Hil-Mak Seafood Restaurant — Restaurant in Ashtabula

Oof. Did not meet expectations. At all. While we did not have a reservation, the hostess put our name down and told us to come back 45 minutes later. Fine, no problem. Totally understand on a Saturday evening. We leave to grab drinks elsewhere and come back at our scheduled time but don’t get seated for another 15 minutes. Again, fine, you’re busy, I get it. We get seated and sit for ANOTHER 20 minutes and no server has even acknowledged us at this point. I say hello politely to the waitress handling our table next to us, and let her know we’ve been waiting for 20 minutes yet no one has acknowledged us. She has no idea who is responsible for our table but tells us she will serve us. 10 minutes later she comes back for our drink order, we put in an order for a bottle of wine. We’ve now been seated for 30 minutes. Been there for 45 minutes. Another 10 minutes goes by and we get our bottle of wine and are allowed to put our food order in. At this point it’s been nearly 60 minutes. Our food comes out 45 minutes later, my husbands chicken is too dry to eat and the salmon I ordered is no better than the salmon I make at home. Plus it came with FOUR pieces of broccoli. We finish and leave two hours after our arrival. They had 18 tables with 3 servers total. Maybe someone called off. Maybe they’re understaffed, not enough servers or cooks. I get it, it’s 2024. But we were never once even offered water until halfway through our dinner service by a DIFFERENT waitress. Never asked how our food was. Literally given no attention at all besides when our order was taken and food delivered. We were asked at the end if we wanted dessert. DO YOU THINK WE WANT DESSERT AFTER SITTING THERE FOR TWO HOURS ALREADY?? I kind of did want to get the crème brûlée. But god that probably would have been another hour of waiting. People literally came and left while we were sitting there. I really wanted to like this restaurant, but after this experience, we won’t be back. I’ll just catch and grill salmon from home next time, it would...

On August the 28th, my girlfriend and I decided to stop down and have her birthday dinner at Hil-Mok. We walk in and are seated after about 5 minutes. Waitress was nice place looked stunning followed by Post Malone Country slop music. We ordered HALIBUT tacos as a starter. We receive SHRIMP tacos, disappointed but my girlfriend and I work in food, so we usually let a mistake fly. Shrimp was dry and it was topped with nothing but crunchy veggies. 2/5 for those. Then the chef proceeds to come out and ask us how our CHICKEN tacos are…. Staff doesn’t even know what they’re plating and handing out?? I order a salmon with scallops, asparagus and a baked potato. My girlfriend orders a filet (MEDIUM) salmon, baked potato, and rice. We wait about 45 minutes for that with about 2-3 other tables seated at the time. No big deal. We get our food and she cuts into her steak, wow the thing is still Mooing. My asparagus is floppy and lacks any flavor, the baked potato’s looked like a dried soggy cooch, not even a slab of butter. Scallops were amazing but lacking something, like they had the texture of a jello. The waitress comes asks us how we were doing, and after their first mistake I let them know , hey her steaks pretty rare, and we didn’t want to inconvenience and waste more of our vacation time so , no we do not want to send it back. Never seen the chef come out and apologize or anything. Rice was terrible on her plate, looked like minute rice and they just plopped it on the plate. The salmon was okay a 3/5 on a good day. We get our bill , and after the steak that moos, on the bill we are charged for a 28$ MEDIUM cooked steak. The least they could’ve done was take 10-15 dollars off for a quarter eaten rare steak that was not what we ordered. The place screams elegance and all I got was a jail spin on seafood elegancy. Steer clear from this tourist stop. PS for all that we...

My husband and I were excited to try this place out and made a reservation. We arrived and were seated and then the excitement wore off. It took a half hour to order drinks. Another table close by asked the busser to please get the server as they were ready to order and we let him know the same. We finally ordered and the one appetizer which was a weekend special they were out of which on a Saturday is puzzling . I could understand running out later in the evening but we arrived 2 hours after opening. We ordered our dinner and then she came back a bit later to let me know they were out of steaks for surf and turf. Unfortunately the wait time already irritated us and we ended up canceling my husband's dinner and just took the appetizer and paid. While eating our appetizer which wasnt great either we called Rennicke for a reservation and got in right after we left.

My husband comes from the restaurant industry and we've never complained or have left after an appetizer. While it wasn't the servers fault for lack of menu items not being available let your guests know up front what you are out of and pay more attention to your tables. There were only 3 servers and 1 brought us drinks, the other our appetizer and our server didn't even bring us our check, she had another. We still tipped 42% on what we had since the food wasn't her fault but the service was lacking. I didn't see anyone in management who should've been out there to apologize for the issues.

Hopefully this place gets better but I'm not sure I'd rush to come back and try again. Super disappointed since the menu and food options...