Our family relationship with Dave & Buster's started decades ago on surf trips to Orange County. It was the first time we visited and good times were had by all. The food back then was acceptable — on a par with Chili's — but the games were always first-rate and we walked away just wondering why they didn't have one in Bakersfield, given all the families who live here.
Of course, over the years we got our own, locally-owned variation on this chain, such as the two Firehouse locations and The BLVD so it seemed like the need was being met, and both of those added bowling alleys, lots of pool tables and a true family event vibe that was quite inviting.
So here it is 2022 and Bakersfield gets its own Dave & Buster's in what was once a Payless Drug Store adjacent to Valley Plaza mall and has been more recently a private vocational school. You may notice it seems smaller than the Orange County versions we visited and going without reservations is completely ill-advised.
On our first visit, they told us it was a three-hour wait, so we sat at the bar. The good news is that reservations are easy to make on the website. But be warned it's a noisy place if you're prone to reacting to overstimulation, and, though the food has markedly improved in quality over the years, the kitchen actually tried to serve me a Philly cheesesteak with no cheese. Yikes.
In many ways our visit there was an encapsulation of a lot of the issues we're dealing with in America today. Though we had a seat at the bar, my companion noted all the tables that were empty in the dining area. As in, no customers, not just customers playing the games while waiting for food. Not enough staff. There are many screens all over the place tuned to sports, but one had a QR code trying to entice people to apply for jobs at this location. And there were no prices at all on the drink menu, another symptom of the inflation we've been living with lately.
As I mentioned, Dave & Buster's has wised up about food quality, realizing that parents will take their child for a fun night out more often if the quality of the food does not make the experience seem like a root canal. What my companion ordered on the first visit was a perfect example: a chimichurri bowl ($13.95), which had four proteins you could add if you didn't want to be that healthy. She added grilled chicken for $5.50.
It was labeled as both vegan and gluten-free and had cauliflower that looked as if it had been roasted with balsamic vinegar, excellent grilled asparagus stalks, sweet peppers, red and yellow cherry tomatoes, pickled red cabbage, avocado and a lemon-mint yogurt sauce. There were even Parmesan crisps. An excellent choice and quite surprising. You can also get it with steak, sauteed shrimp or salmon.
Another surprising choice was an appetizer we ordered on another visit, the shrimp scampi flatbread ($15.50), made with sauteed medium garlic shrimp, roasted cherry tomatoes, mozzarella and Parmesan cheese and a bit of baby arugula strewn on top of it.
No tomato sauce, but that was a shrewd choice as those roasted tomatoes carried the day. Sure, I'm sure the crust is the kind of premade thing you can buy in a grocery store, but the shrimp made it work as well as those slightly scorched tomatoes.
Service as you might expect is a work in progress, particularly at the bar. Those people are so busy making drinks for everyone at the tables that they don't have a lot of time to tend to the customers right in front of them. Getting utensils with your food seems rare. It's just a numbers game.
There was a long wait for everything on our first visit, though our second visit, also at the bar, was not as tedious. In fact, that pizza came out 10 minutes after ordering it. They have a crew of food runners hauling the meals from the window that are really hustling.
Earlier I talked about so much of the experience being typical of life in America today, and one thing any businessman can tell you is that it's hard to find good help. I ordered the Philly cheesesteak ($16.25), which looked beautiful on the menu but someone in the kitchen forgot to include any cheese on it before putting it out to get delivered. After some delay, I did attract the attention of a manager who had a new one brought out.
Once I got the real thing, I did like it though I still think the product is a hair below the excellent product you get from Jersey Mike's. The menu said they used a "cheddar sauce" so Philly natives will probably find it to be a "with Whiz" version rather than the more upscale provolone.
The game area is amazing. I was commenting to my companion about the old days when Pong was the best video game you could find and sure enough there's a modern Pong Faceoff four-player table game. They've got virtual reality games, a lot of games that were electronic variations on what you'd see on a fair midway, like put a ring on a bottle.
If you win any tickets, it just goes on the token card you buy for $3 so you don't have to carry around a lot of paper. And, of course, you can redeem those tickets for prizes in the Winners Circle prize room. Most of the customers on our visits seemed to be spending a lot of their time there.
Happy hour, which offers half off cocktails, $2.50 domestic pints of beer, and only $1 off a glass of wine, is offered from 4 to 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 10 p.m. to midnight Sunday through Thursday.