Smugglers' Wharf — Restaurant in Erie

Day and night from last years food and service. We stopped solely because of great service and food in years past. This time was a complete difference in service and quality. 5 minutes after being seated we get a waitress. We ordered drinks, came pretty quick except wine (about a 15 min wait). We started with an appetizer which was great and came fairly quick, (before my wine.) For a main entree I had ordered a special which I believe was an off menu item, it was a salmon pasta. Worse food I've ever tasted! I took 2 bites and couldnt eat any more, it was terrible. Our waitress never came back to check the table. The other adult meals weren't up to their normal standards although much better than mine, not up to the caliber you would expect based on many years experience dining here. No refills for my kids no offer of a 2nd glass of wine ect. About 10 minutes after my kids (slowest eaters in our party) had finished..She finally shows up and asks if I would like another glass of wine, not even was everything ok ect. I say no we are done if we could just get our check it would be great. Another 5 minutes our bill arrives. I'm irritated with the lack of service and fact that I'm still hungry because my food was terrible enough not to eat. I just want to leave so I immediately set the Credit card out for it to be run.... 17 minutes later I go to the hostess and ask if they changed things and if I needed to bring it somewhere to check out. "Oh if you dont feel like waiting for the waitress the bar could take care of it." I explain we waited 10 minutes for our bill another 5 to get it and since have waited another 17 minutes for our waitress to run our card... and we havent seen her enter the dining room once during this time! (Seriously think she went on break or something in the middle of her shift). Overall very disappointed in service and food quality. Would I give them another chance perhaps when they get better trained servers and managers that walk the restaurant to see how everything is going. It makes it personable and ensures better service, as well as helps address problems. I will say there was a really nice blonde waitress who ended up running our credit card when she walked to the hostess as i was leaving the stand. I appreciate her help checking out so we could finally leave. Its not ok to wait almost 30 minutes total to check out. Very disappointed...

We were greeted cheerfully by both the hostess as she seated us and by our waiter. The waiter seemed like he was going to be great, but as the meal wore on, he became less and less attentive. We even got to the point where we started counting how many times the wait staff at neighboring tables filled glasses and checked in with their guests between visits from our waiter. We are not alcohol drinkers, but our water and soda glasses were often empty and we had to request EVERY refill we got. If the restaurant had been crowded or our server was serving many tables, I could understand his neglect. However, it was not crowded and I saw him serving only one other table. We should have checked the prices on the menu before we chose this restaurant so that we weren't surprised at how expensive every menu item was. I ordered the ahi tuna. I like it rare, but seared. This was so rare that it was raw and icy cold in the center. The flavor of it was quite bland - which has never been my experience with ahi before. In addition half of the steak was quite sinewy; so much so that even the steak knife struggled to cut through it. I would have preferred to have a small salad and vegetables with the tuna, however when the waiter let me know that having a salad would increase the $36 plate to $43, I chose the garlic potatoes. $7 for a house salad?!? The potatoes were good, but had no garlic flavor to them. I also had the vegetable of the day, which was zucchini and yellow squash sautéed with garlic. This was the most flavorful part of the dinner. My husband had the catch of the day (halibut) basket, blackened, with the same sides that I ordered. The halibut was delicious and very flavorful. He felt the same about the sides as I did. For the cost, you'd think there would be enough food to fill you up, but we both had room for dessert. The dessert was AMAZING! I order the peanut butter pie and my husband ordered the 3-layer cake. Both were excellent. If I'm ever in Erie again I'll go get the peanut butter pie again. No dinner, just dessert. The atmosphere was lovely. It had a beach-side feel to it. It was a hot day, so we ate inside. It was quiet and uncrowded. If the service and the food had been better it would have been a perfect evening,...

PLEASE READ If leaving zero stars was an option, I would have immediately done so.

My family went here for dinner and were left disappointed by our food. The “seafood bake” was really just cheese and the crab cakes were extremely overpriced for the ball of breadcrumbs they really were. We were willing to forgive the less than mediocre food but then..

When paying for our meal, we were told that our transaction did not go through and the card needed to be swiped again. We obliged but checked our bank app to ensure the first one never processed, but it had so we alerted our waitress and asked her to please void the second charge (as we had just been double charged for our meal). She not only refused to void the second charge but was audacious enough to ask us to call our bank to dispute the matter with them. HOW WOULD THAT HAVE BEEN OUR BANKS FAULT? OUR CARD WAS SWIPED TWICE. The waitress retrieved her manager who was even ruder and was blatantly trying to scam us. He yelled at my mother and failed to display any basic form of customer service. Any other restaurant would have simply apologized for their mistake and issued a refund (or full comp), but he was adamant that the mistake was somehow on OUR end. It took a good 20 min of arguing to get them to finally undo the double charge. BUT the manager threatened to add more charges onto the card after we had left, which was also outrageous.

This establishment clearly doesn’t understand that they are in the business of hospitality as the way they treated my family was like nothing I have ever experienced. Their disrespectful behavior on top of their horridly bland and boring food should be reason enough for you to never step foot into Smugglers Wharf ever in your life. Don’t let the cute viney exterior fool you. There’s a reason the restaurant was...