Jimmy's on the Pier — Restaurant in Galveston

First trip to Galveston yesterday and asked the front desk at the Baymont Hotel where a good seafood restaurant was. She highly recommended Jimmys so we decided to give it a go. Arrived to a 40 minute wait for a table for 2 so we decided to wait and went out to the pier while we waited on our table. Sure enough, 38 minutes later we were on our way up. Now I am a disabled veteran and have had both knees replaced but still struggle with stairs and a lot of walking. The stairs up were long and steep but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. Made it up and I ordered a beer and my wife ordered a Pepsi. We also ordered appetizers, bacon wrapped gulf shrimp and calamari. Beer was at my table in minutes and was ice cold. It was at this moment that things changed. In fact, once I got my beer we didn’t see our waitress again until shortly before we left. After 20 minutes, I finally walked up to the bartender and told her my wife had ordered a Pepsi 15-20 minutes ago and was still waiting. She asked me where we were sitting and brought the Pepsi out for my wife less than 2 minutes later. Very nice, but where was our waitress? A few minutes later, a gentleman came over and delivered our appetizers. He was very professional, validated our apps and politely told us to enjoy. Luckily, the apps were finger food as we had no silverware or napkins The food was absolutely outstanding. We figured the waitress would be by in a few minutes so we could order our entrees and I could order another beer. I was wrong. Our discussion started out with how good the appetizers were but after about 15 minutes changed to do we even have a waitress. The place is small and there were at least 3 other servers working and busboys cleaning the tables. We did see our server walk by about 3-4 times but never stopped and did not pay attention when we would try to flag her down. Very strange for such a small place. My wife and I decided at this point we would skip the entrees due to the service. We were down to the last 2 bacon wrapped gulf shrimp and a few pieces of calamari and finally the waitress appeared at our table again with 2 glasses of water and asked if we were ready to order. I was happy to have the water cause the beer was gone for quite some time and a few of them had a kick. (Stuffed with jalapeño). I told her we had changed our minds and we just going to do the appetizers so she could bring our check. About 10 minutes later she showed up with our check and gave us silverware and napkins. I already had my credit card out and tried to hand it to her but she just placed the check down and said here are some napkins for you and walked away again. Not sure why we were getting silverware and napkins at the end of our meal instead of the beginning but at least we finally got them. This time she was back just a few minutes later to get the check and asked how we liked everything. My response was “well the food was absolutely outstanding”. Now the way I said it, most people would have known that I was insinuating that while the food was great, something else must have been wrong. This young lady was completely oblivious that we were not at all happy with her service. Can’t say I was shocked. Now in all fairness, the other servers we saw seemed to be taking very good care of their tables and we had a lot of spare time to watch them. Guess we were just lucky. So what it all boils down to is the luck of the draw on service. Will I go back to Jimmys? Absolutely. If I were to see the same server, I would request a different table/ or server. In the end, I still tipped her about 15% as I know that is part of her wage but if her service was better the bill would have been much higher and I generally will tip 25-30 percent so she lost out. Part of me really hopes she was new because if she wasn’t, she needs to look for another line of work as the service industry...

The manager made a wise call and gave us a pretty good discount at the end of the meal and apologized for what occurred. Looking at the other reviews, I'm hoping that our experience was an anomaly

Food was a five star

System to get seated was a one star and at times I had serious doubts as to whether or not what was happening was ethical...

We came in with four adults and a couple infants and a little kid and the young man at the door. Put it down at seven. After an hour of waiting we found out they said they don't actually have for 7... Would have been nice to know up front because over the radio, after waiting for over an hour we heard the person upstairs saying whenever I can get two tables beside each other I can help the group of seven...

That's when I got the manager and explained what was happening and that actually we only had four adults and could do a workaround very easily because we were very flexible

I had gone upstairs numerous times to see tables empty for 20 and 30 minutes but to be fair one would be over here and the other would be 15 ft away. Still questionable though..

After we were seated I took pictures of three different tables that I'll post here that were empty for 20 minutes so still scratching my head but anyway... It was an outstanding meal. The food was excellent. The burger that we had that may have been one of the best burgers I've ever eaten.. the waiter was awesome. It's just very unfortunate that this occurred...

I also asked prairie candidly if they were just short-handed so they weren't seating every one of the tables that they had and they said no that they had plenty of people... I was trying to give them a little bit of an out and to understand why they weren't seeding the tables... One of the things they explained was that people could go out to the pier and may not respond to being called back to their seating... However, if that is all that is happening and someone is 20-30 minutes away from their seating, that seems to be something that needs to change ASAP... Just tell people they're welcome to walk along the pier, but when their name is called they need to be back to the restaurant within five minutes... So don't go too far away... Seems easy enough to solve, although like I said I still have questions as to what was really happening...

Several families that came in off the street that were our size went in before us as well and at one point I asked how that was happening and the young man at the door said there's no Spanish number for them. I did not fully understand what he was trying to communicate but I watched that family come in off the street and they straight up told us there was no way to make reservations. Something was definitely fishy...

Why did I take the time to write all this

Seemed like a great restaurant and I hope the management takes this seriously and thinks about the way they do seating because we were 100% one star review before we even got there and even discussed whether or not they'd be able to dig themselves out of the deep deep deep one star hole that they had dug. Manager's apology and discount. Definitely helped..

Two. If they decide not to change anything hopefully people with little kids won't be in the same situation with hungry little ones waiting for over an hour to find out. They don't actually have a place for you to sit tons of empty tables continuously during the hour you're waiting...

Seemed like a nice young man at the door but very inarticulate and unsure of himself and it came across as though he knew what was happening but did not want to explain. So we had generalized responses that were not helpful and just added to frustration.

Again, hope this helps the readers and hope management receives...

The food was ok, however it was expensive! What you see in the picture cost just over $40! I went here with my mom who has trouble walking, I was able to help her walk up the stairs and across the restaurant to the table I was given which was not the table I wanted (i asked for the outside edge). They it would be 40 min wait for a table which was pretty accurate. The waiter we got seemed ok at first, but we asked a question about substituting some items and he kept cutting us off saying no you cant do that, that would change the price. We ordered the seafood basket and the bacon wrapped shrimp, as you can see in the picture. The a water and a Pepsi (they dont have coke). When the drinks arrived, my pepsi was "flat". I asked for another one, thinking they would fix the machine. But no, he came back and said they are out of Pepsi, what else would I like, so then I chose Sprite. When the sprite came, it too was flat. When we arrived it was 7:45pm on the Sunday night before labor day so they were very busy and close to closing at 9. However they shouldn't just not fix the soda machine just because it's close to closing. After we ordered it took over an hour of waiting before we finally got our food. Other parties who arrived after us got their food first. I have read other comments on Yelp complain about the same issue, (waited an hour for food and other parties got theirs first) and it was because "fried food is faster then grilled food", however other people from tables close by ordered two of the same things. That's what a Yelp review said. When the food finally arrived they didn't offer to refill our "flat" drink or offer something else. We didnt have the same server all night as they seem to just make however is available help you. Our original waiter seemed rude and almost argued with another waiter with what seemed like they were "taking customers from him". I'm not sure but it was not a great first experience and a couple sitting close by was also not happy as he got up and went to the register to pay instead of waiting because otherwise he would have been walk past and ignored like most of the night. So that's what I did too. The original waiter offered to refill our drink and give it to us to go but suprise, suprise, we never got it cause he never came back. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt because he was really busy, but they should be use to this by now and have better experience to handle a lot of customers. I came here for the view of the sunset and to try this place out. Let's just say disappointed is an...