Pier 88 Boiling Seafood & Bar Chattanooga — Restaurant in Chattanooga

This review was severely shortened because I went over the character limit. See the full review on Yelp under 'Michael J'

Dinner took about 30 plus minutes to come out after we got the apps. Those that ordered the boil got bibs, but the server forgot the gloves and didn't ever bring any back. All the silverware is plastic, except for the crackers for the crab legs, but they didn't seem to want to give them out willingly. We had to request them after our server came back to see how dinner was. Also, our server 'passed' these items down the table. We had a party of 9, and it wasn't like here's all the forks. She handed each set of silverware individually. The bibs were passed out the same way as well as our dinners, and I assume the gloves would have been too if we ever got them. The boil items are presented to you tied in a bag on basically a pizza platter with a shallow edge. I can't say if it's better to try and untie the bag and dump it out, or just cut the bag open with your plastic knife. Either way it gets messy..but that's what the bibs and gloves are for. Truthfully, if you ever traveled to the East or West Coast and had fresh caught seafood, this place will leave you disappointed. If you aren't disappointed, then odds are you haven't had decent seafood. I suggest planning a trip next summer, then you will see what I mean. We finished dinner and our server presented a small cake and had a few other servers sing Happy Birthday (this was one of the reasons for the get together) but as 2 of the servers waited to sing, they were complaining about one of the female supervisors... and they were not really quiet about it. We ate our desserts and went to settle our checks, when a female supervisor came over to announce the credit card was declined. Not decreetly either. Several minutes later we were informed the payment server was offline and they were rebooting it. Fine. She took our card and went back to run it again. * 20 minutes later * I hunt down the female supervisor who still has my card and am told the system still isn't working. She offered to write the credit card info on a piece of paper to run it later so we could leave. Really? I ask to speak to the manager and was pointed to a small office to the right of the kitchen. I told him I have been waiting almost 30 minutes just to pay my bill and ask if they have a manual system to process cards. He never really answered me, just kept trying to reboot the modem. He pushed past me to go to a register to watch the female supervisor try my card again (this time one someone else's check) and it failed. They run to another system with my card and not saying what they are doing. I just saw them run around a corner with my card. I quickly followed and it still didn't work. Finally the manager tells the female supervisor to comp the check, though I wish he told me directly since I was 4 feet behind him. He just walked back into his office. It really aggravated me that he wouldn't address me directly. No apology, nothing. I worked retail and restaurants before, I know it can be stressful, but that is no excuse to act that way toward customers. What's even worse, I think he was the franchise owner. We sat down at our table at 630pm. Checks presented about 840pm. At 935pm we stepped out of Pier 88 for the first,...

This was AMAZING. I can not believe this restaurant was in Chattanooga, TN. It felt like I was in Florida. No joke. We had onion rings and fried crawfish tails as our appetizers. Those were the BEST onion rings I've ever had in my life--perfectly crispy, yet melt-in-your mouth. We dipped them in Ranch dressing. Delicious. The fried crawfish tails were perfectly crispy, as well. It came with some creamy Cajun sauce. Delicious. My daughter had the fried catfish poboy. She loved it and ate every single bite. She said the bread was just right--not too much and it was chewy in a good way. Her regular fries were some of the best fries I've ever had, hands down. My son had the oyster poboy with Cajun fries and he loved it. I had the fried oyster basket from the lunch menu and it was only $7! The oysters were cooked perfectly...as good as any fried oysters I've ever had in Florida. I got the sweet potato fries with mine. They ended up being shaped like waffle fries. Usually, I don't like sweet potato fries that are waffle cut, but these were really good. They didn't have a lot of sweet potato flavor, which was fine. What they did have was a lot of crisp. Delicious. Even after they cooled down and we're just room temperature, they were still good. My husband got the shrimp and crab leg boil with potatoes and corn on the cob and sausage. He got the signature Pier 88 flavored seasoning. DELICIOUS flavor. He gave me the crab from his King crab legs. UNBELIEVABLE. BEST CRAB LEGS I'VE EVER HAD. SERIOUSLY. Then I had the key lime pie. It was not my favorite. It had a great flavor, but there was very little crust. I like a lot of graham cracker crust. My kids got the chocolate molten cake. It was delicious. If they had served it with a scoop of ice cream, then it would have been almost as good as the chocolate molten cake at Chili's. My husband got the raspberry cheesecake, but it wasn't really cheesecake. It was mostly cake with a little thin layer of cheesecake. He didn't like it. The service was excellent. The atmosphere and decor were very pleasant and comfortable. All in all, that was some of the best seafood we've ever had outside of Florida. It's my new favorite restaurant. However, I won't order dessert there again because they just weren't my favorite. Bottom line....this is a GEM in a strip mall next to Best Buy on Gunbarrel Rd in Chattanooga, TN. We LOVED it. By the way, they give a military...

The first time we came everything was great so naturally we were excited to come back. This time the experience has been less than great. We were seated and waited about 10 minutes to have someone talk to us. Carol, a bus person, got our drinks. We waited about 15 more minutes and as we were getting ready to leave, Carol noticed that we still hadn’t got served. Carol got the manager over to us to be served. The manager, Kim, scolded Carol in front of us and a couple other tables for getting our drinks because if we have drinks then she thinks we’ve gotten served. Kim apologized and said that they just opened and they are still trying to work out the kinks. Our food came out in a timely manner and it was delivered by the manager. The manager asked if we needed anything else. We asked for cocktail sauce and never received it. The manager only stopped by for a couple seconds about 20 minutes after our food arrived and my fiancé didn’t even get a refill on his drink. When my fiancée was eating his shrimp, he noticed that it wasn’t cleaned properly. He brought this to the attention of the manager and Kim told us “ Our cooks come in two hours early so just one vein is not that bad”. That one vein could get someone sick and for Kim to say it in a disrespectful way is extremely rude. My fiancé even brought it up quietly so that others wouldn’t hear that there was shrimp poop in the food and cause them to leave and she gave that nonchalant attitude. We had to wait another 20 minutes or so just to get our checks. This experience wasn’t as good as the first time. The grand opening is tomorrow and they are still trying to work out the kinks. If this is how the experience is going to be then the store is going to be in trouble. The only good thing from this experience is that a bus person noticed we hadn’t been served and went above and beyond to get our drinks and try to get us served. Normally I wouldn’t review a restaurant unless it was great but 3 other tables had the same issue we did. I understand that it’s a soft opening; however, if this is how guests are being treated before the grand opening then I wouldn’t recommend coming here until all the kinks are worked out in a couple months. We both have worked in the restaurant industry and management issues like this destroy...