Blue Gator Tiki Bar & Restaurant — Restaurant in Dunnellon

Offering an honest, unemotional review here for whatever it's worth. The bottom line is this is not a great restaurant. The food is OK, with fantastic hush puppies, but the shrimp is run of the mill. Would be a fine place to eat if not for some of the worst service I've ever had.

I arrive and see the sign tells you to go to the outdoor deck. I do, ask if I can sit "here" (at the bar, where there are a bunch of glasses sitting there), and I'm told 'you can sit wherever you want.' I say OK and a waitress acknowledges she'll clean it up. I wait about 3 minutes, she doesn't, so I ask 'is there any indoor seating.' She responds with 'um, you'll have to ask my manager, I don't really know anything about that.'

You don't know anything about that? You don't know if there is indoor seating? You're a waitress here, but you don't know if there's seats inside? Fascinating.

So I ask who the manager is, she points, I ask him, and he says yes, and brings me inside. It's several minutes before I get a menu and the girl doesn't even ask for my drink order yet. She just drops off the menu and walks away.

The manager then tells me the kitchen is backed up and they are understaffed, so to be patient. I say 'that's fine,' but the reality is, they are not understaffed. I don't know about the kitchen, but they were not understaffed. I saw at least six waitresses running around.

The problem isn't number of waitresses, it's who the waitresses are. I'll be blasted for this, but the reality is, when you hire teenage girls, you get teenage girl work. They don't care. There's no personality, no smile, no eye contact. I don't know of if they are intimidated, lack of worth ethic (we could go all day about generational debate), but simple fact--none of them seemed to want to be there. From the girl who didn't even know if there was indoor seating to the waitress who didn't actually do anything--another waitress apart from the one who had my table brought me my food, but not to me. She brought it to another table and THEY handed it to me. Then they neglected to bring me the appetizer I asked for, but tried to charge me for it, and the only way I got a refill was by leaning my drink out to block the original waitress and ask for one. If they didn't want me to sit inside, just say 'no, we are full inside.' If there was really a kitchen issue, fine, but that doesn't excuse the waitress not once checking on me or asking if I needed anything. Don't blame bad service on kitchen issues. Acknowledge the problem and rectify it by hiring better people. That's what makes better restaurants.

Again, take this for what it is. It sounds like a bitter rant, but it's just the reality that I don't have a problem with mistakes or slow service or even overcooked food. I have a problem with the integrity of waitress staff and passing blame off. There are people who certainly need a job like this more than these girls, yet somewhere they seem put off by...

We had lunch at the Blue Gator in August 2025. First off, parking is kind of tight and limited, due to limited space. We didn’t have an issue. But I suspect there could be if the Blue Gator is even somewhat busy. We also had no option except to eat on the deck in high humidity and ninety plus degree temperatures, since they kept the indoor dining closed during our visit. It was not bad at first, but got uncomfortable by the time we finished our lunch. They did have a few large fans moving air, but that only did so much. I’m sure dining on the deck would probably be much more enjoyable between October till April. But it still wasn’t out of the question in August, since we did stay and have lunch. The deck has very limited views of the river, between the seating, railings, and especially the boat docking and shelter roofing that runs the length of the deck. The food itself we found to be quite good. The prices are of course subject to one’s opinion. But we found them quite reasonable for the times. I had Buffalo Wings and a Yuengling draft. The wife had Clam Strips and baby bakers (chopped garlic potatoes?) As she put it: “Wife Approved”. We had no complaints with our server. She was friendly and performed her duties in good fashion. The manager also stopped by to make sure everything was good. He left us to visited the next table, and so on. Basically everyone we had contact with, were friendly and professional. We even got a thank you from another man from the front of the boat tour building. Maybe he owns the whole complex? Or maybe he was also just a nice, appreciative employee/person. All in all, we did enjoy our lunch at the Blue Gator. It was a nice experience having lunch down in that little cove. The bridge with route 41 was right above us, but really didn’t seem like a factor. A nice lunch on the river. Nice trees sheltering us overhead. Good, although not the best views. But nice folks providing a good meal, at what we considered, a reasonable price. What more could we want. Well, maybe a little cooler time of the year. We’ll keep that in mind when we return. In which I’m...

(Review edit) Finally went back to Blue gator after almost a year and I wish I went back sooner. The service was amazing! Server was amazing, food came out fast and delicious, and it just seemed like the place was back to it's lively self that we missed. Capt. Bob tried to comp our meals to correct the bad experience we had before but we declined, we just wanted the Blue Gator we had before back and he delivered. Thanks Capt. Bob and Blue Gator staff for a great time. (I'm leaving the old bad review so people can see how far it fell and were it is now) Long time customers, will not be coming back because of the terrible service. We called ahead to see if they were busy because on the weekends it can get kind of crazy. The hostess said it was actually really slow, (I hate to have seen it if it was busy) so we decided since it was our favorite restaurant in Dunnellon we would go. We were seated right away and that's when the terrible service started. We waited 15 minutes to get service, while three waitresses were standing behind us chit-chatting and doing nothing. I finally asked the three waitresses if we could get some help and they all said in a minute. We waited for another 5 minutes before our waitress came to us and when she got there she had a terrible attitude and was sighing while talking to us like we were out of line for asking for help. We ordered drinks and several appetizers which came in a reasonable time, although we never received one of our appetizers and finally told her to take it off the bill. Then it took an hour after that to get our entrees, sliders and three orders of grouper fingers. when they finally came my wife had a long black hair in her meal. As a table we spent $190 and probably would have spent more on drinks and beer if our waitress would have checked on us more than every 30 minutes. We got to Blue Gator around 2 o'clock and we left around 5 o'clock. So for 3 hours we dealt with a waitress with a poor attitude, long waits, and limited drinks. This is probably the worst service I've ever experienced in a dining...