Buckalew's Restaurant & Tavern — Restaurant in Beach Haven

Buckalew's is a restaurant where locals call it "a piece of home next to the shore. " Unfortunately, I did not feel like it was for me today. As a visitor of this grand area they call Beach Heaven, NJ, I was feeling a little hungry when it was close to lunch time. So, I was searching and I ran across this establishment called Buckalew's. I wanted to give it a shot, so I went inside.

Right off the back the interior is dazzling, no problem there. I sat at the bar and the bar tender approached me. The bartender tossed the drink coaster towards my direction and it landed in front of my hand. 1.) No, I do not want to play frisbee with you and this drink coaster. 2.) Have some pride in your bartending craft and respect for the customer. I tried to disregard that action and just ordered a water for the time being. The bartender fixed my water and brought it to me. Immediately, I noticed that the glass was chilled. I was shocked that their glasses were chilled. When I looked closer to the bar area, the glasses were being chilled the wrong way. This establishment is allowing their bartenders to put their glasses inside the ice well to be chilled. That is a HUGE RED FLAG! Glassware should never be placed inside an ice well. An ice well is only for ICE and NOT GLASS. If glassware broke inside that ice well, the bartender will have to dump everything out. Plus, it is contamination from the glass to the ice that the bartender is serving to people.

After viewing those ice wells being set up like that, I was still hungry. I order the "chicken pot pie ". When the dish came out, I was a little confused. Yes, some recipes calls for the crust to overlap the soup itself, causing the spoon to dive right through it to get to the soup. I did not see that happening with me. The crust was not baked overlapping the soup, it was kind of like it's own loaf that the establishment put on top of the soup. I could barely dive through this "crust" with my spoon with its many layers to get to the soup. As I tried to pick up this loaf of crust, I saw many grease layers in between each layer of the crust. I asked the bartender to bring me a separate plate. I put the crust on the plate and just ignored it. Finally, I am at the soup. Immediate reactions, it is full of vegetables. Mothers always tell their children to eat their vegetables. I liked the fullness of the vegetables quantity. The temperature was very nice for the particular soup. Initial response to the first taste, personally, it felt like it was missing something. The seasoning was not a "wow" factor, but it tasted bland. Could it be seasoned more in my opinion, yes. Like I said, this is my personal opinion.

This establishment has one of the prime locations on this beach. It flourishes everyday. It can cater to a lot of people, but it has it flaws that could turn into...

Let's start out with the positive.

Their environment is great and if you have messy children (like we do) their outside seating is fantastic.

The food on the adult menu is phenomenal. My wife had the linguine with mussels. She is a very picky eater, but was part of the clean plate club for this meal.

The sauce was perfect; not overly done. Many restaurants rely on their sauce to play up the seafood in a dish that contains shellfish (or any fish). The seafood was very fresh and didn't sit heavy in the stomach afterwards.

I gave their extensive sushi menu a try. The salmon nigiri was extremely fresh and had a light creamy texture that you'd expect from good salmon sushi. I had their dynamite to and one other specialty roll.

The sushi was incredible. Light. Fresh. It was up there with some of the best sushi I've had.

Here's why I gave 3 stars. The restaurant, we came to find out, is incredibly understaffed. We sat at 750pm, we didn't see a server until 810pm. We didn't receive drinks until 830pm. We received our appetizer at 850 pm (an hour after we sat).

We ordered the kids' food when we ordered the drinks and asked for it to come out as soon as it was done. We ordered the hotdog and the linguine w/ chicken for the kids.

We reminded the waitress that the kids' food could come out as soon as it was done.

It was clear that the kids food was made right away, but was sitting until our food came out. The linguine wasn't cooked all the way through and the edges were dry and hard (as if it had been sitting under a lamp for quite some time). The chicken was extremely dry and hard to cut through. The hot dog was what you'd expect from a hot dog.

Our waitress admitted that they didn't know why the outside was even open. There was only 4 waitresses, 1 bartender, and one busser for all of the outside.

I never judge a restaurant off of one visit - we WILL be back (the food off the main menu WAS THAT GOOD), I just hope they can find more staff as the service doesn't currently match up with the quality...

I have been coming to Beach Haven since 1956/my parents started this island becoming my happy beach place/as a little girl I remember when Buckalew’s was outside and looked nothing like today, various seafood were literally in buckets! Unfortunately I can no longer walk through your doors! There is a bartender there that I have tried to give the benefit of the doubt, at least the last 3 years and I am done! 4/21/25 he walked right by me, another bartender had to serve me, the one that walked right by, was near me again and I asked for a glass of water, I could tell he didn’t like that either, he brought the water without a straw and when I asked him for one, that seemed to irritate him also! He acts like I am someone he doesn’t like and doesn’t even know me/I am not from the island, I live in another city and state and come here different times of the year, off season, I made some comments to man sitting beside me and he agrees with me about this bar tender! I told this story to other bartender but is he gonna do? And I said some things loud enough the problem bartender could hear! Intended bar many years ago and if I would have treated people like this one did, I would have been fired! I also know Carmin and he was a people person and a great bartender and now you have this? Something is very wrong! I went somewhere else last night bcuz I was so upset and I mentioned this situation to some other people and they said they have heard similar stories about your problem bartender so he does not have a good reputation, in regards to your restaurant, in Beach Haven! Good Luck and you will never...