Salt Wharf — Restaurant in Camden

We really wanted to love this restaurant when we dined there last night, but it seems the Fates were against us. The food tasted wonderful, but all meals came out lukewarm to cold. For example, the extremely tasty artichoke dip served in a small cast iron pot that was bubbling along the edges, with the cheese topping bubbling on top, were hiding a center that was actually cool! They must have prepared the dip during the day and stored it refrigerated prior to finishing in the oven. Nothing wrong with that, but it just needed more time in the oven which was a shame, as it was a wonderful dish.

The cool food syndrome continued when the prosciutto wrapped asparagus served with a lovely steak and fingerling potatoes came out; the only thing on the plate that was warm were the potatoes. Once it again, it seems that the asparagus were boiled earlier and then stored in the refrigerator prior to being wrapped in the prosciutto, and then put in the oven to finish. Regrettably they were removed to the oven prior to the asparagus actually getting hot. To make matters worse the steak was lukewarm when it came to the table.

And the hits, I mean misses, keep on coming. When a lovely perfect home-made pasta Aglio e Olio came out, the accompanying lobster tail was undercooked. Being 2nd generation Italian American, I was blown away by the pasta, but to see an obviously undercooked lobster tail by virtue of translucent, not solid white flesh, was quite disappointing. For context, I'm the sort of person who likes to see most fish a hair translucent because the sin over overcooked fish is high treason, but this tail had a long way to go before it became rubbery.

I pointed this out to our server and she offered to get me a second tail, which did come out. It was larger, but also a bit undercooked and I was reluctant to point that out also. Based on the lobster tails and the artichoke dip, I don't think there's much temperature checking of items in the kitchen. The server did give me a credit for the lobster tail miss when the bill came, which I appreciated, but it just took away from the perfection of the pasta. It would have been better to forgo that entirely and serve the pasta by itself.

The endgame also had faults, as the banana bread dessert had a burned crust and my double expresso came out nice and hot, but it took so long for my requested sugar and lemon twist to arrive, the coffee had gone cold. On the positive side the berry cobbler a la mode was the only temperature win for the night, bubbling hot and quite delicious.

As I said earlier, all the dishes tasted wonderful, but serving them at improper temperatures really jaded the entire evening. It just seemed that the kitchen was lacking harmony last night, and a big let down considering it was an 84 mi round trip for us to dine there. It will be quite some time before we come around for...

I was horribly disappointed by salt warf. I went with my sister and we sat on the roof. We were first disappointed that the dinner menu for the restaurant was not available on a Tuesday and it was only super casual food (okay for her as she was excited for the burger!) I’m a vegetarian and found it challenging to find anything of interest. We shared the hummus and it was chunky and came with only a couple veggies including some horribly slimey cucumbers. Okay at this point I just ate it and didn’t complain because I was hungry! (Also both of our courses were brought to the table on our right before they said it wasn’t theirs and then they went back to the kitchen and came to us… okay once but twice?? Come on. )

After sitting for an hour our mains arrived at the table. I got the salad with no bacon and my sister got the burger MED RARE. Which the waitress did not ask how we wanted cooked I had to say my sisters preference as she was trying to walk away. The burger was burnt to a crisp. The couple at the table to our left had the exact same problem. They were able to flag down the waitress before us and told her not only about their burger but also ours. The waitress was sweet and apologized a lot and brought her manager over. The manager was not friendly. She did not bother with us (the two girls in their 20s) and only talked to the middle age couple and was honestly pretty rude to them trying to say the char was actually just the bacon jam. The manager didn’t even engage with us just gave a quick “sorry!” As she walked by. Following this encounter the couple got their entire meal covered by the restaurant. Listen I’m not looking for a free meal, I’ll pay for what I eat but why are you covering a meal with the exact same stuff and problem and not ours? I felt like we didn’t matter and they clearly did not care. My sister and I both work in restaurants myself in Boston and my sister in Vermont, we have never seen such horrible management and ageism

If you’re going to go here only go for a drink. And don’t be surprised if you wait forever to be taken care of!

Also we were a reservation and got a table right next to the bathroom while we watched a walk in get a table right on the edge with a view… probably because they were older and appeared...

The rooftop is first come first serve. I would not recommend dining here. We came for dinner on August 12 due to the views and good reviews, however we left very disappointed. The 1 star is mainly due to the fact that it took us 2.5 hours to get our food. We never were given water and had to sit most of the night with the prior guests dishes and empty glasses still on the table. We also never received any napkins, so I had to go up to the bar to ask for some.

It seems this is a staffing issue. Everyone seemed to be waiting a while for service. The waitstaff looked visibly exhausted and overwhelmed. There was no bar back or bus people, or food runners so the waitstaff was doing everything. They couldn’t keep up. After a peek in the kitchen, there seemed to be only one person cooking. This may just be the experience on the rooftop, so maybe it’s different in the dining room.

Advice to management- if you are having staffing issues, you should probably make this rooftop reservation only and limit the # of tables that you make available. We spent the better part of our entire Saturday night here and still left hungry. We ended up deciding we’d invested enough time here and wouldn’t be worth it to put more food in. We decided to close out and find somewhere else to eat, and landed at Cuzzys, which also left much to be desired. Overall a flop of a night.

On a more positive note, the drinks and food were quite good. The waiting hours for them was the...