Steamers Lobster Co — Restaurant in Saint John

This restaurant has potential to be great but falls short on every aspect aside from friendly staff and the decor.

I ordered the dinner for one, which came with a cup of chowder, bucket of mussels, and a small lobster with corn on the cob. Also the shrimp cocktail for an app and a caesar to drink.

I was born and raised here, lived in NB on the coast for 30 years, then moved to Ontario for work. And to come home craving a decent plate of seafood only to be served garbage for an outrageous price was a shock.

Lets start with the caesar. Tasteless. It was basically colored water in a very small glass. The chowder tasted okay, but it was basically Campbell's Chunky clam chowder with pieces of canned baby clams instead of actual clams. The lobster had barely any flavor and was very small as well as the tail being tough as rubber. The corn was chopped off on both ends which i find odd as i see other reviews with a full piece. But wasn't too bad. The shrimp cocktail was okay, but you open a bag of pre-cooked jumbo shrimp from the grocery store, rim a glass with them, and add a little cup of seafood sauce so it's hard to go wrong there. Though, seafood sauce is not hard to make. This sauce was not great. Had no visible pieces of horseradish that i could see and had a cheap flavor. The mussels were mussels, they are always pretty standard, though they were small inside the shells and i had a couple that were closed. If you aren't familiar, when you cook shellfish and it fails to open. Do not eat it. Do not pry it open and eat it. This means it was dead before it was cooked and you do not eat seafood that has passed before it was cooked.

I can't describe how disappointed i was. This restaurant is directly across the street from the cruise ship landing, it is literally the first restaurant tourists see when disembarking the vessel. This restaurant should be, and has potential to be, a flagship restaurant in this city. It has awesome nautical decor and a perfect location but the food falls short for a seafood restaurant located on the coast of a maritime city which is praised for its seafood. I mean this restaurant is close to so many outlets for fresh seafood supply and i get served baby clams in my chowder?? NB has the BEST clams i have ever eaten, straight from my hometown of Pocologan. There is no excuse for canned baby clams at this price for a meal.

Side note: Steamers does do a dinner theater that is, from what I've heard, pretty entertaining.

Get that food up to par for a maritime seafood restaurant and maybe i will come back. But as it stands i will not set foot back in...

I rarely write reviews, but I felt compelled to share a bit of what I experienced about a month back at this place.

After seeing the overly positive reviews, I was looking forward to a solid seafood dinner in a cool city.

The chowder did not even resemble chowder, it was some sort of solid mushy happening in a soup bowl. It was edible, but looking back if I hadn't just come off driving 8-9 hours I probably wouldn't have touched it.

The round of oysters were the only item I felt that even deserved to be paid for, as they are essentially something a place cannot mess up aside from freshness issues. They were decent, and I believe that's because the staff in the kitchen had very little interaction with them.

The buckets of mussels smelled absolutely foul and disgusting from first whiff on the table (those who know and love seafood have probably smelled on 'off' mussel, and it's quite rank), and we ended up substituting them for coconut shrimp which were too sweet and another plate of decent oysters for my dad.

The 2 whole lobsters were the last items, and they were edible but were definitely overcooked and tasteless compared to high-turnover lobster joints up and down the coast. The corn served with them was something I don't think I'd even give to a farm animal.

It was brutally evident that other than our server, a lovely gal with colored hair, nobody cared or even attempted to care about what was coming out of the kitchen.

I don't enjoy giving a bad review, and I understand that the restaurant business is a difficult one - I've worked in them plating food and as a host and I highly respect anyone working in the food industry. This experience was capped off with a final bill of over $300. I should have chatted a bit with our server and asked for a bit of negotiation as our food was below what should have been acceptable to even send out, but I paid it and it literally felt like I had been stolen from.

Again, the server (I forget her name) was really nice and I felt bad that the other part of her team were putting her in such a miserable position in sending out garbage for food. I don't understand the good reviews, but perhaps it was a rare night of horrible things all lining up, but I doubt it as the place was really quiet when restaurants up the hill were bustling.

I don't foresee this place being open for very much longer. Good luck to anyone who goes through those doors, I wouldn't...

About a year ago I tried Steamers for take out and was very disappointed, so today I decided to give it another try and sit out on the patio deck for Canada Day. Well, my previous review about a year ago is about the same as today. We ordered a Fisherman's Platter and Lobster Roll. VERY DISAPPOINTING - it all started when the waitress took out the meal and put it on the table for the customers next to us, now good thing the lady didn't cough or sneeze as would have been right on the food but she was talking, but the waitress DIDN'T EVEN APOLOGIZE, which was terrible -the Fisherman's Platter which was to be clams, scallop and fish along with fries was definitely not worth the price of $38 - I counted 6 clams and 4 scallops on my plate to go with the piece of fish (which I will say was good) and the rest was fries.......definitely not worth it. Then the lobster roll, price of $27, or should I say mayo roll with mayo potato Salad.....there was so much mayo in the lobster roll that you could not see or taste lobster and the bun was not even toasted, that potato salad was just all mayo, it was like opening up a jar of miracle whip. Also, usually when you are a server you will come check on the meal and ask if you would like to have another drink/refill of drink - but that didn't even happen.....the waitress in my opinion was very unprofessional and the didn't provide any good service. The only good thing that this place had going for it today was that at least it was a patio outside on a nice day. As for the kitchen, I am not sure if they knew what they were doing in there when it came to making the meals (as went inside first before going on the patio and seemed to be young kids cooking)....the service was terrible. I would definitely not recommend this place if you are going for a seafood meal - prices are too high for your food, service...