The Pearl Kitchen & Bar — Restaurant in Bluffton

I'll start by saying there was a DEAD MOSQUITO IN MY SALAD, I pushed my plate aside to tell someone when they came to check on us but it sat on our table for 5-10 minutes until the food runner/busser stopped by to pick up the plates we were finished with, a member of my party told the guy there was a bug in my food, he didn't acknowledge her at all so she told him again and he just ignored it. Our server came by and when she was told about it, she also did nothing. To make it even worse, the temperatures have been cold, no mosquitos flying about, and that means the dead mosquito was on the dirty lettuce that they never cleaned before serving it to us. Mosquitos live off blood and carry diseases. It was just disgusting and unsanitary. I also got short ribs with brussels. The short ribs were half fat that just sat in the middle of my plate, inedible. The brussels were charred so much that all you tasted was burnt, they were literally black. I passed on dessert because I didn't want to know how you could ruin a piece of premade/frozen cake. The service was bad, our server looked irritated to even be helping us at all and gave way better service to the 2 top that she was serving instead of the 9 of us at our table. Our reservation was at 645pm and we didn't leave until 845pm because we waited so long for our food, they didn't bother telling us there was a large party of 25 in the restaurant and we'd be waiting on their orders before we could be served r maybe we would have gotten an extra couple of appetizersto hold us over, instead we sat for 30-40 minutes before the server came over to tell us we were 3 in line to have our food made, whatever that was supposed to mean. If they would've told me when I made the reservation that they had large parties and would be spread thin I could have made reservations elsewhere and actually had a nice Christmas dinner with the rest of my office staff. OVERPRICED AND...

Reserved table same day on Open Table. Got the time I wanted. Seated promptly on patio. Nice table, although extremely hot outside. Ceiling fans helped a little. Water glasses sweated all over the table. Wine was good. Crab cake small but tasty. I especially liked the dipping sauce and tiny little cherry peppers. Although tasty, the Beef carpaccio was disappointing. Very little beef, but a lot of arugula. We had to uncover the beef for the photo. The caprese salad was the worst I’ve ever had. The tomato was pallid and tasteless. I would recommend that the chef find some locally sourced vine ripened or heirloom tomatoes for future. There is just not any excuse for not having a good tomato when it’s August in the South… The scallops were very good and enough for my daughter and I to split (we had two large scallops a piece), and the grits were also good. The chef split the entrée for us and presentation was very nice. Server was mediocre. There were a couple of little things that annoyed me, such as: I asked to have my water glass removed; we were dining outside, and the condensation was running all over the table. He explained to me that it was hot outside and that the glasses do this when it’s hot (isn’t that what I just said). I asked for salt and pepper. He left the salt but not the pepper. He said he couldn’t leave the pepper on the table because of Covid. I guess salt is immune? He apparently didn’t know what an heirloom tomato was; I was hoping that the caprese had heirlooms instead of beefsteak and he said “yes, they are heirlooms”…no, they were not heirlooms (see above review on the caprese). Dinner for two, splitting all the apps and entrée, ran about $140...

I took my wife here for her birthday a couple weeks ago. Have lived in Bluffton for a year now and have always wanted to try this place. Was really looking forward to it. What a mistake. To say our experience was awful would be an understatement! From the get-go it all was bad. We were seated at a tiny two-top. Our waiter brought my $13.00 cocktail, which had so much mixer in it even our waiter questioned it. So that had to be remade. Then my wife ordered her favorite appetizer- shrimp cocktail and that had to be thrown out. It tasted like they were cooked, refrigerated and then warmed up again. Rubbery. We live in one of the best places in the country for shrimp and it was so bad they couldn't even replace it so we had to get a different appetizer. We both ordered the grouper, which our waiter said was their signature dish. When it came out it was nothing like what he had described when asked. My wife's had an ammonia taste, too. It was just average for a $35 entree. He really didn't have a very good grasp of the items on his menu. He really struggled when asked about them. Finally, and I understand that this can happen at any restaurant, a couple with a 2 year old baby was seated right next to us. The child continued to scream through our meal. It was just the icing on the cake, so to speak. We do not spend over $200+ on dinner for the two of us very often so when we do I expect good food AND a trained staff, as well as a nice ambiance. Other than the bad food, untrained staff and rude help,...