Boathouse 19

I have tried to love this place, but I just can't. Part of the problem is on my end...I just don't like pickles, and they are in a lot of their dishes. The burger is serviceable. If I return, I will get that.

We went on a practically empty weekday night, and waited a disproportionately long time for our food. When one dish had shrimp instead of oysters the excuse offered was that the kitchen was "slammed." I'm not sure by what, but the waitress had to say something to save her tip.

I will still happily come here for drinks.

I decided to take my family down here one nice sunny afternoon because of the location and my experience with lunch at the same location.  When we get there, they have a parking lot attendant that stops you and lets you know where to park, which is good because you can't see the parking situation around the end of the building.  Some of my family were on motorcycles and they were told that they couldn't park in front because of the lack of room, only to discover that here were about 10 parking locations near the front door for them (only slightly annoying.)

It goes a bit down hill from here.  We get to the front door and they indicated a 25 minute wait (which the attendant the parking lot mentioned the same.)  We indicated that we would like to sit anywhere, and that inside was acceptable because of the outdoor seating wait times.  I did notice that only about half of the seats inside were occupied in the restaurant.  Nearly 45 minutes later we decided to check on our status of the table and they mentioned that it would be another 25 minutes.

During our extended wait we decided to have some beer on the back deck but were ushered from place to place with the employees stating "oh you can't have a beer here in the walkway, you can't have a beer here near the stairs" and so on.  Now granted they have some tables indicated no alcoholic beverages, but no signs indicating where you can drink your beer anywhere (again, only slightly annoying.)

Finally, one of the managers or owners must have heard me complaining because she came out to talk to me and within about 10 minutes we had our table.  She also gave us a free round of drinks (3 adults) which I thought was nice recompense.  Another 40 minutes passed and we got our food, which we consumed with famished fervor in about 15 minutes.  

So, all in, we spend about 2 hours and 15 minutes there for 15 minutes of eating.  I asked the server why the tables were empty and there was such a long wait, and she mentioned that they didn't want to overload the kitchen and cause a wait.  Now I saw the kitchen had about 6 cooks and 2 preps, but food was pilled up in the window.  Maybe an expediter, or some better prep work would give the kitchen some efficiency to allow for their entire restaurant to be seated during busy hours.  I would hope that they could do this at some point, or they will have issues turning a profit you would think.

The food was fairly good (although I would have eaten a tree branch at that point and thought it was wonderful.)  The dessert was awesome (Blueberry crisp.)

Some good points:

1.) The view was great
2.) They had live music which was nice
3.) The employees were very nice!
4.) They had some decent beer on tap

This would have been a 1 star review without the free round of drinks to show that they had empathy.  This would have been a 4 star review if they had service that reflected the potential of the place.  I would say that 2.5 stars is where they reside today based on my experience.

We ordered food here in the mid-afternoon on a Sunday. After nearly ninety minutes, it showed up cold and dry, which means it sat under a heat lamp for a while. We asked for a refire on it.  The staff refused to refire our burgers, claiming they were fresh.  They dumped out another order of calimari into a plate and handed it to me.  The only discernable taste of the food was salt, with respect to the calimari, and - strangely - sugar with respect to the burger.  Disgusting.