Hippie Fish — Restaurant in Zandvoort

I mulled it over last night and needed to write this as a learning experience for your restaurant. We had booked your restaurant at 5.30 yesterday evening and sat outside to the right of your restaurant( coming in from the beach. It was all very pleasant and we had some nice drinks with some very nice Peron peppers, calamari and the little anchovies. Everything was just great until the main meal arrived. Service had been prompt etc etc. A very young man with blond hair and pink shorts served some of our main meal. He was carrying the platter with two sweet potato chips and and a normal chips, on top of those were perched little tubs of mayonaise. The moment he started to place the platter on the table, the tub of mayonaise flew of the platter, hit the table and emptied the whole content onto my husbands shirt from his head to all over his shirt. The young man ran off to get some paper. My husband was initially livid and tried to walk away but quickly realised that he was covered in mayonaise so came back. It’s a testament to him that he calms down so quickly, I’m not sure I would have, but I took my response from him really. It was very obvious the young man had not told anybody about the incident ( maybe a manager) because he arrived with some paper, apologised and disappeared. Having been in the service industry a long time ago , I think how you make up for these accidents says a lot about the establishment. Maybe a good training opportunity for your staff? These accidents have to be addressed somehow, and apology for a ruined garment isn’t enough. My husband did not want to make a scene, being a polite Englishman but I tell you if it had happened to me( being Dutch) not sure I would have been so gracious. Maybe not made a scene but demanded a proper response. Hopefully you can train your junior staff up better. I’m afraid the quite expensive meal after this was a huge let down and we really could not enjoy it much. Somehow I don’t think we will ever come back. Best Regards,...

Unfortunately when giving our evaluations here in Google we cannot divide food quality and service quality and evaluate them separately. About food - the dishes were delicious and above expectations, prices were at the expected level. But the staff did not meet expectations of being at the level 🙄 First of all - something went wrong when I booked a table for a chosen time slot: when arriving at Hippie Fish on time it appeared that the table was not reserved and the administrator instead of offering us a table in the terrace (there were plenty of vacant table through the evening as we noticed later) started in details to explain to me how their electronic booking system works and what may have gone wrong and bla bla bla... When I insisted: “either offer us anything else (I needed a solution instead of explanations) or we are leaving to seek for other options around (there are plenty of them)” he at last offered us a table. Then the “miracles” started - I had to ask 3 time to clean the table we were offered, we were given only one blanket instead of two (we needed one for each to sit outside in comfort) and in the end I had to grab the blanket myself later, I ordered 2 glasses of wine in the beginning of the diner but the second glass was brought after 3 or 4 reminders and I had to wait for 20 more minutes to get it... When we were almost done with the main dishes I asked to show the desert menu and I had to wait for it for 45 minutes 😛 So when a young lady came with a tray full of deserts we were almost paying and leaving and that was too late for the desert. It is definitely good for my figure but looks like the staff was too busy to serve us. The majority of the staff I think are students and don’t stick much to this job, so that evening we were not very lucky to see a good service level in NL...

Nice from far but far from nice! The ambiance is super nice. This is probably what attracted us in the first place, but this is as far as it gets. We had a horrible experience from the beginning. We arrived half an hour too early for our reservation. We were offered a seat at the bar and got drinks relatively quickly. So far so good. Although the staff constantly pushed us aside very in order to drop dirty dishes in front of us. Very poor organisation. We realised that there was a bunch of free tables available and asked if we could use one of those or at least wait there. We were told these are blocked as they don’t have enough staff to serve this area. After the half an hour waiting time they offered exactly one of these tables to us. Although the table was free since we entered the place the table was filthy and dirty. We had to ask two times for the table to be cleaned. This happened after 20 mins waiting without having been offered a Menu or another drink. In the meantime however the staff had a great time chatting to each other and their friends. The what we think was the floor manager repeatedly pointed his finger to our table and gave us the evil look as he apparently didn’t want us to sit there. However all the tables slowly filled up. When we finally received our hot chocolates they were luke warm and we had to ask for another heat-up. Altogether the whole experience was so dissatisfying that we decided to not have dinner there and left after having had a few nachos, which where okayish and tempted us to give at least a second star. All in all, very disappointing experience, horrible service and a floor manager who is obviously in the wrong job. Lastly, the toilets looked like a war zone. No toilet paper and tissues available. Room for improvement dear...