Fins & Tings — Restaurant in Fort Lauderdale

0 stars for service. So this place is very popular and the food is advertised to be great among the reviews. However, on my very FIRST experience here, service was very POOR from ONE individual, a female waitress, Margaret. My friends placed their food and drink orders but she totally messed up on both. She failed to confirm if the daquiri was alcoholic and didn't put in the order for my friend's Long Island Iced Tea. So she brought us our salads and I asked if they had pepper. She said, What kind? I said, Black Pepper. So she's staring at me like I'm crazy asking for black pepper. I'm like this is a restaurant why wouldn't you have black pepper. So of course as our party of 10 staggered in, they waited more than 10 minutes to be given menus and have their orders taken. When I asked for a separate check, the waitress appeared shocked and proclaimed she confirmed with someone else that all orders would be together. So of course she had attitude when I politely asked for my check separately and my friends also did. I waited at least 30-40 min more to receive my check for my bill. I personally DO NOT RECOMMEND this place. This should've been a great experience. But it so underwhelming.

So she brought me my check and gratuity is fixed at 18%. I kindly asked her to have it removed. She made a loud sigh (huff) and walked away with an attitude.

So I still sat waiting on my check. Still waiting... Still had attitude...but whatever, it isn't that serious.

I spoke with the manager Kendall about the gratuity being removed from my check. He gave me this speech about how ut is Florida law for parties of 10 to have 18% gratuity added to the bill. I didn't bother to rebuttle because it wasn't worth my time since what I took from his speech was that "we take care of our employees more than the customers although the customers put money in our pockets". I honestly don't understand why people think you should tip for BAD SERVICE. Granted, I SHOULDN'T have to tip your employee for her poor attitude, rudeness and poor skills of being a waitress, regardless if it is her first week (used as an excuse repeatedly, but isn't one that should be used. Were you not hired for your experience?) I don't mind paying the establishment for the work i.e. the food, but her, paying that tip, she did not deserve it. By God's grace, she was tipped tonight! She was very uncouth, rude, arguing with customers...my friends that is, had a poor attitude, displayed her attitude in body language, eye contact and everything. Just overall not qualified as a people person or equipped to be a waitress.

We all want good service and deserve service. But she is the face of the company and should act accordingly. A positive attitude should always be shown. You should never display a poor attitude nor speak rudely to a customer or use excuses to justify how poorly you feel. She should ask herself if the service she is providing to myself and my frienkind of service she wants to receive. I'm still waiting on my check...smh. I honestly had GOOD intentions for this place, but I WILL NEVER EVER EVER NEVER EVER NEVER EVER COME BACK. Like I tell prople I'm GOOD.

Go for drinks and music. Eat at the bar. If you want to dine, do so at your own discretion.

Food review:

I ordered the Port Royal (Escoveitch) fish with fried bammie, peppers and onions in vinegar sauce. Also rice and peas and macaroni and cheese. I will say on the Escoveitch fish, it was tender however it was not drenched in the sauce and flavored as such which Caribbean people say is how it should be cooked. The mac and cheese was good, moderate cheese, spicy and sweet. Rice and peas were moist. Fried bammie was good. Bar area is slow. They had only one bartender. I waited 10 min trying to water there because my waitress kept ignoring our table and I couldn't ask...

I had visited this restaurant a few years back but could only recall that the food tasted good., nothing specific. Over the weekend, I had a birthday dinner at Fins & Things. And wow, the food was better than I remembered!

As an appetizer, the table ordered 2 servings of fries and wings (sweet and sour with lemon pepper). I ordered the escovitch fish with rice and peas and a side of festival. I also ended up tasting some of the salmon as well as the curry fish and some of the brown stew fish. The sweet and sour wings were bathed in my favorite type of sauce. It tasted similar to Wendy's sweet/sour sauce. I'm not a huge fan of dry wings but the lemon pepper wings were flavorful as well. The seasoned fries were perfectly salted and a great mix of crispy and soft fries. All the fish was amazing and well seasoned. I could tell a lot of thought was put into these recipes and everything tasted authentic. Their festivals were immaculate; on par with the festivals from the Jamaican restaurant Country Walk. The salmon was my favorite because the accompanying sauce was sweet and savory and spiced with Scotch bonnet pepper; like a mixture of brown stew and sweet and sour sauce.

Moreover, the service was excellent which is surprising for a Caribbean restaurant. The food also came to the table in a reasonable amount of time. We met the owner and she is super personable and friendly. I thought this place was Jamaican but she is actually from St. Vincent.

FYI: This restaurant is right next to a strip joint...

My husband and I have come to this restaurant several times in the last couple of months. The food is fantastic. I love their okra sauce with roast fish. Our biggest issue coming to this restaurant is the service this is not a cheat meal and we expect excellent service. People are very Unapologetic about bad service. Our last visit we had to call the manager because it was ridiculous. The server brought are soup but forgot the spoon and didn't come back with it until 20 minutes afterwards. Ensuring that the soup was at that point called. The rice and peas was not cooked through so when we mentioned this to our waiter, she did not even think to ask us how to replace it she just walked away and disappeared for another 20 minutes. We had to gain her attention again and tell her we need this to be replaced because it's inedible. She's like I'll be right back and disappeared again for another 20 minutes. We don't like to make trouble when we're out especially when people are managing what we're going to eat. We definitely don't want to have any surprises. but at this point we thought the manager was the only course we had left with this type of Service. Unfortunately, The manager was unavailable they were in the back cooking because they were short on Chefs. Is this is the type of stuff that happens at this restaurant, if you enjoy good fish you're going to have to wait to 45 minutes and sometimes bad service. It's a shame, they really had something great...