plenty of business over the last few years. Ian was beyond rude and clearly incompetent, because Massachusetts licenses are pretty much impossible to fake. I told him if he pulled his out of his wallet it’d feel the exact same as ours, but he just stood there with the same smug look on his face, repeating the same thing, that he “feels” like they’re fake. Not to mention he continued to make comments as we got our things together to leave. I will surely never, ever be bringing my business to this restaurant again, nor will any of my family or friends. Ian’s treatment of us was disrespectful, tactless, ignorant, and clearly a power trip. I mentioned that he may want to educate himself on identifying fake IDs because if he’s making this mistake with us, he probably has before and will continue to, thus costing Southside even more business. Maybe the owner should consider investing in an ID scanner to save his staff and customers embarrassment and frustration. It’s a shame because I truly like going there, but as long as Ian is the manager, there’s not a chance I, or anyone I know, will return.

And after reading other reviews on Yelp about how management and even the OWNER treats their patrons, I’m surprised they’re even still in business. Disgusting.

Celiac friendly?

No

The GF menu had salad or pizza only. Extremely limited. The staff seemed willing to help but not knowledgeable. I feel I had some cross contamination symptoms.

A couple of salads, one entree and gluten free pizza. They ran out of pizza and the remaining options weren't promising so we left. Wings, nachos etc were not gf and option to modify other dishes wasn't offered as an option

Celiac friendly?

No

Nachos and buffalo chicken dip are fantastic!

Great pizza and wings! there menu is marked with gf items, its not a huge selection but the pizza and buffalo wings are great. i love their greek salad. can't go wrong! they also have trivia nights, country nights and more!