Fish Tale Grill — Restaurant in Cape Coral

It’s extremely disappointing when we go out on date night, drive 30 minutes to get to our favorite restaurant and have a terrible food experience. We willingly and happily spend hundreds of dollars on food and cocktails every time we go and for this, one would expect that we can be kind to the staff and still be heard when we voice a concern.

We discovered fish tail about 5 years ago and we fell in love with the place. Great place for a date night. Two of our favorite things about fish tail has always been the oysters Rockefeller and the captain feast for 2. Along with that we love the live music on the patio. Fishtail is a pretty long drive for us considering we live on the north side of Cape, but we made it a point to start going about once every two month, sometimes more frequently and sometimes a little less frequently. Unfortunately, I do believe it has come to an end and we will not be going back.

I will start with the Oysters Rockefeller . This dish is kind of a hard thing to find, not very many restaurants make them and therefor if we see it on the menu at any restaurant , we will give it a try. The first time we did about five years ago, there was four of them in the appetizer serving. The dish included an oyster baked with spinach, bacon, cheese, and then to add a twist they put a fried oyster on top of it. Absolutely delightful and we were 100% certain at that point we would return. After a couple years, they reduce the serving to three, we were slightly upset with this because of course the price remained the same but inflation sucks for everyone so we understood. We loved it so much that we just started ordering two orders of them and this often was accompanied by a shared main dish. About six weeks ago we went to the restaurant on date night, ordered just one order of the OR, and to our surprise, they had just stuffed the whole shell full of spinach and put a fried oyster on top. We told the waiter that there had been a mistake and he proceeded to tell us that’s the way they had always been prepared. I didn’t wanna make it argumentative and uncomfortable, so I politely said no sir, I’m pretty certain this is incorrect. He said he would go talk to the kitchen and return to tell me yes that’s the way the dish is made. Now considering at this point, I’ve been coming to the restaurant for five years, I’m going to guess that I’ve had this dish 25 times, could be more or could be less. Regardless, I did not dig my heels in and say that because I did not want to get confrontational and potentially ruin date night. Plus, we had the captains feast on the way.

The Captains feast is kind of like a seafood tower and it is often on the specials menu. I will say we’ve not had this as much as the oysters Rockefeller, but it’s certainly close. It’s a fun dish and what makes it a fun dish is that it changes slightly each time you eat it. You usually get lobster, Alaskan and snow crab, fried fish, cocktail shrimp, and from there maybe some ahi tuna, coconut shrimp, scallops, tons of possibilities. All the portions that evening were significantly reduced, but even with that the most disappointing thing was that the fried fish this time was salmon. It was not good and I can only imagine that it was getting ready to go bad in their kitchen and they came up with this idea to fry it.

We didn’t even bother saying anything because nobody wants to be told they’re wrong about the appetizer and then complain about the main dish. You’re just gonna look like you’re being petty. So we paid the bill and left, tipped the band $20 and requested a song from them. We walked down the ramp and danced on the sidewalk till the song was nearly over. We got in the car both realizing what had just happened, this was likely our last time eating...

Love coming here. BUT… we went here Saturday 8/17/24 celebrating a birthday. A lovely manager or hostess sat us and asked us what we’d like to drink. Within a minute or two she brought our drink orders out, sold us on the fish special and said our server would be with us soon. That was the highlight of the night sadly. About 15 minutes went by with absolutely no attention when an employee stopped and said “Hi I’m Jamie and I’ll be taking care of you, are you ready to order?” Wow. Are we in a rush Jamie to take care of the bigger table or more important guests. We ordered and asked for bread and another round of drinks. And we waited. And we waited and waited. A food runner came out with our orders followed by Jamie, the bread and our drinks then she disappeared. I asked the runner for parmesan cheese for my pasta dish. And I waited and I waited. He finally looked at me as if to say…”oops, forgot”. Shortly after he brought out a generous side of cheese for me and apologized for the wait. Didn’t have the heart to tell him my pasta was cold now. Had Jamie stopped by to ask how things were I might have told her but alas… No sign of her. So I ate some of my cold pasta. Finally we were done. Drinks empty, empty plates and still no sign of Jamie. Finally Jamie showed up and I was the only one who needed a take home box. A few minutes went by and Jamie tosses the box and a bag on the empty chair for me and walked away. Ok, by now you get the point. The service was absolutely horrible. Jamie was inattentive and not organized as I watched her, hoping she’d come to our table as she doted on more important guests. So the third and final Jamie sighting is when she brought and collected the bill. We were guests so I didn’t complain but had I been paying the tab, I would have not only discussed how displeased we were with the service and definitely not left a gratuity. Sadly it was evident Jamie has no idea how to read her customers and know something maybe amiss. She was more worried about a large table behind us and other guests. On a bright note: the food was amazing. Though cold, my order tasted great, would’ve been better had I been able to start eating it hot off the grill… my partner and our hostess had the TripleTail special and there wasn’t a crumb left on their plates. Which was why I didn’t say anything only to find out later my partner, whose birthday we were celebrating notified management about how disappointed he was with the service, went to use the restroom. We will definitely be back but will be sure to ask that Jamie not be our server. Very very disappointed and embarrassed as I was the one who suggested this venue for a special occasion and had the experience we had. So to Jamie, thank you for ruining our...

We arrived here and decided to eat inside as it was super hot outside. We were seated immediately. We had a party of 4 and a 5th was supposed to arrive later. (I guess another group was complaining because we got the table they wanted.)

It wasn't super busy and obviously no wait but still doing OK business for a Thursday in off season.

We had the margaritas (it was Cinco de Mayo). They were Bogo for $9 I think. Not wonderful and we only did one round.

I ordered Lunguine with clams. It was bland. My brother ordered lobster ravioli which had large scallops in it (not in description and he does not like scallops). My one sister ordered a salad and some sort of spicy shrimp. She said the shrimp was ok. She sent the salad back 2xs because there were tomatoes (which was not in the description). I can't remember what my other sister ordered, but she didn't like it. I also ordered the lobster bisque. It was clumpy and bland. My brother did say he enjoyed the clam chowder.

Our waiter was enthusiastic but would disappear for very long periods and once we got our food he was a ghost. Turns out their AC was broken just that morning and I was hotter than could be. I remember walking in thinking it wasn't much cooler than outside, but didn't think anything of it. I think we even said something to hostess to effect that we didn't want outside because it was hot. Would have been nice to be informed.

So this is a very busy area of Cape Coral and parking is not easy. We were dropped off and my brother parked the car.

This was a monumental disappointment. This was the first time I had been out for adult time without my 2.5 year old. I was looking for good food, drinks and not sweating like I'm in Florida 🤣. I definitely will not visit again because of this experience, parking in this area is very difficult, and it is a good 25 to 30 minutes from my house.

Pictures of linguine with clams, lobster bisque and bread with sun dried tomatoes (Not a fan of the butter but i...