Mia Oceanfront — Restaurant in Hallandale Beach

Evening, I usually do not do this unless I have had a wonderful experience or a terrible experience and the later pertains to this location. Have been wanting to try Mia Oceanfront for quite some time. Are not tourists, live here and have never gone. Well, will NEVER go again. How this facility is rated well is beyond me. We made reservations, were early and were seated by the hostess. She gave us menus and said someone would be right with us. We sat for 20 minutes before anyone, server or other staff for that matter even greeted us. When the young lady, Sasha, finally come over she asked if we would like to get started with water. We ordered tap water. The water came and it was in a carafe that must have come out of the dishwasher. The water was warm, not room temperature, warm. Then we were asked if we would like the complimentary Prosecco, which we said yes. After about another 20 mins we finally received the Prosecco. (One of the guest got a broken glass, how was this missed?)This is when our order was taken. We ordered an appetizer for the table to start. Each person (3) ordered a starter and then a main except one. So you have an idea the starters ordered were soup. So, over 40 mins has now elapsed and we are waiting for the table appetizer. It finally showed up after being there for 50 mins. It was fine. We have reached the over an hour mark and what comes out, no starters, but two of the courses that we ordered as mains. There were 2 sushi rolls that were anything but good. I have never had warm sushi before with a fishy taste. The other dish that was ordered as a main was tuna tartare. That, in itself, was tasty. I did forget to mention that we had asked for a menu to order more wine, server NEVER came back to take the order for wine. We are going on over an hour now and two people have received no food. That did it! Enough was enough. All we wanted to do was leave, which we did with a loud exit. Hospitality, not even close. Then we got an excuse of we didn't know it would be so busy. Busy, for a restaurant that has an interior with about 15-18 tables and at the time there were people at only 6, I would not say that was busy. Yes, there were tables outside as well but one does not have to do with the other. Being in the hospitality business for 17 years I have no idea on how this place has survived. If this is how they operate than shame on them. Not sure if the owner is aware, as I did ask for the owner but was told he/she was busy, so could not express to him/her. The management of this place has a lot to be desired. It's too bad as it is a lovely setting with outdoor seating looking out over the ocean. It's one thing to apologize but to continually apologize and not do anything to fix it in real time is a disgrace. I don't even think this restaurant deserves 1 star as the whole evening was overshadowed by terrible service and no attention to customer needs when you see there is a problem. There was a gentleman as we were departing who agreed and said his experience this evening was terrible as well. Don't know how they will make it through a South Florida season if they don't get their act in order. To top it off when we went to valet to retrieve our vehicle, they wanted $9.00 but did not take cash, only cards. When the card was processed there was tax on top of it which drove the price up to $11.00. What a crock! This place was pitiful. The owner, management and staff should be ashamed of how this evening transpired. There are a lot of great restaurants in our city, this is not one of them! An extremely dissatisfied guest who...

Picked this place for our anniversary dinner (a couple of months late, due to medical reasons, but that's another story). Reserved outdoors - they have a beautiful view onto the ocean. Arrived and they'd made no note of our outdoor request, and when we walked through told us to pick our table (not sure how I feel about that, but suffice to say there were none directly to the water but our view was nice all the same). Our server was nice, and given the type of meal we were looking to pace ourselves so don't know if the pacing was normal (we were there almost 2 hours in all). What I liked was the view, the setting as it got dark (candlelit) with a lovely and talented string duet (cello and violin), which made for a lovely atmosphere. The food was good, solid 4* (a real 4, not '"this is my favourite burger joint type rating), they had a Georgian quest chef in but we only tried the bread (amazing). Where this all fell below a 5, too much food - we had asked when ordering whether appetisers and sides were shareable and told no, that we would need one each and we could easily have shared an appetiser (especially as we ordered the Georgian bread). So after the first course we were already stuffed. My wife had to leave half of hers else she wouldn't have been able to attempt her main course. We each ordered steak (one filet one ribeye), our desired temperature of medium-rare was pretty close to perfect (mine was a little underdone in the middle but still within reason). The sides were plentiful and given the steak came with some grilled corn (which was delicious), we could've ordered a single side of mash to share and it would've been enough. Instead we ended up with 3 barely touched sides, my wife had most of her steak left. The steak perhaps could've used a sauce, at least on the side, on top of the seasoning. That meant we had what was over $100 of food uneaten, so we took it home (which was inconvenient as we were ubering and had plans to go out after the meal). With one bottle of wine ($59) and a single beer ($9), no dessert, our bill with 20% (mandatory) service was almost $330 . Indoor was a very different vibe (nice interior), where they have a very rambunctious birthday party with live entertainment, kids everywhere and a LOT of noise (they asked us if we wanted to sit inside with no head's us). Looked fun, but not for us that night. The door to the outside gave great sound insulation, but opened with the servers going back/forth. Oh, and be mindful of the "would you like sparkling or still water" - each is bottled (our still was $9 + service/tax, about $12 addition). Combined with the photographer who came around (which made us uncomfortable to ask the server then to take a picture of us, so we didn't get one at our anniversary dinner of us together), and the mandatory service (like you see on the broadwalk), it did feel a little tourist-trappy. Bottom line we would go again - great view, lovely interior, good menu, nice service, great atmosphere with the strings, but just be mindful of our quantities. On another day, this could've been a couple of beers and a more modest order and under...

Had high expectations going in, but not impressed. The service was especially dicey. I know this is a pet peeve of mine, but I really don't like it when the food runners come to the table (we were a party of four) and say, quizzically, "who had the caesar salad?" "who had the shrimp cocktail?". C'mon, a restaurant that aspires to be the type of restaurant that I think Mia aspires to be doesn't operate like that. The food runner knows who gets what. And then when the entrees came, we had to then request forks and knives because our utensils had been taken with the appetizer/salad dishes (as they should've). But the server, who was almost non-existent after taking the orders, never noticed that we needed new utensils before the main course arrived. He never came back to pour wine from the bottle. Very weird. And then, when the check was presented, maybe the mystery was solved. There was a 20% gratuity added to each of our two checks (for two people each -- we weren't a large party). The server thought/knew he was guaranteed 20%, so why bother to offer good service. He didn't point that out (another huge pet peeve of mine - if an establishment, for whatever reason, is going to add an automatic gratuity, the server should, nicely and diplomatically, POINT IT OUT, don't leave it to the customer to notice it or, more to the point, don't hope that the customer won't notice it and then add a 20% tip on top of a bill total that already has 20% tip included). He just presented the Toast hand held device and we were presented the options of 18%, 20%, 22%. My fellow guest said "you already have 20% added in, right?" and the server had the audacity (after being absent the entire meal) to say "yes, but that's the gratuity that gets shared with the back of house, you have the option of adding more on that goes directly to me". Give me a freakin' break. Needless to say, we didn't add more and I refrained from calling the manager over to reduce the "automatic" 20% gratuity. And, to top if off, my shrimp fettuccine, when served, was lukewarm, like it had been sitting there a while waiting for the other entrees to...