East Coast Bistro — Restaurant in Saint John

My fiancé and I enjoyed a lovely east coast trip in the maritimes and our last stop on our way back home was St-Johns for a couple of nights. We were very excited to try local restaurants there as our trip had been nothing short of spectacular food wise so far. We opted for Italian By Night the first night, which was excellent, and East Coast Bistro on the second night.

Based on our experience, I would recommend passing on East Coast Bistro. It was wildly overpriced and the service was very subpar for a 180$ meal (our wine glasses were not topped off even once and so was our waters, waitress felt annoyed, etc). We ordered gnocchis and oysters as appetizers - gnocchis came with a slice of mozzarella cheese on them making them rather tasteless, but oysters were okay (still the worst we had the entire trip though). Our entrees were the Seafood Linguine and the Brisket - The linguine was fine, but the brisket was dry as hell. Forget tenderness, I had to knife my way in there like an axe. I told our waitress at the end of the night and she pretty much brushed it off and never apologized! It is worth mentioning that it was their most expensive item on the menu that night.

The dinner ended up costing more than our previous night at Italian By Night, and was a massive disappointment.

The place was at reduced capacity because of covid restrictions and it was a slow Friday night… it felt very weird, and weird is not a feeling you want to feel walking out of a close to 200$ dinner...

I had the brisket and my girlfriend the veggie burger. Brisket was fantastic, but if I could note it could use a bit more seasoning or even just salt; but that could just be my preference. Also the coleslaw could have used more dressing as it was the only thing breaking up the grease and fat from the brisket and fries on the dish. The girlfriends veggie burger was great. Nice to see a fresh take on a mushroom burger. Service was good with no complaints. Atmosphere is good as well, quiet place to have a nicer meal. We also tried the chocolate bete noir. All-in-all a fair price for these days, especially given with higher tier cooking. Definitely a place to enjoy again. Only 4 stars due to the inbalance in my plate. Definitely even a small side of veggies and the coleslaw having more dressing would have made a huge difference. The plate is too rich for just fries, even for a...

Fabulous food with original ideas. Beautiful presentation, and staff were helpful. We were a big group of 16 in the private space at the back of the restaurant and service was a bit slow for the main course. I had the special pasta of the day, a ravioli stuffed with a cheese mixture and served in a saffron cream sauce with 2 jumbo prawns. It sounded wonderful by description (there were other flavours mentioned but I couldn't hear the server over the noise) and but it arrived lukewarm, was a very small portion compared to the other diners' meals (left me hungry) and rather bland and tasteless. Other diners' food came out steaming hot. Mains arrived slowly so food got even colder by the time we all had them. That's my only complaint; the rest of the dishes, appetizers (seared scallops) and desserts (vanilla brulee)...