Hunt's on St Joe Bay — Restaurant in Florida

Came here from recommendations from some locals. The wait wasn't bad. I was initially told to sit outside. Wait was one hour. Turned out to be more around 40 minutes. Had some free love music as well, which I'll get to in a minute. Got seated, and it took a bit for the server to come over and get our drink order, but once he did, beverages came out in a decent time. Ordered raw oysters and fried pickles, and the oysters came out quick, but the pickles tool about 14 minutes. The oysters were awesome. Large and fresh, nice briny flavor. The pickles were good too, not heavily battered and not very greasy. We ordered meals at the same time we ordered starters, and I wanted the whole snapper but was told they were out, so I opted for the snapper filet instead. Others ordered shrimp, crab cakes, and she crab soup. The crab cakes were extremely salty. They were "grilled" but had no grill marks, so I presume they were actually cooked on a griddle. The shrimp seemed ok, maybe a medium-size grade. The she crab soup was ok, not the best we've had but also not the worst. The snapper I had was blackened, but it really had no flavor and was a pretty small piece of fish. The sides were really small: green beans weren't mush, but there was maybe 1 ounce. The baked beans were really sweet. The garlic toast tasted like it had margarine and not butter or some synthetic butter spread. And finally, ordered key like pie to finish, but it was like a lime flavored cheesecake-type of desert, but without the cheese. I had to hit the restroom, and while I was inside, I was watching the guy who was on oysters shucking detail. I was a little taken aback to see him rub his nose with his non-gloved hand and then cough over three trays of oysters without either covering his mouth or turning away from the food. Finally, the girl playing music had it cranked up extra loud, all while playing for maybe 40 people, and it was outdoors. It was pretty hard to have a conversation. The service was good. Our server was nice and checked on us a bunch. It's always a good thing. But I wasn't blown away like some people had hyped me up to believe. The food tasted fresh, so I appreciate that, and the oysters were really good, but it is not one of those memorable places. For a local joint, it's not bad, I just don't feel it was good as the people who recommended it say it was. If you're around the area, yeah, cool place to see the sunset and eat some grub. But nothing I'm going to go out of the way for. Edit August 2024: it's also interesting to observe that those that leave stellar reviews get a response and less than stellar...

We arrived around 6pm the hostess told us it would be an hr 15min to 1hr 30 min wait we were seated 2 hours later. The hostess seated us and gave us menus but the waitress took a very long time to show up to the table.Other staff saw that we were sitting there with no drinks , with the menus just sitting on the table (we all knew what we were ordering at this point) and nobody reacted. They would just look at each other . We were seated right in front so you couldn’t miss us. When the waitress finally returned and took our orders she never returned with our drinks. There was 5 of us , we just ordered 4 waters and a soda. I had to go up to the bar to get our own waters.Finally she appeared and brought out the soda and water in glasses. She said that 3 kitchen staff and 2 waitresses were sick and they had to send them home. If that was the case they should have stopped taking names and started to turn people away and tell them the realistic wait time. The meals came, husband ordered snapper sandwich he said it was good. I ordered scallops, they had regular ones on appetizers menu but only bay scallops for dinner. Half were over cooked and they were cold but we were sitting under a fan that was blasting so maybe they cooled off quick. The hush puppies were good. Next order was grouper sandwich just ok. Told sampler platter was delicious. The crab cake dinner had a chunk of shell in it that that was explained as “feeling like eating a piece of glass”. When brought to their attention they said it was fresh crab so pretty much expect that. They did bring out desserts to go for pretty much everyone in the restaurant because everyone was complaining I think. Oh the tarter sauce was sitting ina refillable plastic container on the table. I don’t know how long they leave the ‘em out for but it definitely was not cool. The checks came , they were messed up also and it took her a very long time to come back with the credit card. Felt like we were being held hostage. She did remove the crab cakes which she should have as nothing was eaten on the plate. Expect to wait 3 1/2...

Place is cool. Overlooks the water. To start with issues. We ordered onion rings and fried pickles. Waitress came back we ordered crab claws, she crab soup and shrimp dinner.

The second order came first then they brought out our appetizers. Let’s just say not a single thing was great the she crab soup was bland tasted like maybe milk and crab no seasoning. The crab claws were a disappointment for $25. You got a really small bowl of sautéed crab claws it had green onions in it, which was something I’ve never seen before. So did the soup. My wife said the fried pickles were nasty. Nothing came out really hot. It all came out kind of room temperature. The waitress was really nice but honestly service was not that great. I did leave a good tip because you’re never gonna leave less than 15% unless you’re just a butt hole. The band was doing sound checks and for like 45 minutes we listen to three or four bars of 100 different songs. The onion rings came out burnt, and when I said something to the lady, we had already eaten most of the food. besides the onion rings I mentioned it to her. She didn’t offer to take it off our bill and take it back, She only offered to replace them which was kind of funny because the person next to me their onion rings looked really good. Mine looked like burnt. I’m uploading a picture of that. I had to salt and pepper to the crab soup to make it at least edible. The shrimp had no seasoning on it. Fried shrimp should have some kind of seasoning not just fried in batter. The cocktail sauce is only ketchup and hot sauce. I’ve never had it that way we normally use horseradish all in all this was a bust. There was no wait time so that was nice the night before it was three hours and by the time we got up, the wait time was an hour if I waited an hour to have crappy food, I would’ve been really upset. If you want better food drive a little bit further and go to uptown raw...