Alice M.
Yelp
TLDR: Mostly fresh seafood BUT no flavor + dishonesty about promo. If I were a fish, I would be extremely sad if I were to end up on a plate here.
WHEW I don't normally leave long review (or reviews at all) if I don't like a place, since I don't want to hurt small businesses, but this was such a negative experience.
OVERALL THOUGHTS: Came here with a group of 9. We were excited about this place because of a great review we saw online, plus we heard fantastic things about the key lime pie from their sister restaurant (Pepe's). I assumed I should've chosen different entrees...then our entire group discussed the meal afterwards, and no one had anything very positive to say about their food. Speaks volumes because we had ordered about 14 different entrees between the 9 of us. We were so confused why people had rated this place so highly. Everything was mostly fresh, but mostly flavorless. Drinks were decent though.
PRICING: I don't mind paying for good seafood (costs these days are going up!), and we had initially thought the prices were fair for the portion sizes. However, I would not have paid anywhere close to what we did for how poorly cooked the food was. The bill came out to be $550 (for entrees + 4 drinks + tip) for the 9 of us. Definitely too steep for the quality.
MAIN ISSUES: They had a promo for a free key lime slice per entree, as long as we showed them the promo photo from their sister restaurant, Pepe's. There was some initial confusion as there were two versions of the promo, but we showed the correct one, and our waitress explicitly confirmed that the promo was valid. She asked us how many slices we wanted and stepped away while we decided. I guess we could've ordered 14 slices lol (...good thing we didn't, as you'll read later on), but we all only wanted a bite or two. We decided on 2 slices, and she left to put in the order. Pie was pretty good, we paid the bill and left without looking too closely (lighting was also pretty dim). Only a few hours later did we realize that she charged us for the slices.
It was a minimal amount of money split between all of us, but on principle, we thought it was ridiculous that she confirmed the promo, then charged us for it. I doubt it was confusion because we had already asked for the check, then remembered that we had the promo. We didn't decide the number of slices until after asking for the check, so she had to have gone back and purposefully added the 2 slices to the bill. No clue what the point was to charge us the extra $14 bucks. Hope it was a mistake...but really hard to tell here.
It had also started raining in the middle of the meal. We were seated at the edge of the patio and the rain blew in on us. The rest of the restaurant was quite empty even though it wasn't close to closing yet, but the waitress did not even check in on us or offer to move us to another table. Honestly, none of us truly minded (because it's just rain!), but we did have to move ourselves away from the edge.
DETAILED MENU BREAKDOWN (If you are unfortunate enough to already be sitting down):
- Key Lime Pie (4.5/5) Pretty good, wish it was a bit more sour. There's a ice cream/pie shop around the corner that we tried after (and liked more), so I wouldn't come here for this.
- Fish Tacos (1/5): Flavorless fish (could be mistaken for chicken) placed on a cold, flour tortilla. Covered in sauce to try to give it some taste. Both the tortilla and the shredded cheese tasted like they could from your local grocery store.
- Broiled Seafood Platter (3/5): Chose a loaded baked potato as the side. I wish it was just a full plate of their scallops because all three pieces were delicious! Buttery and flavorful. But Mahi mahi tasted flavorless, shrimp lacked flavor and was extremely overcooked and rubbery. The baked potato was very dry and hard to swallow or finish.
- Coconut Shrimp (2/5): Pretty standard coconut shrimp, but too much sickly sweet sauce that lacked the coconut flavor. It got passed down the row...everyone in the group had some, and none of us could finish it because of the sauce.
- Oysters Dozen (1/5): Oysters were on the smaller side (which is fine), but they had no taste to them. Many of the oysters didn't even have liquid, which means they were very old or not handled properly. Had much better oysters the day before.
- Snow Crab Legs (4/5): Standard in taste, lots of meat, worth the cost.
- Calamari (3/5): More chewy than crispy. Not terrible, but seasoning could use more flavor.
- Seafood Penne (2/5): So thick with large chunks of meat that it was hard to eat. Had to split with a friend.
CONCLUSION: There's no shortage of restaurants nearby that serve seafood at a similar price point. We went to one the previous day with live music, so this one was extremely disappointing and a terrible experience in comparison. Begging everyone to go elsewhere! Wish we had chosen a better experience to end our last day in the Keys.