Charles Seafood — Restaurant in Harahan

It’s intriguing how a great or bad experience will drive you to write a review, especially if you never written one, which is my case. Well I had a bad one, and the crazy thing, it’s not about the food taste, service, etc. They actually have good food and service, which I’ve occasionally gone to in the last 30 years that I’ve been living in Harahan. Bad management is the culprit!!

It pretty much started with my wife having a craving for boiled crabs. When I got to the restaurant for a “to go” order of “ 10 Jumbo crabs ”, I had asked if they were heavy, which is a term used for a crab that is full of meat. I was assured that they were, and brought them home. At the house, I started pulling them out of the bag, and a bunch of them were kites, a term meaning the crab has a huge shell on the outside, but the actual meat inside the crab is scarce. I told the wife that we’re bringing these back. I asked if she wanted to just eat at the restaurant to still give them the business, which she agreed. Upon getting to restaurant after a duration of 20 minutes from picking up the crabs, I was directed to speak to the manager. He explained to me that he doesn’t take crabs back that are good….. that he would exchange the kites, but in my case he would honor a full return. I explained that I wasn’t aware of their policy, and that we were just going to eat inside the restaurant instead. We were shown our table, and ordered a soft shell crab platter, and bowl of gumbo. When it was time to clear the bill, the waitress said we were only getting a credit for 8 crabs. I explained that if there was a miscount, it was on their part because I didn’t initially count the crabs to verify the amount was correct when I was at home. I just put what I had on my serving trays back in the bag. The waitress said she would relay the message back to the manager. Afterwards the waitress came back to inform me that it would still be an 8 crab exchange instead 10 (Roughly $7 each). Of course I asked to speak to the manager, in which, I expressed their error on the count to him. A lot of verbiage was exchanged, but basically he held his stance on only crediting me for 8 crabs, when it should be 10. This left a bad taste in my mouth, pretty much insinuating that I kept 2 of the crabs and ordered a better deal on the menu. My last words to him were “this is no way to run a business”.

On that note, I will not go back to Charles Seafood!!

On another note: I didn’t see a return policy on the crabs on their web site, or a notable sign or verbally stated when I purchased them in...

Let me preface this first by saying that I love the food here and we have never had a complaint with anything served to us. However, the reason for my 3 star review deals with the service this evening. My wife, son, and I went to eat and we were seated almost immediately. After about 15 minutes of waiting for someone to take our drink order, a waitress who was not ours, came over, told us that "Kevin" would be waiting on us, but she would get our drinks. Once she brought them, we waited a few more minutes and Kevin finally came to the table. He took our order, which was Crawfish and potatoes along with an appetizer, which isn't a hard thing to do. We got our app and the crawfish came about 15 minutes later. No potatoes. As we ate, Kevin seemed to disappear. No refills and still no potatoes. A waitress to an adjoining table saw what was going on and offered to get refills for us and our potatoes. As she came out with the potatoes, Kevin apparently saw this and came to the table. He stood there, says "I guess I forgot your potatoes, rather low, then says, "Obviously, I won't charge you for them, then just stands there in silence for an awkwardly long time. Extremely uncomfortable. He finally walks away. Once we were done, he brings the check, I give him my card, and he returns with the completed bill. No apology, no thank you, nothing. He lays it on the table and walks away. His tip reflected his service or should I say lack of and I ALWAYS tip at least 20 percent. By the way, I tipped the very nice waitress $5.00 just for being helpful even though she tried to refuse it. Had this been the first time with him, I'd excuse it. However, this had been multiple times like this, only with him. I did call to try to let management know the situation, not looking for any freebies. I spoke with a "manager" who cut me off as I was trying to explain and blamed it on being "shorthanded due to Covid". Considering that there was no less than 5 different wait staff on the floor and no other table around us encountered issues (they did not have him), I do not buy this explanation. We will continue to eat there as we love the food and the value, but we will be certain to request not to sit in his section or at a table he may be waiting on. I do not believe in harboring negative feelings towards a restaurant due to the ineptness of one...

On 4/11/18 we were served iced cold crawfish. When I brought it to the attention of our waitress JOY, she took them away then brought them back saying she could put them in the microwave if I wanted because they had turned the boiler off. I went there specifically to eat crawfish. I said it was too late to order something else because the other diners with me had their food, I said I would keep the crawfish if I could get a discount. She agreed. When our bill came, it was incorrect to begin with and we had no discount. She said the manager said no discount. When the manager came to our table he had an attitude and was RUDE! I asked for his name and he said I AM THE OWNER! He said we don't give discounts on food. I explained about the cold crawfish, he said "you can't expect us to keep crawfish hot 24/7, and if you don't like it, don't come back." We also tried to explain that we had charges on our bill that belonged to the table next to us, he said the bill is right, "I checked it myself." The guest at the table next to us then joined the conversation and said they ordered the item and never received it. This turned into a back and forth in front of other customers. He told us to pay the bill or not, but don't come back! My husband, who is black, walked over to the bar to settle the bill and get the unordered items off our ticket was told by the OWNER "I stand by my waitress and WE DON'T WANT YOUR BUSINESS ANYWAY"! We are professional, well traveled individuals and we have never, EVER been treated this way at any establishment! I want to be contacted by the real owner as I can not believe any business owner would treat their customers that way and not value their business. Not to mention our waitress Joy was late to take our order, late bringing the food, and even later to bring the bill and to top it off, the bill was incorrect! I...