Millie's Restaurant & Catering — Restaurant in Daytona Beach Shores

This was the second time at Millie's for us. It's a really small little restaurant, so reservations are best if you want to go. We really went back for the food. But I will give a shout out to the one server we've had there twice now - Leighanne - she's a really nice person and we enjoyed visiting with her again on our visit back tonight. But other than Leighanne and the one girl (didn't get her name and they don't wear nametags) that greeted us when we walked in, all of the other people that we saw working in the restaurant seemed very unhappy. The guy who I believe to actually be the host (and he was there the last time up front too), acts ok, but he never greeted us or thanked us for coming when we left or anything. Tonight he mostly only spoke with one man who was seated at the bar the entire time we were in the restaurant. The restaurant would serve themselves well - in such a small location - if that person made sure to walk around and check on people occasionally and certainly thank people for coming in and just in general being kind and nice to all of the customers. I will say that I note on their website that it just says that reservations are accepted. However with the way they treat you when you walk in - they'll say like "2? Do you have a reservation??" As though you would be retarded to just walk in there without having a reservation to begin with! If that's what they expect, then on their website instead of saying "reservations accepted", it should say at least "reservations STRONGLY recommended" (if they'll still seat you without one), or just go ahead and say "reservations required". All that said - the food was, as typical, very good. It's all made from fresh, local ingredients! We really enjoyed it. Really can't say enough good things about the food we've had there. We both had sweet tea to drink. They do have wine and beer options. We had steak and mushroom soup, house salad with grilled shrimp and housemade ranch dressing, and the shrimp and grits. Everything was super good! So kudos to the chef or chefs! I recommend it for the food, but don't expect much in the way of hospitality. Would serve the owners well to work on this area of their business! So I gave 4 stars because the food is so good and let's face it, you're going there to eat, not to make friends. But being nice is free and well worth the effort. At least worth taking away one star...

Boy, after reading all the great reviews, maybe we set our expectations way too high for our first visit.

Let's work from bottom to top. First, the atmosphere. The restaurant is in an unassuming small plaza, no problem, but inside, good grief. I have never been inside any place more desperately in need of a paint job in my life. Much of the seating is held together with duct tape. Every single square inch is worn, chipped, scuffed, and just plain tired.

The service is fine, but only just fine. No salt or pepper on our or any table. Refills of drinks were frequent, but no stop backs during appetizer nor entrees to see if we needed anything.

The food was meh. Okay, it was just lunch but their dinner menu isn't setting the world on fire with creativity, so I think lunch is an accurate representation.

My wife and I split everything in half.

The appetizer was smoked fish dip. Bland. The fish itself is great, but the overall package is very bland. Looking for jalapeños, hot sauce, pepper, anything to give it a boost but none were on table and waiter never stopped by. The quantity was great and the crostinis were very good. They were the only thing saving the fish dip from just super bland.

We had a hamburger and it was just okay. Ordered medium because it is ground meat, and was served (without a thermometer, but based upon color and look) rare to at best medium-rare Personally, I like it, but I'm getting older and realize the risks. I'll eat a steak bleeding but ground beef? It was okay, but not as good as other places. Fries were again, fine, but just fine. Nothing special for supposedly "hand cut fries". If you ever had boardwalk hand cut fries, these aren't it. I think these are called "hand cut" because of the style/size, not because there is a dude hand cutting them in the kitchen. They didn't taste nor look like fresh potatoes at all.

The fried fish sandwich was, again, fine. The fish, tri tail, was good but not great. Fish itself was very good but the breading was again, bland. Tartar sauce was okay.

Nothing was exceptional. Not the food, staff, nor atmosphere. It was all just fine, nothing more.

We'd prefer to give our money to small businesses than a chain or tourist trap, so on the whole, we'd go back. But when we do, we will go with our expectations set at just barely...

My hubby and I recently watched the show diners drive ins and dives, and Millies restaurant and catering was on it, and we live 5 miles from it, so of course we had to try it out, especially with its raving reviews online. We were very excited to try the fish collars, thats the main reason we ate there. We went with our kids and ordered chicken tenders for our boy, they were so large, it was more like fried chicken breast, so I cut it and the breading would just fall off.. then ordered the filet and lobster tail special and was greasy, not cooked correctly, had to get them to make it a 2nd time, and still not correctly cooked, on one half it was well done, and medium rare on the other half and absolutely no sear on it, the meat was gray, then it was served with a chimmichuri sauce on top, which I love chimichurri, but not on a beautiful filet, well I guess it fits, it was not a good filet at all, it was extremely small, looked more like 3oz and again it was gray and tasted old, also the lobster tail wasn't properly prepped and had no sauce they just boiled it then sliced it in half you had to dig it out yourself it was so tedious and that meal alone was $44. Then also I ordered the grouper frachaise(idk if I spelt it correctly, its grouper fish with a caper beurre blanc sauce over angel hair pasta) we were all so excited to get our food it was so disappointing, my pasta had absolutely no sauce on it, extremely oily from the fish there was maybe a tablespoon on the actual fish, very bland, I had to ask for lemons to try n eat it, since there was no sauce.. we were expecting a lot more from this place considering we spent roughly $40+/meal (not the tenders) but we unfortunately are very dissatisfied with the food experience. We don't like to complain about our food so we basically just ate it as is, well some of it. Moral of the story, we won't be coming back, and i think it was either a bad night or just overrated. Not worth the price we...