Lagniappe — Restaurant in Fernandina Beach

Dined Sept 2025, Couple, Belated birthday dinner. BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT = Very disappointed. Clearly they get it right sometimes, but it was far from right on my visit.

Mussels $16 USD Mussels were OK. I got 2 bad ones & stopped with half left. I get it- mussels are highly perishable so not a huge deal but worth calling out.

My Steak: New York Strip $38 USD I asked the server to please request that my steak be CHARRED. I stressed it: ‘please tell them I want as dark and crusty as possible up to medium rare’

Food was delivered by a food runner and she left. Issue with the meal I was served: No char at all. Meat was ugly grey, visually unappealing (see photo) The ‘bourbon butter’ compound looked as if flung sideways across the steak with zero presentation value. The sauce was nothing as it appeared online - it was a watery brown sauce, Meat had no flavor. I did not detect any kosher/sea salt.

To wrap this: Question to chef: Would you be proud to serve this plate and willing to put your name and the reputation of this restaurant on this plate?

I give the steak a 1 of 5.

3 Roasted Chicken: To be clear, the chicken was massively overcooked. I have attached videos that show the chicken skin pulled back and top layer of the meat, clearly overcooked, and bone-dust dry.

Cutting it was like cutting a piece of beef jerky.

I get it - sometimes meals come out wrong. But here are other issues that are just too much:

A.The waitstaff use a large guest table in the back corner to wrap silver. It was 8.15 and we were still trying to salvage an enjoyable evening, and it did not help to have the staff there 2 tables away from us having convo loud enough for us to notice. Pretty tacky and intrusive and not at all what I expect from a ‘fine dining’ night out.

B. When our server came to check on us:

I showed her the steak and specifically requested that she let the chef know it was nothing at all as I had asked for, that there was no char at all, and it was not at all enjoyable. By the time she checked on us I had already eaten maybe a third of it because I was just hungry and disappointed and just wanted to get out of there, and I told her I was not expecting her to take the steak off the bill but I absolutely did want the chef to know.

She said ‘I definitely told them how you wanted it’ and I’ll let them know.

This was was about 7.45 on a sunday night early September and the place was NOT busy.. The dining room was less than half full. What was everyone doing to get all of this so wrong???

We also showed her the chicken skin was almost black and my wife even cut into the chicken so the server could see how hard and dry it was. She again said she would let the kitchen know.

I did ask her to box up the reminder of my steak so I could hopefully take it home and salvage it later. For $38, I was not going to just leave it.

She brought us a single chocolate mousse dessert. It was by far the only thing good about the meal.

I called the restaurant the next day and left a detailed message explaining we had a poor experience. Someone called me back later that afternoon, and I went through the whole story. When I got to the part about how overcooked my chicken was, he said ‘yes, I was there and I saw it and I called it out to the kitchen’.

The manager was on-site, fully aware of everything that went wrong, while we were still in the restaurant, and yet never bothered to come over to the table to over any sort of apology, explanation, or anything at all to acknowledge our poor experience.

Isn’t that Restaurant Management 101 ?? I’ve been in the restaurant business a long time, 30+ years, and I’ll never forget a sign in the back office in one of the 1st restaurants I ever worked at. It was simple but powerful:

It read, simply, this: SOME CUSTOMERS DON’T GET MAD. THEY DON’T COMPLAIN. THEY DON’T SAY ANYTHING AT ALL AS THEY HEAD OUT THE DOOR. THEY JUST WALK OUT …. AND NEVER COME BACK.

Thanks for reading & best wishes...

Tonight my boyfriend took me to the restaurant for my 41st birthday. It started out fine, but quickly escalated one of the most repulsive dinners in my entire life.

We ordered the “special” ribeye tonight with a blue cheese sauce with four shrimps, truffle potatoes, and asparagus to share for 75 dollars. Due to food allergies I couldn’t have the shrimp or blue cheese. Apparently, this place does not know how to season a steak with simple salt or spices and relies on the sauce for flavor. When it arrived, it was covered with disgusting au jus sauce, which I’m assuming the chef used to attempt to add some sort of taste to it without using seasoning. This was never conveyed to us when we ordered it. The first bite I took literally required three minutes of chewing because it was so bland and dry. I contemplated dipping it in my water to get some saturation in it. My boyfriend conveyed the same sentiment that it lacked any flavor. We told the waitress and she sent the owner our way.

I can handle a bad meal. It happens. People are human, but what I can’t handle is dealing with the most condescending, rude, and unprofessional owner. He argued that due to the alterations that’s why we didn’t like it. My argument is anyone who knows how to season a steak doesn’t need to depend on a subpar sauce to cover the lack of it. I told him it lacked salt and pepper. He then literally pointed to pepper on the steak. He agreed to take it off the bill, but with a lot of grumbling and complaining. Special orders definitely upset this owner.

