The Captain's Boil — Restaurant in Vaughan

Update: the crab that they gave us was actually really good. We brought it home and ate it two days later so I guess it marinated in the fridge. It was really delicious so I'm adding one star.

Kudos to the manager for great customer service but the kitchen and wait staff were not great.

Tldr: got served cold empty lobster carcass as part of our boil, seafood was gritty, stale, or overcooked, flavors were underwhelming, bad service (waitress not attentive or nice, waiter was rude. Neither seemed to care for customer experience. Manager gave a generous discount and crab, though, which was really nice.

Details:

1. the compost bin for the shells that we got was dirty and had sauces on it from previous customers. I had to ask them to switch it out. For context, this bin was set in the middle of the table for us to use for our meal but it looked like it hadn't even been washed, so it felt like a dirty garbage bin right on our dinner table.
2. the food quality was poor. The clams were gritty, the sauce lacked flavor, shrimp were overcooked, and some of the seafood tasted stale.
3. the lobster took at least 45 minutes to come out. I feel like they forgot it or something but there was a time when we ate most of our other dishes and were just waiting for the lobster
4. we received a cold and empty piece of lobster shell in our lobster boil (see picture attached). We were so confused and asked the staff about it. One of the waiters was very rude and kept asking like 4 times how many lobsters we got. I kept telling him "one" and he just kept yelling at us "how many lobsters did you get in total?" that even the waitress chimed in. He gave us a very weird look and scanned our table as if to check that we didn't eat it ourselves. Then he just said it was an "extra" piece with no explanation of how it got there. It was so weird and unappetizing to find the lobster carcass in our boil, like food scraps in our food. And again, it was COLD. The rest of the lobster in the same boil was warm!

The only saving grace was that the manager gave us a discount and some free crab when I escalated #4. The cold lobster was just so unacceptable in my opinion, after everything else.

Also, the lobster bisque was $15, was a really small cup, and didn't even taste good. The fries, sausages, corn (plain), and fried rice were decent -aka all the non seafood items that were not drenched in the captains boil sauce (the sauce was not good). We had to ask for water after half an hour of the jug sitting there empty. The table was absolutely overflowing with trash by the time we were done and nobody helped to clear it at all in the ~1.5 hours...

I would not recommend this place only because of the service, it will make a big difference in your experience.

I’ve dined out a lot and have had waiters/waitresses who obviously don’t want to be there but still do the job. I rarely write reviews but the service here was terrible. The waiters and waitresses were very unfriendly and unprofessional and it made the experience questionable.

We entered and stood at the door for 15+ mins before being acknowledged and told to have a seat until the table was ready (we saw many free tables so we were unsure so we stood there until being told to sit and wait).

The waitress was a young lady with red hair who was careless and inattentive. We ordered our food and asked for a litre of beer with ice on the side. She brought us a single sized drink and no ice and then disappeared so we couldn’t even tell her it wasn’t what we ordered. She walked over to the table and dumped/threw the bags of seafood boil and just walked away super fast. I got the incorrect order. She was always standing at the bar with her back to us and there weren’t many staff. The staff walk by fast with no eye contact and it was hard to get a hold of someone else or anyone, they come and leave quick my. We were then missing our sides (rice) and waited 10 mins until a waiter was available we could wave down. We were being served by different people throughout cause our waitress just disappeared. Then we flagged down another waiter for the ice we asked for and her never brought it. We finally waved down our same waitress and asked for the ice. She then started to clean tables then went back to socializing. We finally just went to the bar ourselves to get ice, and she finally came back and asked if we still wanted it and said sorry. We then waited and waited for the bill. Another waitress finally got us the bill after we waited and waited and waved someone down (as we did the entire time for simple things because no one cares). The same waitress then came asked us if we want the bill and we told her we asked already for it. She then said “you already asked another person for the bill?” And we said yes and she just walked away really fast and didn’t say anything, surprised she was even upset because we didn’t expect her to bring...

This was by far the WORST restaurant experience I've ever had in my life. I would give it 0 stars if I could. I visited here after hearing great things about other locations in early December. Upon arriving my party were seated and waited 20 minutes before anyone even came to our table. We were bothered but didn't think much of it as it was packed that night. After finally flagging a waitress down, we ordered our food, which was so incredibly problematic I was shocked.

The waitress who was serving us frequently disappeared throughout the night, anytime we asked for little things, for 10-15 minutes at a time. Upon our food arriving to the table, we asked for plates and spoons, she disappears once again and our rice had gone ice cold. I believe we ordered the Pirates Feast. The okra was close to raw, the the chicken and shrimp was super overcooked. My friend asked while ordering if they could just toast the garlic bread slightly more. When it came it wasn't, so when she asked a man to toast it, HE BROUGHT IT BACK NEARLY BLACK. Keep in mind we were trying to be understanding as it was busy but this was ridiculous. I later learned this was the manager himself.

To top it all off, the lobster tasted like it had gone bad, which left me feeling sick the next day. At this point, we had waited so much in between that when i asked the waitress for scissors to cut the lobster open (where she didn't get back to us at all) she told me they put everything in the dishwasher. At the end of the night, as we were so disappointed with our meal, I reluctantly told the waitress about everything when she asked about our experience. She then told me she never even had the food there herself. When she spoke to the manager, all he did was take off the $10 rice off of our $150 bill. When i went to speak with him, he looked me dead in the eyes and said "sorry about your experience" with no care at all.

This is the first time I've ever had to write a review for a restaurant. I would personally never...