Island View — Restaurant in Fort Myers Beach

Thanksgiving dinner was a delight. At least when it came to the food. The rolls were fabulous and the thanksgiving feast was nothing more or less than expected. They were very nice on the phone when confirming our reservation and we were grateful to find somewhere to eat on thanksgiving. That’s the end of the positive. The server really ruined the experience and turned what could have been a nice family meal into an annoying and frustrating experience. Our server (we never did get a name) was unpleasant from the get go. One in our party mentioned her surly attitude and we tried to give her the benefit of the doubt since she was working on thanksgiving. Honestly. If someone is this awful better to close than have them work. Anyway, we ordered our drinks. When she brought them back she could have taken our order. She didn’t. That’s fine. But it took her 10 minutes to return. That’s fine, at least we had drinks. Kids were doing their workbooks and everyone was content. Finally, she returned for our order. We ordered 4 turkey dinners, she even returned shortly after to confirm it was 4 dinners (there were 5 of us - 2 small children, so I understand the confusion). She returned with bread and 3 salads. We assumed the 4th had not be able to come out at the same time. After a while we tried to get her attention, saying ‘excuse me’ when she walked by and raising our hand when she was in eye shot. She NEVER seemed to hear or see us so we stood up and walked to her to ask her about it. That’s when she got rude and told us we were wrong. That we only got 3 salads and repeated the various dressing orders. We reminded her of the fourth and she stormed off to get it. Brought it back and apologized. We had about 3 minutes to eat our salads before the dinners came out, who knows what horrible thing she did to it in the kitchen because we got our meals WAY before others around us. We shuffled all our plates around since we hadnt had time to finish our salads. We also had to ask the person who brought out the food for an extra plate after we discussed that the kids were splitting the dish. At this point we had bread plates, salad plates, the bread dish, the butter dish, the glasses of water (several empty and not refilled) our drinks (by now empty and not refilled), and our dinner plates. She didn’t clear anything. We began stacking the dishes in the middle of the table. From here on out we did not see our server. My daughter spilt her lemonade all over the table and floor. I tried to get the ladies attention and she was sorting silverware or something on the other side of the dining room. I ended up moving her seat, pouring some of my other daughters lemonade into her cup because she was just upset she didn’t get her lemonade treat. I wanted a refill on my drink, my husband wanted a refill, we wanted the plates moved off the table, we would have liked some more napkins, anything. Nothing. No where to be seen. Everyone was done with their meals and not a single dish had been cleaned off the table. At this point we wanted dessert but no way we were staying her any longer and trying to find room on the table for yet another plate for each of us. So we called Bayfront Bistro and got some key lime pie for pick up. We waited and waited for the check. Finally I was going to the hostess for the check when I nearly ran into our server. I managed to get her attention then. Asked and it was delivered. We sat for a long time waiting for her to get the credit card when finally we decided to pay in cash to get out of there away from all the empty dishes. At this moment in time my littlest had to go to the bathroom. While at the bathroom the person paying had their elbow on the book with the cash and this lady (man, I wish I got her name!) pulled it out from under my moms arm on her way by. Since we left a bad tip, we weren’t looking to pay while waiting for someone to go to the bathroom. But, it was the only thing this woman had picked up off the table all night. As soon as she opened it she saw the bad tip and starting losing it on...

Trying out the various Happy Hour menus in the area, we were impressed by the various items on the menu here and decided to check it out. The Happy Hour menu runs every day 3:00-6:00 here. One catch is that if you are not already a customer of the resort, you will probably have to pay to park in the crazy surrounding area. We paid $10 to park in the overflow lot of the resort across the street. To get to the restaurant, you have to take a somewhat hidden glass elevator that isn't overly visible from the roadside, but does offer a nice view as you ascend to the 6th floor. Getting off the elevator takes you directly to a short walkway that leads to the hostess stand.

We were fortunate to be seated at a booth along the large window views of the gulf. Janielle waited on us and was awesome at checking in on us and being personable. We mostly ordered items for the 4 of us to share, although my son did get the Hawaiian Pizza (11.00) all to himself that he said he liked, although it did not have the BBQ sauce they usually seem to have. The Lobster Flatbread (13.00) and Seafood Pizza (12.00) were both very good. The flatbread was a rectangle cut into 6 pieces and the pizza was maybe a 12-14 inch cut into 8 slices. To be honest, I couldn't discern a huge difference between the two, but the women in the family thought the flatbread had better flavor. My daughter chose the Wonton Fish tacos (7.00), although the term taco may be misleading as it was 3 open faced crunch wontons with a fish blend in them. It tasted very good, but there wasn't much quantity-wise. The star of the show was the Eggplant Rotolo (8.00). I don't know who Larry is, but his mother's marinara sauce is out of this world. I could probably eat anything with that sauce on it.

Overall, very tasty food with a wide variety of options and very reasonable prices. Would definitely consider returning, but might be best to walk if you are close...

My family and I dined here for Father’s Day to honor my late husband. We walked into the beautiful ambiance & gave the hosts the name for our reservation, one was eating and the other ignored us, until we asked again. They were extremely rude. Our server Mable was incredible. We were greeted immediately and she had a friendly demeanor. She had recommendations for the everything, drinks, apps & our entrees. We started with some apps which were fantastic. It was obvious they were short staffed because not only was our server sweating, she had about 6 tables at once, one being my family of 10 and was cleaning them all on her own as well while your hostesses just stood there. I understand if “ it’s not their job” to help clean up but it looked really bad for the restaurant. The servers were all running around and I could see the hosts laughing at the bar or at the hostess stand eating & watching videos on their phones. Although my food & service were great, the singer was awful, & my one star is for the management. The hosts shouldn’t get paid to just stand there and be rude. Reading all the other reviews, it seems you’re aware that this is an issue with your hosts yet nothing is being done about it. It’s a shame to see such an amazing restaurant with amazing food have such negative reviews due to your hosts. I hope this changes, I would love to come back and change my...