Skull Creek Boathouse — Restaurant in Hilton Head Island

If you're a foodie like us, just go somewhere else.. Details below if you'd like a read.

Party of two on a Wednesday night was over an hour wait. We lucked out and found an outside high top. Service started off excellent, but went downhill.

We ordered half a dozen raw oysters and proceeded with our entree order. Waited awhile and she came back around and we decided we'd like to try the hush puppies. Those came out instantly. Some were a little over done. They were definitely just frozen hush puppies. The honey butter was the most enjoyable part. We continued to wait for our oysters and nothing. At that point we were over the oysters, we had hoped to have them as more of an appetizer which is how we ordered them. A good while later the food came out.

I ordered the swordfish special. It was good. Fish was a little over cooked, the salad it came with had great flavors, but the peach that was on it was not ripe at all and therefore lacked flavor. The special also came with fingerling potatoes. They desperately needed their own dipping sauce. Overall it wasn't bad, but not what I expected for $40.

My husband ordered the Royal Seafood Sampler. It was extremely disappointing because that was the number one dish recommended to us by the waitress. The crabcake was one of the better items, but still not great for the price and us being from MD knowing a delicious crab cake. The vegetables of the day looked to be cut by a 2 year old, or beat up in the steam pot. Some of the green beans still had the stem on them. I like my veges with some texture, not mush, but these were almost crunchy still. The savannah rice tasted like it was cooked with liquid smoke, not good. The scallops were nothing special and smothered in a pineapple relish that did nothing for them. The stuffed shrimp tasted processed.

After our food came out I politely reminded the waitress that we had ordered oysters and she immediately interrupted me and made an excuse that they were slammed and they'd be right out. I apologized for the confusion and told her we weren't interested in them at that point. I think she just forgot to put the order in, which was totally fine. I would have preferred the honesty.

After the oyster incident she service completely changed. She was still nice, but nowhere near as friendly as when we first sat.

We had such high expectations after reading the reviews. Honestly not sure how it has the rating it does. It could be a great place, but I feel like they can't keep up the quality with the...

TLDR: Just walk over to Hudson’s and eat there. None of the food tasted seasoned at all.

We waited an hour and 15 minutes for a table (we were quoted 1 hour). It was about 7:45pm when we got seated. Our waitress was great.

All the reviews I saw about the food being bland made me skeptical but I thought we’d give it a shot since it has an average rating of 4.5 stars with over 7k reviews at the time of writing. We had hush puppies and those were about the only thing I would recommend. We are typically the people to say something when the food isn’t right but we waited so long already that we were so hungry and it was late and just sucked it up and ate. I had the half pound of shrimp. It was very bland, cocktail sauce was good, but the shrimp was not cleaned at all prior to serving. This led to a gritty texture in the shrimp and I didn’t realize until about half way through eating that it was the poop vein (look it up). It is possible, and most places do, to clean the shrimp even with the shells on. I then had the mashed potatoes which were sweet? Very confused on that one. The slaw was just ok, I didn’t finish it but it wasn’t my style. Our waitress informed me that it was mayo based, which it was, but I felt like it was just too creamy.

My girlfriend had the 4oz filets which one was cooked perfect and the other was very overdone. I didn’t think steak could be so bland!? They tasted like there was no salt at all, and there was no taste except for the meat flavor. I don’t understand how most things we had were so unseasoned. Again, something I would have said something about had we not just wanted to finish our food because of how hungry we were. I also felt like it wasn’t advantageous to complain after we had eaten everything. I didn’t want to seem disingenuous and that we were trying to get a free meal. Also the green beans and carrots were still raw and again had no seasoning.

The desert was good and to my surprise it didn’t taste like they just used Hershey’s chocolate sauce so that was good.

Normally we take photos of our food but this was not a “phone eats first” level of hunger. We will not be back. A shame because our waitress and the hostess took care of us and the views and vibes...

We've been coming here for years on our family vacations. Previously everything was awesome. Perfect 10. It's been a couple of years and apparently things have changed. We showed up around 520 PM and we were quoted an hour and fifteen minutes to an hour an a half with a party of ten. Smaller tables were not as long, as I would expect. At the hour and 45 minutes mark we asked and were told it was another 30 minutes. When we asked at 2 hours they said another 30 minutes and that tables had paid but were not getting up. We also saw many smaller tables sat before us even though they arrived after, we had said we could split up... But that didn't seem to matter. We also asked why a party of 14 was sat before us that arrived after and the response was that while they don't take reservations they do give preferential treatment to certain hotels so... Be warned. At the end of the day it felt like those who complained got sat early and that they prioritized smaller tables instead of tactically holding tables for larger parties that had been waiting much longer. There were at least two other parties we spoke with in the same situation as us. I spoke with Lindsey, a manager, and she was fantastic.... Doing the best with a bad situation. The one part of tonight that went as it should.

I don't think I can recommend this place any longer, especially with larger parties. Unfortunately we almost always have a larger party when we do come and that means we likely will not be returning.

The atmosphere and live music is continually top notch... But we effectively wasted our evening and had to leave without being sat because they couldn't tell us how long it would actually be to wait. I think if you have 4 or less I would recommend that it may be worth the risk for this place as the food and service in the past was incredible. But the mismanagement of the front is a complete deal breaker for me....