The Fisherman — Restaurant in Shediac

The worst dining experience I have ever had. (If I could give zero stars I would. It gets one because that is the price of posting). If you can eat anywhere else -- say, cooking roadkill on a fire in the woods -- do so. Truly horrible experience top to bottom (service, food, wait time). I wish I were joking.

Here is the story: we arrive at shortly before 6:00 for a 6:00 reservation. They are slow to seat us but ... no worries. Eventually our server -- named either Holly or Polly -- no one seemed sure -- takes our order and says words to the effect: we will have this ready for you quickly. We wait ... and wait. No one comes, our server never checks in, does not bring more water, no one offers an explanation. After 55 minutes my wife goes and finds our server and asks when our food will arrive. Her reply "I don't know." The conversation ends without follow up. She never comes over to our table. So, we wait. No one comes over, no one refills water, no one offer any explanation whatsoever. Eventually, I ask another server who is walking by if they can check on our food -- "yes" -- and cancel my wife's appetizer. We wait .... the server never comes back to the table. As they walk by again, I ask "any word on our food?" The server says "I told your server -- either Holly or Polly, still not sure -- about it. She will look into it." She never comes over. At this point, another customer suggests we order breakfast because we might get that on time. We wait ... after an hour and a half, I ask another server for help and explain that no one has even asked if we want more water. She gets water and checks and says "the kitchen is catching up." I ask, "what does catching up mean?" She says, "it means you have been waiting a long time." I say "well, I was hoping for an ETA on the food." She says "I will check" and comes back saying "it is coming now." Our server re-emerges with the food. Like seeing a long lost friend, we are happy.

And ... it is horrible. My daughter ordered fish and chips. The chips were concealed together in a mass and had been obviously sitting together in a warming bin for an extended period of time. Her food was warm; not hot. I ordered scallop carbonara. The scallops were cooked to the consistency of a hockey puck, the pasta was seriously undercooked, and the sauce tasted, I don't actually know how to describe it. To say that it was not a carbonara sauce would be an understatement. It was ... as if someone had just dump white goop on pasta. It was, in short, inedible. My wife's meal was likely the best. She had seafood casserole but again her sides (potatoes) had clearly been sitting around as they were blandly warming to cool.

Here is the upshot ending this experience: no one cared. Our server literally dropped the food and ran. She put it down on the table as fast as she could and hit the road. I will assume she had a good reason, just don't know what it was. I eventually stopped the server who ended up bringing us water: "hi, excuse me." "Yes, is something wrong." "Yes, the food is inedible." I showed her my daughter's fries and she offered to get new ones. I said "No, we are not paying for this." She promised to get our server and a manager. They never came. I eventually walked up to the front desk and found my server to explain that I would not pay for something this bad. She said she would get someone to talk to us. They never came.

I have never before seen such horrible service. Usually, if the food is bad, the servers will try to sympathize and see if they can fix things up. The take away: no one cared. Not our server, not manager who never came, not the other server who passed us off, not whoever cooked such horrible food. You might be tempted to eat here in the summer if you are on vacation. Do yourself a...

It was probably one of my worst experiences ever (and I have traveled pretty much all over the world). For starters, the place closes at 7:00 pm. The server tells me they will be moving to summer hours, but not yet (I went July 2). I asked if they had wifi. She says yes, but that the password is really long, so she will write it down for me. She brings me a thread of letters and numbers that is a mile long. I try different networks, and none of them is working. When she comes back I asked her which one is the restaurant's. She tells me she's not sure, but that they've been having problems. So I gave up on that and asked for seafood chowder. She comes back and tells me they are out of seafood chowder (this is a seafood restaurant!!). So, I asked for onion rings to keep it simple. She goes: "And what would you like for the main course?". I tell her I wasn't sure yet only because I didn't want them to bring me the appetizer and main course at the same time. She tells me that the kitchen closes at 7:00. I got there at 6:40 and by now it was 6:55. I asked her if I should just pay and leave if they were closing. She tells me I can still order. Again, I ordered fish and chips to keep it simple. As anticipated, they brought me the fish n chips before I had finished the onion rings. So, I put the rings aside because I don't want the fish to get cold. At the end of dinner, I ask if I can ask for a coffee or if they are closing. She brings me the coffee and goes: "The coffee is warm but not hot. If you want, I can make another pot". All I said was "oh god", just bring me the bill. I still gave her a 20% tip because I guess it's not her fault. But I'm never going...

My husband made reservations at The Fisherman's for our 26th wedding anniversary. It was a Thursday, and I was really looking forward to it. We drove over 30 minutes from Riverview to Shediac, expecting to have a lovely, delicious seafood dinner date. We arrived a few minutes early and were seated at a strange table sort of behind a beam, in the center of the restaurant. There was a large room about 10 feet away filled with a few hundred people with loud microphones and live music. The door was wide open. We couldn't hear ourselves think, let alone hear each other talk. But we had been waiting all week, and just hoped that our food would make the overwhelming atmosphere worth it. We waited and waited, 25 plus minutes without being acknowledged. After seeing 6 other parties arrive, get seated, and served drinks (3 right next to us), we realized that we had been forgotten. We tried a few attempts to make eye contact with a server to no avail. After 30 plus minutes of wincing through the noise in hopes of being noticed, let alone served, it was obviously time to leave. We are very, very disappointed. Upon exit, the staff appeared confused… not sure why, they just looked shocked so not sure what happened. Highly disappointed. If you are looking for a nice, quiet dinner date, with great service, DO NOT GO TO THIS PLACE. PS, I hear their food is great, but didn't have a chance...