When the waitress came back, we expressed our dissatisfaction with the owner’s response. The owner came back over and continued to raise his voice and argue with us at the table in front of other customers. I told him it was my birthday and he had ruined my special dinner. His response was he didn’t know that. Does it matter? As the owner, some empathy and understanding is part of the job description. I told him he needed to learn how to deal with. His response was maybe he needed better customers. Are you serious?

As a school teacher, I have no problem paying over a hundred dollars for a nice meal and I work hard at my job. Parents don’t always agree with me, but I would never talk to them like he addressed us. He wanted to argue multiple times that he wasn’t rude. He might need to use a dictionary and refresh his memory on the definition of this. I read at least five reviews within the last month that stated the owner made their whole dining experience unbearable. What’s the common factor here? It’s not me.

Think carefully before you plan to take someone you love and care about to this establishment. The moment you bring up a concern, the owner’s ego is too large to say he was sorry or how could he make it right. He is a total joke and should not be working around people.

*Edit: If there is any question about what kind of owner this place has, read his response. I told the front it was my birthday. I told the waitress I couldn’t eat blue cheese or shrimp. People have a right to let others know what garbage this restaurant is and the terrible attitude the owner has in regards to anything. We were never informed about the slob that would be added to the ribeye. I would have never ordered it. Look at this picture. No one would think this is 75 dollars worth. I didn’t realize that the owner never modifies anything on a menu and will only order it exactly the way it is written on a menu. You still yelled in my face. The reality you should be embarrassed by your actions, but that would require admitting you made a mistake, which I think is impossible. I have let all my friends and family know about this and they are appalled. Next time let a waitress video the way you communicate with your customers. You...

I’m going to try to keep this brief, because what this comes down to, is that we had a poor experience in this restaurant due to being greeted by a hostess who was downright hostile for no good reason. My sister and I were in Amelia for a day trip for a special occasion. When we have time together, our favorite thing to do is to try new places. This restaurant was recommended to us. When we walked in, we were greeted by a middle aged, muscular, blonde woman who asked us if we had a reservation. When we told her that we didn’t, she acted annoyed, but seated us anyway. Mind you, this was a Wednesday afternoon at 4:45pm, and this is a strip mall restaurant with no view of anything special. She walked us through an empty restaurant to a cramped table for two. In my day, I worked in quite a few restaurants, so I do understand that seating isn’t always all about where the guest wants to sit, but as we looked at all the empty booths around us, we wondered if it might be possible for us to sit in one of them. My sister went up to the hostess and very politely said, “We will understand if the answer is no, but would it be possible for us to sit in one of those empty booths?” The hostess then told my sister that it would not be possible as they were expecting large parties of people that night. Ok, fine. We accepted our table and were willing to roll with it. Then, out of nowhere, the hostess comes to our table and says that if we’ll grab all our stuff she’ll take us to another table. Mind you, we hadn’t asked again, and she also had a major attitude at this point. We had been nothing other than polite with her. My sister and I grabbed all of the utensils, our water, menus (hostess helped with nothing and acted completely put out, even though we hadn’t bothered her again). She then put us at a table smaller than the one we had previously been seated, but with more seating (like a cocktail table). She didn’t ask us if it was ok with us. She just waited until we caught up to her, gestured towards the table like, “there you go” and huffed off. Again — we had not been one bit rude to this woman, but my patience was thin at this point. Some simple communication would have sufficed, such as “I’m so sorry, but we reserve our booths for larger parties” or “making reservations helps us assure specific table requests.” Anything would have been better. This woman was clearly vocabulary deficit. She was rude and unnecessarily hostile to two women who were there to have a nice evening. We come to Fernandina and Amelia often. We have some favorite restaurants that we visit. This won’t be one of them in the future because of this experience. When restaurants train their employees, they need to remind them that when good people cross the threshold of your establishment, they are doing so with the expectation that they are going to willingly give you their hard earned money in exchange for pleasant service and good food. That’s how restaurants work. We received almost half of that deal. My dinner (shrimp and grits) was good. My sister’s dinner (chicken and gnocchi) wasn’t. She also was almost done before she was able to get salt and pepper. Our water glasses were never filled either. Interestingly enough, our server seemed to be good friends with the hostile hostess. She came over to us initially with a chip on her shoulder, but eventually warmed to us personally. She still didn’t provide great service despite not being very busy. We still tipped her 20%. For the record also, the booths that we initially requested were never filled. One of the booths housed four employees eating and looking at their phones while we sat in our cramped space. No thanks! We’ll go back to one of the great places in town, but...