Tukka East End — Restaurant in East End

**UPDATED AFTER CHEF RON RESPONSE TODAY CHEF RON - we came to your restaurant on March 7 and you are replying on April 2 stating you remember our visit. Your comments are completely inaccurate. There was NOT an additional 50 other people when we arrived - actually only a couple behind us. We were NOT greeted in a friendly manner at all. And we DID NOT walk out to the ocean front balcony and sit at a reserved table!! We sat in the corner 2-top where we were seated the entire time and no other customers were seated in that room for at least 40 minutes. I am even more disillusioned about your restaurant after these comments as you are accusing us of actions that we did NOT do. As I mentioned, we are in the restaurant business and know what is right and what is wrong. We were NOT treated like valued customers and I do not like that we have to think about Tukka's lack of customer service again with these comments nearly a month later.

ORIGINAL REVIEW FROM MARCH 9: We came this past Tuesday at 5:30pm were treated so rudely at the front host desk. Party of 2. Without even a greeting, the male host asked what time was our reservation. We did not make one. He scowled and said he would have to go get the manager. The manager rudely looked at us and his desk and said we were disrupting the busiest night. Then he walked around and said that we could not sit outside. He led us to an indoor side room and put us at a tiny table in a corner. I felt as though we were peasants being punished for not having a reservation!

My family is in the restaurant business and there is not a reason to treat customers as though they were a bother. Yes, the restaurant was busy and we could have easily waited a bit, but this management needs customer service skills.

The server was pleasant and the food was good, not exceptional. But we won’t be back...

I had pretty high expectations coming here based on reviews. We left less than impressed. Some of that was our fault. We just missed the lunch service by a few minutes and showed up during their happy hour service. We don't drink so we were left with the choice of a handful of appetizers and bites. We probably would have left and found something else but there's not a lot on this side of the island and most other restaurants were probably also in happy hour phase too. We ordered a bunch of appetizers and were hungry and excited. The restaurant is well located right on the water. It was nice sitting outside and enjoying the view and the breeze. But the second our waiter brought out the food, the enjoyable part was over. The food did taste quite good, but the second he set the food down our table was absolutely overrun with very aggressive flies. It was just one or two, there was a group of probably twenty flies that were landing our our food and plates faster than we could wave them away. We ate at quite a few restaurants during our stay, many of which had outdoor or open-air seating, and we didn't see hardly any flies at any of the others. I don't know why there was such an infestation here but because all of our time was spent trying to keep flies off of our food, we really couldn't enjoy the food at all. We ate as fast as we could, paid our bill, and left. I'm not sure if we just caught them at a really bad time on a really bad day but it really seems like the restaurant could do something to ward off flies (traps, candle deterrents, something) as no other restaurants we ate at had a problem like this. I really wanted to like this place. But given my experience, I won't be coming back here...

This is a complicated review to write, so I will try and do my best to say why.

Let's start easy, with the food. Great flavours for the dishes we tried (lobster poutine, kangaroo pops, tuna tartare, conch and crocodile fritters and lion fish tacos). Dessert was decent, but I think their efforts go into the rest of the menu. The drinks were good, but a little on the weak side compared to others on the island.

Unfortunately I felt a bit underwhelmed on the portion sizing and I felt that other places on the island offered more for the money.

Onto the service; the service staff themselves were great. Lots of them, which made ordering, etc fast, but they visually looked overwhelmed at times. They were running their feet off for sure. They brought the food out very quickly, which was ok, but it was almost TOO fast. Within ten minutes of ordering, we had all our food.

It seemed like the first place we went to on the island that was more concerned with turning over tables than allowing people to enjoy their time. I wouldn't necessarily say we got pushed out, but there was an underlying pressure it seemed.

Lastly, the view......outstanding. As with many places on the island on the shore the view was amazing. Right on the ocean, cool breeze, lovely sunset.

That's what makes this review complicated to write. Because if we had more time to sit, relax, and enjoy our foods and the view, I think I could have rated it higher. But I just kept getting the sense it was turnover vs atmosphere. It just rubbed me a bit...