Durgin Park - Boston's Historical Landmark Fails quite Miserably

Durgin Park prides itself in being established before you're born... 

Durgin Park is the first of a few restaurants we tried in Boston's historical district of Quincy Market. It's conveniently located across from Faneuil Hall, the actual Hall, where streets are cobblestones and lights hanging from trees. Very very aesthetic. Durgin Park is had been a landmark of the Downtown Boston since the 1800's, however, reviews for the restaurants has progressively gotten worse and worse each new century.

The night started out promising, because I heard a couple of older gentlemen walking out with nothing but praise for this place. We enter, and I see gigantic chunks of meet by a window, and a sign at the bottom of the stairwell that asks you to wait to be seated. The host called us up the stairs to be seated, and I found the place to be lovely and quite endearing. The kitchen located in the center and was open to the entire restaurant. This may have been a spiraling down fall at this point.

Courtney, before the near two hours wait. You can see the open kitchen behind her.

As we sat down, our waitress threw us our settings and napkins so that we settle ourselves... which is fine had she been a bit nice with a pleasant smile instead of a grump face. Then came the possibly best part of this fiasco, the cornbread with a mild nudge from the waitress to my friend to get his attention. She didn't quite distribute it, more so handed to us as we pass the bread along.

 Not gonna lie, I devoured the cornbread like no tomorrow. I even had the Boyfriend's servings. It was delicious... but I'm going to attribute that to the fact that I was just plain hungry.

The cornbread was followed by our appetizers, baked potato skins and friend calamari. The potato skins were interesting; I didn't like it. I thought the onion overpowered everything from the cheese (non-existent maybe?) to the tomatoes. It was actually tough and a bit leathery as well. The fried calamari was undercooked and came a marinara sauce as well a slightly spicy cheesier sauce. It also came with this surprise that none of us tried...

Almost an hour after the appetizers.... we're left with an empty table and no water. The waitress by this point has done everything from yelling at other waitresses and lifting her skirt up for the world to see, but she conveniently forgotten about the "just a minute" wait on the entrees... or the salad or everything. Our patience depleted by now, fed up with the staff, not because we're expecting to be catered to... but just hungry... and the fact that now we see the wait staff manhandling other people's food with their hands, cleaned, I'm not even sure.

I can only envision what they've touched and now is touching our potential food; the  Boyfriend's allergies... we joked that by the end of the night if he doesn't fall over from some allergic reaction, we should count graces.

Anyhow, we called the Manager, told him we've been waiting for almost two hours and still is salad-less much less our now supposed entrees. Manager inquired about the salad, asking what kind only to signal to us from the kitchen (after a brief discussion with his wait staff) that the appetizers and drinks were on him.The alcoholic beverages were clearly made for the lightweight... much like grape fruit juice and fruit punches for children then adults.

All in all, what I can only say about this place is non-existence because we got no food; what we did get was much below par for a restaurant. Which leads me to think that the Boy they're talking about in the poem in the back of the menu was a foreshadow that despite being long established before our birth, Durgin Park is still a boy, and is asking to be forgiven...

P.S. I later read in reviews that the wait staff is purposely snippy to customers as a joke... that you pay for great food not great service... ironic Durgin failed on both front. Wait staff weren't snippy rude, they weren't there and food was nothing beyond edible... clearly if we had to pay, we were paying for manhandled, self-served leathery chews.

Frommer's Three Stars for this place should be highly questioned.

---
Information:

Durgin-Park
340 Faneuil Hall Marketplace
Boston, MA 02109
Webstite: Durgin-Park