Katie H.
Yelp
Tidal Raves is just about the only "nice" or "date night" restaurant in Depoe Bay, so we decided to visit while we were in town. We had a window seat and the view was amazing, of course. It's right on the Ocean and so picturesque. The inside of the restaurant is on the smaller side, but it's open and bright which I love.
The service was okay. We joined the waitlist online (awesome feature since they don't take reservations) and checked in when we got there. We got sat fairly quickly - probably sooner than they had estimated and they were able to honor our window seat request. Our waiter was with us pretty quickly and our drinks came out really fast. We order appetizers while we figured out what we wanted for our entrees. Right before our appetizers came we ordered our main dishes.
Before we could even eat a quarter of our appetizers our entrees came. It was a little disappointing that they couldn't space the meals better and time the dishes. We either could finish our appetizers and let our entrees get cold, or we could not finish our appetizers and move to our entrees. I prefer that my entree come out after we are done with the appetizers, that way we have time to enjoy them, have time to digest a little, and don't have to worry about any of it getting cold.
Towards the end the server was hard to catch. Once we gave him our entree orders, we didn't see him again until we were just about done with our meal. Actually, we both took a pause eating because we both wanted another drink with the rest of our meal and he wasn't coming back. It was frustrating.
Lastly, the food. We started with claim chowder and Seahawk bread. We didn't love either, really. The clam chowder was pretty bland and we had to add salt and pepper to try and make it a little better. Also, for it being Clam Chowder it was really lacking in the clams area. The Seahawk bread was also pretty bland and we didn't love it. It was better than the soup though.
For our entrees we got the Rock Fish on a pesto potato cake with a garlic shrimp and caper sauce and Brussel sprouts and the Pasta Rave with Alfredo sauce. The Rockfish was fresh, but lacked flavor. The sauce that was on it didn't add much, which was surprising being that it has capers. It came with a lemon wedge which helped the situation a bit. Also, the pesto potato cake was not crispy at all. It was more like pesto mashed potatoes. The texture was off. Same with the rockfish, it was not as crispy as I would have liked.
My husband also didn't love his Pasta Rave. Like our other dishes, it was bland as well. The Alfredo didn't help and didn't add anything. He did say the muscles in it tasted good, but other than that he didn't eat it.
Lastly, the drinks. I got a Paloma which was fine, not great, but better than the next drink I got. The next one was the "seasonal gimlet" which happened to be blueberry hibiscus and it was AWFUL. I never send things back and I had to let them know I couldn't finish it. It tasted just like Robitussin cough syrup.
All-in-all, when we are in Depoe bay again we won't go back. The view is amazing, but the food was severely lacking and the service wasn't great. It was nice to have a night with my love, but the restaurant wasn't worth what we paid.