Zola's on the Water — Restaurant in Brookings

So we have tried the food twice being new to Brookings, and the pizza is good, atmosphere (aside from Covid) is fun, and the people are nice, but that's where it ends.

We realize we are dealing with the Covid debacle, but tonight was everything but smooth. After reserving dinner time, we waited in our car for about 40 minutes, and that's understand able. Then finally got the coldest table outside, which was fine as we accepted it, but after getting the menu, we waiting in line again to order (now this was 3 times waiting in line).

Hostess was very nice, but when we were seated, we were told we'd get the next table under the heater. When the patrons were finished under the heater, some guys just walked in, sat down at the table that we were advised we'd get. I believe the wait staff knew as they never came back....

Some might say this is trivial, BUT it clearly was not smooth operation, and what topped it, when the food came, no one came back to the table to see if we needed anything else, we wanted another beer and more wine. Sorry, we were just underwelmed with this place, after 2 tries. # stars is a good score for Zolas.

Sorry, other places in the area do a lot better at all aspects.

Disappointed

Update July 24, 2023

Failed again, and we supported them!

When we first moved to Brookings, we tried all of the places for food. Pretty limited as we’re small town, and it’s mostly casual dinning. In 2020, Zolas failed, but that “was” during COVID, so later we tried it again (after 3 tries) and they redeemed themselves. Great location, nice setting, decent bar. It was one of our top 3, and we took all of our guest there. But they recently updated their menu, and now they can’t get the food out to you. Most of the servers are great, but chances they’re going to jump ship if the kitchen management doesn’t get it together. We saw people come and go, and our food no showed. I will say, nearly 1.5 hours later, the pizza and pasta dishes were good. My food was over cooked, the wife’s food was mediocre, and the manager, well our comments to him fell on deaf ears. It was like talking to a manikin. Sorry, what should be one of the best places in...

This is the third time attempting to give Zola's, yet another, chance to redeem themselves, but they, once again, failed...

We took our two children to eat an early dinner this last Saturday, 9/16/23, and stood at the front desk/check-area for three minutes before an annoyed-looking young lady sauntered up. She did not say anything to us, did not introduce herself, but just looked at us. I'm assuming she was counting in her head, because she began grabbing regular menus. I told her we had a party of four and would like two children's menus. She seated us right behind the check-in area, by the window. She never said a word to us, didn't smile, or engage in any type of small talk.

We began looking at our menus, and it appears as though they have raised their prices on every menu item by, at least, $2-$4!!! A lady came up about three minutes later and asked if we would like anything to drink, we gave her our drink order: soda for the children, drinks from the bar for us adults. Another 5 minutes passes, and a different lady came up, and told us that she was taking over as our waitress and asked if we wanted anything to drink. Again, we gave her our drink order. A few minutes passed and a young man brought the sodas for the children, asked if we (the adults) would like anything to drink, and stated that he would be taking over from the previous lady as our waiter. We explained to him that we had already given our drink order, to which he replied, "they didn't put any drinks in for you two."

After already experiencing poor service within the first 20 minutes, we chose to pick up and go to Fat Irish across the way. We were met with friendly, smiling faces, seated promptly, given drinks right away, and the food was hot, tasty, and quick.

We will not be eating at...

Our experience was not great, but there were some positives. It is a nice place to watch the boats, listen to live music and their z-sticks were delicious. Unfortunately, the good did not outweigh the bad and we won't be back. First, we were put on the waiting list with a half hour wait, which wasn't a problem at all. After over a half hour, my husband checked and they had crossed our name off the list. No call, nothing (we were told we would be called since waiting inside was cramped). They were nice and we know mistakes happen and they said we would be seated right away. It is just hard because we have our toddler daughter and she was basically hangry by that point (luckily not to the inconvenience of others, just to us being clingy and whiny). If this were it, then no biggie, but our food was not great and we waited quite a while to be served,had to ask for refills and for our check. I have never had to ask for our check before and we are usually really patient people. My salad was full of old lettuce and the bases of the romaine stalks and I mean the very base(the hard white circle part). I picked two of those out and half of the lettuce was just not edible (pink spots, lots of just hard white spots and wilted pieces). My husbands pizza seemed like it was not fresh and I am not sure why. We couldn't pinpoint it, but it just was not good. The z-sticks were great and fresh, so we compared to that. Our daughters grilled cheese was really good (I ended up eating some of that). Overall, just a disappointing experience and not worth the trip or the cost.We don't go out to eat often and when we do we like to pick places that have been highly recommended to us with great food and Zola's fell way short of the...