Oceana Restaurant & Bistro — Restaurant in Charlotte Amalie

Mostly good food and service is meh...

I was pretty excited about coming here. My Queen and I coming to this island for the first time and having very good food at our resort - I was ready to be blown away!

We were running a little late but I called and updated our arrival time. We were only 30 mins late and the front end manager, who was seating us, thanked us for the call. We were sat first with another party of 4 sat right behind us. Our server went to them first, chatted a little bit, took their drink orders, and told us he'll be back.

Something in that tone and the way about it left us feeling a bit shunned.

Observing the interactions with other tables this seems like a place that a lot of "regulars" come to. The friendly interaction with those other tables was obvious. While my lady and I are both over 45 yrs old and professional people - there must have been something about how we look that gave caution to easy agreeable consideration by the service staff.

To be honest, and I hate to go here, but I am a white male and my spouse is a black female. It's the only thing I can think of. Because the other tables had the visuals of a real life Polo catalog or for the troupe of twenty somethings there were received with adulation after the Abercrombie catalog shoot they must have come from - the whole vibe was different for us.

The waiter a bit short with my wife and a little impatient with me - it begins to add up. We ordered a starter to split and when the runner delivered it - she said "I'll be back with A spoon" - I replied with "two please"...The body language and look on her face was more like "How dare you".

The basil risotto was absolutely fantastic - five stars The local lobster tail - five stars Mahi Mahi.....well....it was served rare. I asked if that was normal for Mahi (which I knew it wasn't) and they came and grabbed my plate. The manager apologized and they cooked my piece a little longer - after I ate the cooked parts.

I mean - I'm not a food waste guy but for the level of restaurant this is - or wants to be (James Beard vibes) - I would have thought they would have re-fired the whole dish but.... The re-plated on clean china and brought out the mostly done fish - two stars.

To make up for it they said they wanted to buy us a round of drinks - so we re-upped on what we had.

My wife and I are professional airline pilots and so we eat out and hotel - A LOT! This wasn't a work trip - this was get-a-way pleasure for us.

Final thoughts: The restaurant is beautifully situated overlooking the water. The food was good - really good but a $200 dinner for two with service that smacks of arrogance because we don't look like we just jumped off our yacht.....meh - we'll keep it moving next time. Oh yeah BALCK PEOPLE have money...

We had the absolute worst experience. I know this is a long review but I feel that it depicts our complete experience.

Check-in. When we arrived for our 8pm reservation (that I made exactly 30 days in advance), the host was abrupt with stating “we have you sitting in the bistro tonight. We have no table available for you in the main dining room. This is why I attempted to reach you this afternoon over the telephone.” After I expressed my concern, she was able to find a table. After waiting 30 minutes, we were sat at 8:30pm.

Drinks. My partner ordered the cucumber infused gin cocktail and said that it was very tasty. I ordered the habanero pineapple margarita. 5 minutes later, the host returned to let me know that they were out of the habanero infused tequila for the evening. I ordered a glass of their champagne ($19/glass is a pretty good price) and it was also tasty. I like trying new champagnes and this was one that I had never heard of it.

Food. They were out of EVERYTHING that I had wanted. They were out of the special offering lobster dinner, lobster tail add-on, scallops, and red snapper. There were several other things that they were out of as well. My partner ordered the tuna tartare and shrimp apps. The shrimp app was tasty but the tuna tartare was brown. I ordered the substitute mahi (for the red snapper) and it was pretty good (although not local). When we sat down at 8:30pm, we were starving. We tried to order bread with our water but was told that everything has to be ordered at the same time and that they would course it out. Needless to say, our bread arrived after our entrees.

Service. Our waiter was kind and attentive until the end when he became short with us. The manager did stop by to apologize for our experience. She took off the bread and also added $24 in concessions. When the bill was presented, I asked that the tuna tartare be removed from the bill as my partner did not eat it (he told them it was bad when the remainder of the food was collected). We were told that we had waited too long (at the end of our meal) to mention this and that they were not going to remove it. The waiter even checked with the manager about this. After further pressing this (emphasizing that the tuna was brown and just bad), the tuna tartare was removed.

We were so disappointed in our visit as the restaurant came recommended by friends and online. I would not visit this restaurant with high expectations. I just wanted the experience I had hoped for and not the discounted items. We were given many excuses for why our experience did not meet expectations; at the end of the day, the restaurant let us down...

We had a very enjoyable dinner at Oceana while on a recent trip to St. Thomas, USVI. We arrived a bit early for our reservation, so we sat at the bar and enjoyed a cocktail until our table was ready. Oceana is a very cool location, and beautiful house right on the bay, great views, especially during the day. The staff was very friendly, the service crisp, and the fare very good!

At the bar we started with cocktails, the "O" and a sunset martini. The "O" is the house signature cocktail, a combination of house-infused pineapple rum, ginger, lime juice, coconut cream and pineapple juice. Delicious and refreshing! The sunset martini is a tasty blend of vodka, Chambord, citrus, candied lemon and a sugar rim. A nice way to start the evening! Once seated, after another cocktail, we opted for a nice bottle of white wine, Lenda Albarino. It was a good wine that paired well with our food selections.

We ordered and shared two salad, the beet escabeche and the house special grilled peach salad. The beet salad included several varieties of beets, on a bed of goat cheese, adorned with spicy arugula, and rimmed with a raspberry balsamic reduction and EVOO. Very tasty. The grilled peach salad featured bibb lettuce, honey whipped goat cheese, candied pecans, a balsamic reduction, and EVOO. Very good salad, our favorite of the two.

For our main course, we opted for the bouillabaisse, which was a prefect size for sharing. The soup included lobster tail, clams, mussels, shrimp, fresh fish, a very tasty broth and toasted bread on the side. It was a very good dish, and perfect for using the bread to soak up the sauce at the end. For dessert we shared two scoops of cookies and cream ice cream and the trio of sorbets. Both were good, we liked the ice cream a lot! Homemade, creamy and deelish!

It was a good dinner, paced well, and worth the visit. The setting is delightful, and we'd recommend just stopping by for a drink is you're not able to...