The Raw Bar at Island Creek Oyster Farm — Restaurant in Duxbury

If you find yourself on the South Shore of Mass.... GO. TO. THIS. PLACE. Can't say enough about this experience! We visited this past Sunday, after my wife & I drove up from New York for a family event. (I'm from the area.) We were both VERY excited to check out their new set-up. The location & grounds: absolutely gorgeous. The food: UNREAL (which goes without saying). Delicious cocktails, quality beer list.... But it was the professionalism & customer service that absolutely blew us away. The operation was an impressive, well-oiled machine; which was obvious from the start. That's why we were surprised when, over an hour after ordering, our food still hadn't come out. In fairness, it was incredibly busy & we were just chilling with our drinks & enjoying the beautiful scenery; but we decided to check up on it with the bartender. After trying to locate the order, it became apparent that something had gone wrong & it was never received by the kitchen. I cannot stress enough how impressive the response to this situation was: Immediately they very sincerely apologized, explained that this was a very rare mistake (which I do not doubt in the slightest), and told us that they were going to pick up our tab. I initially thought they meant only the food (which would've been overly generous enough), as we had already had a few drinks each. But no; they meant all of it. They then had our order rushed to us in absolutely no time flat. The food was INCREDIBLE, & well worth the wait. But the thing was, we were having a great time & still planned to hang out. Not wanting to look like we trying to take advantage of their already incredible generosity, we insisted on opening a new tab for everything we ordered from that point on, which ended up being another round of drinks AND another round of food. When the time came & I tried to close out, they refused to charge the card & insisted on picking up that round too. I was FLOORED. I honestly haven't seen customer service at that level in my life! Didn't even know it was possible these days. And the thing is, it didn't come off as "customer service; it was a 100% sincere reaction by some damn fine people who seem to love where they work & take pride in making it an incredibly impressive experience from start to finish. Honestly, 'blown away' doesn't even come close! My sincerest commendation & all the respect in the world to everyone involved with this place: from the front line staff, to the kitchen, to management, & all the way up the hierarchy of the organization. Island Creek is obviously the standard as to how a business should be run, & it shows. Can't wait to be back! (And the best part is, they just gave me every justification to be completely unreasonable with how much I plan to order the next time we get there!) Do yourself a favor & make the trip. It's worth every penny that we would've...

The oysters are still perfect… otherwise today’s experience was nothing like my previous visits. It used to be a simple raw bar with draft beer at picnic tables on the beach.

The parking is limited and confusing. The young men recklessly driving golf carts around the parking lot were unexpected and unhelpful. They drove in reverse for about 100 feet then cut in front of us and held up their hands. I didn’t realize they worked at the restaurant until they jestered my passenger to roll down the window and rudely told me “I’m just trying to do my job”. I thought that was just a fluke until I was sold a glass of Sauvignon Blanc for $13 at the outside beer and wine truck which I could clearly see was another type of white wine. The bartender showed me the bottle of white blend and explained that “we are selling this as the Sauvignon Blanc today”.

Next, we waited in line to put our name on a list. Then we waited for a text message. Then we waited in another line to get a wrist band. We were told to get a picnic table. None of the open tables were clean. Then we had to wait in another line to order food from the raw bar.

As I was waiting in the 3rd line, I got a call from the inside restaurant. We decided to try that instead. None of the tables were clean, so we sat at the end of a long table on barstools, ate 6 oysters (without napkins or utensils), paid our bill and left. We still left a tip as the entire staff was very young/inexperienced and the absence of management was abundantly apparent.

If I was not visiting from out of state, I would have given up after the white wine incident. The oysters are...

I was excited to try out the new indoor location but I didn’t realize that it doubled as a daycare. We walked in and asked how long for a table, to which we were told “hard to really say”. When I ultimately pressed him, we were then told that it would be a 20 minute wait, so we went to the bar to grab a drink. On the corner of the bar were two parents with their newborn in a giant carriage behind them, who rushed to put a sweater on the seat next to them to make sure we wouldn’t grab it. The bartenders made no effort to come to us, making us flag them down over the carriage to get their attention. We then waited for over an hour for the table that was supposed to be 20 minutes. Meanwhile, there are all these young families occupying these tables for hours, using the money that they should have used for a babysitter to throw back drinks and drive their kids home, with their kids crawling on the ground and climbing on the furniture, as no one is making an effort to get them out of the restaurant. When we finally got to a table to sit down, a kid was crawling up my arm rest. I couldn’t pay the bill fast enough. This place has so much potential, but it’s food and drinks were completely outweighed by the inability of staff to appropriately manage the place. I worked 10 years in the front end for a local upscale restaurant - this place is completely mismanaged and it’s employees have zero sense of urgency....