Bimini's Oyster Bar & Seafood Cafe — Restaurant in Greenville

Our first visit and first time to Bimini’s, parking was a bit tight and had to park across the street in another establishment. I understand Bimini’s is giving their best. My opinion, to give your best would be to get a bigger establishment, more staff based on labor and better parking.

Based upon entering the establishment, when we walked in I was kind of reluctant because the greeter did not greet it was not even a hello, just follow me and walked us to a table without looking back. We waited for 45 minutes at the table while watching our server serve 5 tables that arrived after we were seated, these tables had their drinks, appetizers ate and left and after 45 minutes, enough was enough! until the table sitting behind us was polite and courteous enough as regulars guest to feel upset for us and bought my 72 year old mother a birthday drink, since 45 minutes went by and we don’t even have a waiter/waitress yet. Our server served 5 tables after we have arrived I felt like me and my family have bothered the establishment and we were just ghost at this point. At least we did get seated quickly then ignored.

A lovely woman name Ayena waited on us after we flagged her down. Ayena shown pure empathy, compassion taken ownership of the situation and was very apologetic even though she was not the waiter/waitress for our table. After she has taken ownership of our table we got our food quickly, it was hot and delicious. The atmosphere and decor of the place reminded us of being in North Myrtle Beach.

I ordered the 1/4 lb fried shrimp, a dozen of mussels, which were extremely dry not much flavor, it was missing some white wine garlic flavor or something, 6 raw oysters, 6 oysters rockerfellas, 1 crab cluster, the crab legs were so sweet and didn’t need any sauce or butter, a crab cake, and clam strip’s appetizers as you can see I am a food critic at it’s fullest Teekaaboo Style and don’t play with my seafood. Their hush puppies were good and delicious. They had a great event going on and I enjoyed the guy playing the guitar.

Besides the long wait times and even though the front desk was present the customer service was not a great experience and I have been working customer service for over 16 years and currently do.

Customer service was terrible with a smile🙃. We had to ask for a waiter/waitress more than 6 times for a sweet tea that has not been delivered after we were finally able to order, we ate all our food until my nephew started getting upset who is 4 Yrs of age because he was thirsty and could not take anymore food without drinking. Our waiter kept saying he was going to bring our drink but 3 new guest tables were served after requesting our tea. I started adding humor and was wondering if we get up and leave after eating everything will we get noticed then. After eating all the food we are still waiting on two drinks, my mother’s birthday lemon meringue pie as promised. I am feeling like everything should be 1/2 off price.

It was so bad I was wondering who the store manager was, being experienced as a restaurant manger myself. I requested to speak with him/her. I expressed my grievances and it really felt like a brush off and he really need some lessons on more empathy and compassion instead he was more relaxing and chilling at the bar more than running his shift/establishment but I did once more advised him to keep our waitress Ayena and expressed my deepest gratitude for her. I mean sir, we waited 45 minutes patiently before we had to track someone down to even ask us what can I get you to drink for starters, Ayena is a major plus for the establishment but don’t want her burnt out either, she basically ran the place herself.

I am disappointed that we did not have a better experience. Yes! we should never have to leave our seats to go find our waiter/waitress. The issue was not the food, like I said we had impeccable service from our waitress Ayena, she had a great personality and we never had to wait for anything, however; the issue is customer service and definitely was not the...

On June 6, 2024, my mother, father, brother and I went out to dinner at 6pm. Long story short, we were there until 9pm. My mother who lives in memory care wanted some fried oysters. It took 30 minutes before we even received any water or drinks so so we promptly ordered our meal. Both parents ordered fried oyster platters and my brother and I ordered oysters on the half shell and 4 clusters of crab legs to share. After waiting an hour longer, the waiter informed us that they were out of oysters. Mom & Dad disappointedly changed their order to fried shrimp platter. Minutes later, the waiter brought the oyster platters out and my mom proceeded to jump right in. He then immediately came back and snatched the plates up (while she was eating) and said it was wrong and took them to another table!!! The other table knew and called (I'm assuming) the manager or owner over and he proceeded to remedy the situation. I don't know what he did for them. We then received our food but still had no silverware. I was able to get cocktail and tarter sauce off an empty table. We had to then wait for silverware, a single cracker to share for our crab legs. We could see two waitresses running as hard as they could and our waiter appeared to be running also. We could see people who came in after us getting their food albeit still slow. We knew they must be short staffed so we never complained or said anything. My parents had to bolt as soon as they ate because the facility locks up for the evening at 8pm. She was 30 minutes late. When we received the bill, it still had the 2 oyster platters and an additional shrimp platter. My brother called the manager/owner(?) over and he said he would take care of it. Our waiter brought us another bill which was still wrong. The 3rd bill was correct. We never received an apology, a discount or anything from the waiter or the manager/owner(?) for the 3 hours and wrong food. We paid, my brother left 18% gratuity (which he never leaves that little) and we pulled out at 9pm.

I have never written a bad review and I'm only doing this in the hopes that it will be remedied. Bimini's has been around for a long time and we have eaten there many times and the food is always wonderful but not worth this (even with...

They had a sign stating they were understaffed, but we were ready to be patient as we were looking forward to diving into some big ole plates of seafood. We arrived at 5:30 on a weeknight and were quoted a 15-20 min wait - totally reasonable - but one hour later we were still waiting. Still though… wait times change and things happen.

The tide turned for me when I heard all the servers telling this poor host to stop seating people, period. I asked the host if “stopping seating” included those of us on the waiting list - there were only two parties of 3 remaining at that point. The host apologized and said we would need to wait another 30 minutes if not longer… she really wasn’t sure if, or when, we would ever get a table. I saw customers being turned away at the door and being told they couldn’t give a potential wait-time.

Quick disclaimer: I can’t stand when I read reviews and people say “oh I’M in the industry so I KNOW everything” but okay, yes, I have 25 years of experience - all levels of dining - bar, wait, mgmt, FOH, BOH. I’m only bringing it up here because I observed and listened to what was happening as we sat there waiting. And I’ve been where those folks were at tonight, struggling to keep up while the ship is going down… I felt it in my soul - and I do get it.

But… on the flip side, having to turn customers away when there’s only two parties of 3 waiting… and at 6:30 on a weeknight? The whole time I was looking around and wondering, “where is a manager?” I never saw a manager assisting the host or trying to problem solve. It felt like this staff got thrown to the wolves, and that didn’t set well with me.

I’m sure there’s more to the story, there always is, and maybe they were able to start seating again eventually. We threw in the towel and left since it was so uncertain. So I never got to try the food and tbh I doubt I will be back.

I’m giving 3 stars to give the benefit of the doubt. But just be aware that a) you should get a reservation no matter what day or time and b) they don’t seem to be consistent.

Big props to the host for keeping it together - I would’ve been crying in...