Ocean Basket The Grove — Restaurant in Gauteng

We came to Ocean Basket to enjoy a meal. Instead the opposite proceeded to happen.

We walked into the hot restaurant with no aircons. In the middle of summer this was terrible. My dad ordered the sprite and they forgot to bring him a straw. There were also not enough condiments for the 5 of us.

We ordered the full deck platter which is the most expensive meal to feed us all. What we saw were prawns that were NOT cleaned . They all had the poop lines in them but we didn’t see this automatically because it was covered in the yellow butter sauce.

We called our waiter (who at this point hadn’t come in to check on us, only to take our order and bring food) and told him about the situation. That this is extremely dangerous and you WILL get e-coli if eaten. He took the prawns back to the kitchen a bit begrudgingly and brought us more prawns. These also had the poop lines in it. Also the prawns brought back were about 5 of them even though all of ours had poop. At this point we were so fed up. We finished the salvagable food and left. As we were leaving my grandmother had started to choke and we desperately called for water and only for the waiter to take an extremely long time as my grandmother was choking. We had to call another waiter and he brought us tap water.

The service was terrible, the food was terrible, the ambience was terrible too! Not a single good thing can be said. Menlyn Ocean Basket also had the prawn poop problem but gave us a full dish of prawns with no poop in as an apology. The manager didn’t even see us....

The OB at The Grove has really gone backwards!! The table we sat at was dirty and not cleaned. And OB was not so busy. The service was non existent. Firstly we had so many waiters we didn't know who our waiter was. When we got our bread the plates were filthy dirty because they were never washed. The bathrooms were also absolutely shocking, very dirty, it stinks, the floors are very dirty. The drinks took forever to come to the table. When trying to order something else was so difficult no waiter made eye contact and trying to get someone's attention was impossible. And then some of the waiters were just standing around at the front desk counter. Then when you get one waiters attention he just turned to a other waiter telling them to help us. No one came to ask if everything is ok. And trying to get the bill to pay was also a mission, we eventually got the bill then no one came with the card machine so we could pay. My husband went to the front counter to pay and no one helped him, one guy said he will help him and then ended helping someone else. Trying to tip a waiter was also a challenge because there was so many people serving us so who gets the tip! And why give a tip if there was no...

We went for the prince prawn special. Now look, I know prince prawns are typically small. But I swear the shrimp we have in our fish tank at home were bigger than the prawns I was served tonight. R160 for a meal that could fit on the saucers they bring out with the bread. It was honestly more like a starter, not even close to what would be considered a main meal.

Not only that but the prawns were somehow both salty and bland at the same time. It also arrived somewhat cold.

The service was also lacking in some departments. It wasn't busy at all but we had to remind our waitress on multiple occations to bring us things like cutlery. But it wasn't to a degree that it took anything away from the overall dining experience.

Don't get me wrong. I don't mind the price., seafood is expensive and it is a business after all. But if I knew the meal would be so small and disappointing I would've gotten something else.

I'm not a person who would send back food unless there was something really wrong with it. I HATE leaving bad reviews and only do so when there's truly a reason for it.

All I'm saying is (in my opinion) the prince prawn special is not worth it. But the peach and white wine spritzers were...