Nervous Nellie's — Restaurant in Fort Myers Beach

This review is in regards to having dinner before the Christmas Boat Parade, which Nervous Nellies advertised if you have dinner here you get a chair to stay for the Christmas Boat Parade, but what they didn’t tell you is only the first 100 people get chairs….so here is my review, we were a party of 7 people and we are all locals of the community, 2 days prior I called Nervous Nellies to ask if they will have heat lamps for the outdoor seating for 7 people and they said yes, as long as we get there early enough cuz it will be a busy night it wont be a problem sitting ,here is where the problems start, when we arrived at 4pm, we were greeted by the hostess which then told us we could not sit outside unless we sat at different tables because they were not allowing parties that size out side only inside, well, why didn’t they say that when I called ??? After lots of controversy, we ended up getting tables next to each other, only because we asked a party of 4 to switch tables with us and these out of towners were nice enough to move, and then regardless of what the hostess said, we pushed the tables together like it or not….we ordered our food at 4:30pm keeping in mind the boat parade starts at 6pm, well, at 6pm we still did not get our food, 90 minutes and no food, we asked the waitress a few times, and she kept saying the manager will be over to speak with you, finally the manager came to our table with the tray of food and he served our meals, we said to the manager why did it take us 90 minutes to get our food, we are here for dinner and to get a seat to watch the Christmas boat parade and now the parade has started and we are missing the parade because we are just getting served, the managers response was “ hey, it’s the night of the Christmas boat parade what do you expect? Its one of our busiest nights”” …WOW, what great customer service that was…not even an apology from the manager, most of us got fried seafood which was cold and who wants to eat cold seafood “no one” one person got salad with ranch dressing and the dressing was watered down and runny, complained to the manager about it, he brought out new ranch dressing which was not watery, but had nothing to say about the cold fried seafood ….at this time its 6:30pm and most of us didn’t eat our meals, we asked the waitress of the tickets we needed to get for the seats to watch the boat parade which was half over by this point, and all the seats were taken, we could not get seat tickets….knowing all the issues we were having, the waitress or the manager should have offered us the seat tickets before they ran out…this disaster for my wife and I cost us $90 for dinner for 2 people which we didn’t eat cuz we were not eating cold seafood, $20 for parking, and no seat to see the parade, we ended up standing down on the dock for 15 minutes to watch the tail end of the parade.

Note to Nervous Nellies, that manager should be fired for providing awful customer service with no empathy, and in the future when you advertise for the Christmas Boat parade, make sure to mention only the first 100 people will get seats. We are locals and will not return, you need to make this bad situation right and speak with...

Under no circumstance should you request to sit on the upper deck outside. Seems like the best place to eat at a waterfront restaurant at the beach but believe me when I tell you it’s not. Food and drinks were great but service was unacceptable. I am a bartender/server working in service and this is the first time in my life that I have left no tip. The outside section is part of the bartenders’ responsibility, with two bartenders taking care of the people at the bar, drinks for the whole upper deck, and multiple tables inside and outside. Seems like an unreasonable amount of work for two bartenders to run back and forth to accommodate. Took almost 30 minutes after we got our drinks to put in our food order and another 45 minutes for the food to arrive while the restaurant didn’t even seem very busy with empty tables all around us. Before the entrees had even arrived, our server/bartender had asked us not once but twice if we were ready to pay the bill. WE HAVENT EVEN GOTTEN OUR FOOD and you’re asking if we are ready to pay?? Either they were clueless as to what we had ordered or they had to have been intoxicated to some degree to ask us twice in a row. Once the food came, it was wrong but we were afraid to wait another hour for the kitchen to fix the order so we didn’t care at that point. The Christian family sitting at the table next to ours gawked with us at how bad the service was all night, how we had all been there for over two hours and wanting nothing more than to leave. It’s comedic when other tables are are all talking to each other and ridiculing the service and literally laughing at how bad the night has been. We wanted to grab dessert but at this point what was even the point in trying. I can’t stress enough that if you want to sit on the water at a restaurant, go literally anywhere else down the road or across the bridge. It simply isn’t worth waiting 2 1/2 hours for terrible service. The cherry on top was that the only part of the night our server was actually punctual was getting the check ready for us to pay as well as getting us boxes to go, seeming that they only cared about their tip and getting rid of us. The toddler daughter of the family sitting next to us did more work than our server, running inside on multiple occasions to grab silverware, condiments and to go boxes through the whole experience. Get that 12 year old girl a job on the upper deck, she might just save your business. Ridiculous that some people still have a job here, I blame the manager just as much as I blame our server/bartender. God Bless Nervous Nellie’s...

I come here and I wonder, why did I come here again? We have been here before because it's dog friendly and it's waterfront dining. We ordered two beers in a margarita. The waiter leaves, takes over 5 minutes to come back with our beers in the can, but no glass, but he did not remember to bring my daughter's margarita. So we ask him for two glasses so he leaves comes back 5 minutes later with my daughter's margarita but no beer glasses. We asked the waiter a third time for the beer glasses disappears for a few minutes then comes back with plastic cups. Not impressed. At first I thought well maybe glasses and allowed on the deck but my work daughter's margarita came in a class and other people had class on the deck. We watched our waiter from before and he kind of walked around hoping the door for otherwise staff and just kind of stood in the distance looking and not checking in with us to see if we needed anything.

My wife ordered her Reuben sandwich with sweet potatoes however when they actually brought sandwich it came with regular fries. So she asked them for the sweet potatoes which she initially ordered and they said okay but never apologized for bringing the wrong fries. Service was not good. Food was ok but overpriced. Ambience was nice. If you don't mind paying higher prices for waterfront dining, ok...