Aqua Terra Bistro — Restaurant in Buford

TL;DR - The current owners will be able to ignore the complaints I outlined for about 12-18 months without a dip in reservations & revenue until they hit that turnover point where people who primarily go here once or twice a year for special occasions have either one bad experience, or two in a row & won't only stop going there, but will be writing reviews like this, at which point the restaurant will have to be sold, or be faced with trying to make so many abrupt changes in such a short period of time, that it won't make a difference at that point.

Detailed review below:

This is a place my wife & I have been to several times over the years. Whether it was just the two of us, or with another couple. In my opinion, it has gone from an actual fine dining restaurant to ... well ... an overpriced casual dining restaurant, wrapped in a shell of what it formerly was, gouging it's customers along the way, & at the same rate prices are going up, the experience & quality are going in the opposite direction down.

For starters, while you're technically eating at a restaurant that has tablecloths on the tables, the cloths are covered with brown paper. Granted it's a thick brown paper, but it's the kind of visual that you would expect to see at a place that would serve you a crab boil. So it's obviously done as some sort of mechanism to save money on having to clean the linens are regularly as they should. Given that it looks like they just literally took the entire menu & added a flat 50%+ from what it was two years ago, which I'll cover more below, there is clearly no excuse to be eating off of brown paper for your wedding anniversary when entrees are $50+/each.

From there, it seems either the owners got rid of any of the previous staff, or maybe the previous staff all saw the massive drop & quality & left on their own. Not 100% sure, but I didn't recognize any of the staff there, where I had previously, which by itself is fine, but the waiter we had lacked familiarity with the menu at some points, & with a pair of black & white converse shoes, continued to permeate the feel in combination with the brown paper that I wasn't eating at a fine dining establishment, despite definitely paying the fine dining prices.

For price comparison sake, the crab cakes in September of 2021 were $22 for a half order, & $28 for a full order. At that time, it was accompanied with a tomato cucumber salad, corn succotash, & passion fruit honey mustard. Now of course a restaurant can change these items to keep things fresh, but now the crab cakes are stacked on a lump of rice, & you get 5 little plantains, for a total of $40. To me, it's a lot less fresh, cheaper ingredients, at a higher price. But as outlined above, if you increase $28 by 50%, it's $42, so basically a 50% increase.

Same could be said for the pan roasted halibut. Used to be $36, a 50% increase would be $54, & wouldn't you know it it's $55 now. It's all pretty much the same.

Aside from that, the last bit I would mention on the food is the "Wild Seabass Gochugaru Yakisoba" "special" leaves a lot to be desired. There is very little seabass, & underneath it, the noodles & all the vegetables are excessively covered/soaked by the "yakisoba sauce", which based on the taste must be a fancy way of saying soy sauce, & it was incredibly salty. It was closer to a soup than a meal. You couldn't taste anything but the sauce.

Now your instinct might be to blame things like inflation for these prices, but if you look around at other fine dining places, there may be some who have done the same thing, but I haven't come across them yet, at least not at this scale. For comparison the place we considered as an alternative to Aqua Terra this year was Rumi's Kitchen. Obviously a different type of food, but a fine dining competitor none-the-less. In the last 2 years, their prices have gone up ... 5% for entries ( $35-$37 for the Shrimp Kabob ) , & 10% on appetizers, where a small price change on a cheaper priced items yields a...

My wife and I have been to Aqua Terra 5 times before. It's been about a year though since our last time. I thought awhile about writing this review, but what finally sealed it for me was that I needed to say something because eating out has become so expensive and when a restaurant commands prices such as $60 for a Filet (steak), $30 for shrimp and grits and $30 for fried chicken, it better be good.

I'll start by saying something positive and that is that our server, Jenny was attentive, friendly and responsive. No issues there.

Now for the food. I ordered the Filet Conserva (the $60 steak). I ordered it medium. And I confirmed with the server what medium is so we were both on the same page. Well, the steak was mostly medium-well in the middle and then well to very-well as I worked out from the center of the steak. Flavor was ok, but nothing that would differentiate it from a $30 Filet at one of any steak chain restaurants you can name (not an exaggeration). And it came to the table just warm. I'm not being critical or mean, that is just how it tasted. I was very disappointed and I debated about saying something, but I did not. I didn't eat all day and it was already 8:00pm. Normally I would have given them another shot, but our reservation was in the evening and we had to wait on our son to get there. He was about 40-min away.

My wife ordered the shrimp and grits. Big disappointment here too. Couple things. First, the grits and overall flavor was VERY bland and the grits didn't seem to have any consistency. It seemed more like shrimp and mush. The shrimp were small and there were 7 of them in there. They tasted pretty good. My wife ate the shrimp and left the goop, I mean grits.

Lastly, my son ordered the Fried Chicken. He said that was great. Some of the best fried chicken he's ever had. For $30 it should be. He was happy with it so kudos to the chef for that dish.

My wife and I also had lobster bisque. It was good, but needed more sherry flavor. We love lobster bisque and there are some other area restaurants that offer it and it is better.

We ended up getting out of there spending just under $240.00. Very disappointed to have come away with such a bad experience. Unfortunately we'll be crossing off Aqua Terra from our list of...

A VERY LATE BUT OVERDUE UPDATE! The team at Aqua Terra is incredible. We went back for a second time for valentine's day. And our service was incredible and my goodness the food! The food was AMAZING!!!! NO WORDS CAN DO JUSTICE! But I have to say Aqua Terra literally went above and beyond to make sure we had a better experience the second time around but they also were all in on a secret that I had no clue about. They literally brought my engagement ring out on a dessert plate while my husband is proposing and it was absolutely gorgeous ! My now husband had everything lined up and Aqua Terra literally went above and beyond! We're so grateful for this place and we will be back every year for valentine's day! We are obsessed!

Last night my boyfriend and I came into Aqua Terra for the first time. We did not make a reservation so we ended up waiting for two bar seats to open up. After 10 min a couple got up and we were able to sit down. We waited 20 min before one of the bartenders finally spoke to us not to even give us a menu or take our drink order. Not to mention that the previous guest drinks, silverware, and napkins were all still in front of us. We weren't on a time crunch but we were completely forgotten about. I had a glass of wine and wasn't even offered a glass of water when all the other customers had a glass of water with their drinks it's a small thing but at the same time it is a given when you're having a drink. When our food came out mine was slightly cold and his was also and it tasted great but we didn't bother to even ask anyone because we felt like we were an inconvenience but we knew it would take forever. Also the previous guest drinks, silverware ,mess, etc. was still right in front of us the entire time. The sever asked if I would like another glass of wine and I said yes and never received one. Then it took 30 min for us to get someone to acknowledge us that we would like a dessert to go and the check. Never got the dessert because it was never put in until we reminded the server. To spend 140 dollars and receive the absolute worst service and food to be cold is not fun date night. Wish we could have had a...