Boat House — Restaurant in California

My husband and I drove to Crescent City for our anniversary celebration and decided to have dinner at what we thought was the Boat House Restaurant we once knew.

It was no longer the clean, beautiful and wonderful restaurant we had been to in the past. It changed ownership and the food was now Asian ( mostly sushi ) cuisine.

We decided to give it a try so we ordered the pork dumplings and fried vegetable spring rolls as appetizers. He then ordered his sushi and I ordered the chicken chow mein for our dinner. Everything was random on that menu and over priced.

As soon as the appetizers came out they looked like store bought, frozen food section slop. My husband broke open the “egg roll, water oozed out and the inside was mush. The dumplings were coated in old grease and stiff.

He ate one dumpling and a half of one of the egg rolls because they were gross 🤢. Our main came out and as soon as the chow mein was placed on the table it smelled rancid! It looked like it had been mangled, mauled and spoiled. The color was a soft yellow with small flecks of what looked like tiny pieces of “chicken”. My husband took one small bite and spit it out! It was AWFUL! So in disgust we told the waiter quietly at our table we didn’t not want any of the food it was not good.

This waiter (which you could tell they are all family in there except one of the waitresses) makes a HUGE scene in the restaurant! He called who I assume was his mom over (she did not speak English) and started yelling in their language. We got up and tried to explain why we didn’t not want to eat their food and they kept yelling at us. My husband went to the register and said we will pay for the appetizers and our drinks but not the chow mein.

I can’t even make this up the “waiter” then goes in the main dining area starts flaring his arms around and Yelling how we were trying to not pay them and he was threatening us and saying he was going to call the cops! I stood there in disbelief since I am actually a chef who went to the BEST culinary school in America and trained with some of the best chefs. This should be shut down and the health board will be getting a call.

We ended up paying for all of it even though we did not eat it and as I was leaving they yelled bye Karen!

I am not a “Karen” and actually a very nice, chill person but ok thanks for trying to give us food poisoning and making a huge scene in your restaurant.

Seriously DO NOT go in the bathrooms either unless you’re up to date on your vaccines and tetanus shot. It was horrific.

DO NOT Recommend this...

We went to the Boat House recently to have dinner to celebrate an occasion. We had never been there before and the reviews and menu looked inviting. Unfortunately the experience we had was not as inviting.

Walking up the stairs to the waiting area we notice there are several parties that haven't been seated yet. It was dinner rush and they were definitely having a busy, potentially short staffed night so I was not concerned at that point. I'm generally okay with waiting for a good experience. However the sour mood of the guests ahead of us would end up being true for us too. The host staff was disorganized without any system of tracking the guests waiting for tables.

While waiting I notice two dishes of sushi sitting on the counter. 10-15 minutes go by, and as we're still waiting for a table, the sushi on the counter is also waiting for its table. The server brings 2 more dishes from the kitchen, picks up the sushi and takes it away to the table. I'm no kitchen expert, but watching food come out inconsistently like that is definitely a red flag. My wife also noticed a really suspiciously fishy odor in the restaurant. Red flag.

We are finally seated in a tucked away corner, given a menu and water, and that was the last we saw of the wait staff. By this point our expectations got even lower and our patience wore thin. While we were waiting for a our waiter I noticed that very few tables had food. Maybe 2 tables that I could see actually had food. After 20 minutes of waiting, we got up and left. It takes quite a bit for me to get up and leave a restaurant, something I very rarely do.

Maybe this was just an off night for the Boat House. I see quite a bit of good reviews, but also a good amount of poor reviews. Maybe there was staffing issues and circumstances we weren't aware of.

Unfortunately, there was no part of this experience that encouraged me to try again another day. I would love to support this local business, but in its current state I can say that we will not...

I will preface with that it is a holiday. We were hungry for lunch and went in because the parking lot was not packed. (Funny enough, it got busy while we were waiting for our food)

The restaurant was upstairs, and I didn't see an elevator option.

The lady who greeted us was nice and bubbly. She brought us to our table and gave us our menus. They brought out waters a short while later. It was good-tasting water- no chemical/chlorine flavor. They had Coke products for their soda. There was a huge drink/wine list.

The food - Japanese, Seafood boil, with a smattering of American options.

The wait was a while to be able to order and it ended up with another lady as our server. She was initially pretty cheery then as things got busy, she became impersonal. She didn't give us straws for the waters only the sodas. We had to ask for extra napkins. My chopsticks with my sushi, I opened them and they were broken. (The server didn't check in on us after the food came)

We ordered a dessert, specifically asking for it to be brought out before the food- because we like to make sure we have room for the dessert- it came out at the end of the meal. Fried Bananas- so good.

The sushi was great. Fresh with a beautiful presentation. The teriyaki chicken was so good. The pineapple rice was good.

The decor was minimal. Roof repairs were apparent. The bathrooms were squished but clean. The noise level got loud, as it's basically just one big room. The view- because you're upstairs you can see the jetty & South...