People, people, PEOPLE… I must be completely and brutally honest in my review of this place, located on Friendship Rd (right off of TecPort), in Harrisburg, PA because my experience here was unfortunately not a good one. First; I am a seafood lover…I’ve always been one ever since my mother introduced me to it and other delicacies as a small child. So I was really looking forward to the opening of this restaurant, which was originally supposed to be in May of 2014…then June…then whenever. Amidst much anticipation and very mixed reviews, it finally opened at the tail end of summer. I purposely waited until I felt like they’d had enough time to get the establishment together before my family and I would try our hand at it. My girlfriends went and tried it on October 31st (when I was unable to go along due to prior commitments) and I hadn’t heard any complaints from them, so I figured now was the time to go ahead and see about it.
Well. We arrived for our 2pm reservation and upon entering the establishment I noticed that it was clean but very small, which was ok – but contrary to the All-You-Can-Eat Buffet advertisement, there was no “buffet”…not the type where you could go and place things on your plate yourself. Keep in mind, you have a 2-hour dining time limit when you do the “buffet”.
Also, there had been a hostess/waitress at the door who seated a couple who walked in ahead of us, but never came back to seat us…Then finally, a tall waiter whose name began with a “J” (I believe it was Jarrod or something close to that) came to greet and seat us, and would be our waiter for the day.
Waiter J was friendly, but slow and not very good at multi-tasking. He would run back and forth and back again to bring us one thing at a time, which annoyed me quickly but I did my best to keep cool. We ordered drinks, which is what we always do first, but it took so long for Waiter J to bring them back, to the point where another more experienced waitress named Ashley offered to retrieve the drinks for us. We asked her could she take over for Waiter J and be our server instead and she agreed, but when she went to ask Waiter J if he would mind if she took our table for him, he told her “I got it.” I didn’t agree, but I decided to behave and give him a chance.
So finally we get our drinks and place our orders for food. My youngest daughter ordered chicken fingers and fries from the appetizer menu, so her food came up first and they were pretty tasty. My oldest daughter ordered the fried jumbo shrimp and fries platter, and Jonathan and I ordered the $34.95 all-you-can-eat “buffet”, adding the Maine lobster to mine for another $9.95, as well as an appetizer of mussels for Jonathan. I thought the mussels would be steamed in garlic/butter but instead they came out in the tomato sauce and honestly, I thought they were repulsive. Somehow though, he enjoyed them.
My oldest daughter’s fried shrimp platter came out, and she was immediately disappointed with the flavor or lack thereof. The batter that the shrimp were fried in tasted soapy, as did the overcooked hushpuppies.
And finally out comes the all-you-can-eat trays. This “buffet” selection includes Maryland Crab Soup (which looked like succotash, and didnt have any crab in it – Jonathan had a bowl of it, I refused), corn on the cob, hushpuppies, steamed clams, steamed shrimp, steamed Blue crabs, steamed snow crab legs and as I said earlier, live Maine lobster which could be added on for an upcharge. We both asked in the beginning that they do not give us the Blue crab or the corn, but load us up with the steamed “everything else”. ….We ended up with both the Blue crab and the corn, and little bits of everything else.
Now when I think all-you-can-eat, as far as seafood, I think back to Luddy’s down in Goldsboro, or the Manor House in Middletown, where they would literally dump crabs by the bucket in the middle of your table and let you go for yours until you beckoned for more. This was far from that. We had to beg and wait for little bits of this n that. And none of it was seasoned – not the Blue crab (not that I wanted it, but still), not the shrimp, the lobster, the crab legs, none of it. BUT, the corn on the cob had a little bit of something sprinkled on it…that’s not what I went there for though. Even the lobster was void of flavor. It was loaded with water, though. Yet and still, I did my best to eat what I could of it because ya just don’t waste lobster. You can’t! LOL!
While I was disappointed that our food lacked flavor, I figured I’d dress it up somehow – butter helps everything. I don’t like the oil that a lot of these restaurants are trying to pass off as melted butter – it doesn’t sit well with me. So I asked Waiter J if he could get me real butter, melted. He said he could and went back to retrieve it. He came back with it and I dipped two big pieces of snow crab leg in it and bit them…and found that the butter was sour. It had that funky rancid taste. I was done at that point.
While we were going through it at our table with all this bad food and all these platters everywhere, Waiter J was slow to come and take things away to help us make room and he was also slow to keep our drinks full. Another waitress (not Ashley, a different one) came and refilled our drinks, as well as take our payment once Waiter J finally brought the bill but never came back.
Had I been the one to dine and dash the way I’d done as a youngster who loved to prank, I’d have definitely done that here. Captain Don’s will never see me or get business from my family again and I must add here that I spent the majority of my evening in bed, sick after eating here. It was that bad. 😦
Dining Room Snitch 