Seafood Express & More — Restaurant in Jacksonville

Seafood Express serves the most abundant portions of delicious food at a very reasonable price! If you can survive the frostbite you may receive while ordering and the lengthy wait for that order, you're gonna be in high cotton. As I walked up to the counter just before 5pm on a Monday afternoon to place an order to go, the cashier behind the counter seemed totally oblivious to her surroundings, her eyes locked on her cell phone. There were maybe six tables of guests and a lady waiting for her order sitting to the side. After a moment of waiting respectfully for her to acknowledge my presence I asked "Is this where I place an order to go?". She gave me a surly look blurted in a disgusted voice "What do ya want?". I tried to ignore her nasty attitude as she impatiently took my order, snatched the money from my hand and she literally slammed my receipt and change on the counter snapping "It'll be ready in 15-20 minutes". I came back in 20 minutes later and chatted with a lady waiting ahead of me who had thoughtfully called her order in. When the cashier materialized again I asked her if my order was ready yet and she snapped a curt NO as she turned back around and went back into the kitchen. The lady I had been conversing with turned to me and said "I thought I had said or done something to tick her off, glad to see that I'm not the only one to get bit today." She was worried as she had called in 45 minutes earlier and was late arriving - her order still wasn't ready. There were two people back in the kitchen that we could see and they stayed in constant motion. The lady and I both received our orders complete with a personalized eye roll - about the same time - according to the time on my receipt, my order took 36 minutes for a cheeseburger, fries, corn nuggets, fried okra, jumbo sweet tea and a shrimp dinner with baked potato and garden salad. We used to dine at Seafood Express quite often and the service used to be expedient and the atmosphere and service warm and welcoming. The lady I met while waiting said she orders take out once or twice a week and is usually met with indifferent to cold attitudes but this was a first for finding the cashier...

Our party of 4 decided to try this place out this past Fathers day. While there was no singular glaring issues, it all ended up adding up for a bit of a let down experience.

This is a walk up order counter (did not know that, probably our fault for not looking more thoroughly at the site.) We ordered two starters, one a basket of fried okra 8.99 (little high in my personal opinion) and a basket of gatertail (14.99). I decided I wanted to try the stuffed grouper and shrimp combo, sadly to be told they didn't have any of the "stuffing stuff". So I shifted to the blackened salmon and shrimp combo with green beans and fries as the two sides. Husband ordered the grouper with shrimp combo with a upgraded side salad and fries as his two sides. Our two adult guest both ordered to Shrimp special, 30 pieces of shrimp with side of fries (14.99 hell of a deal!)

After grabbing our drinks (again, all self service) we took a seat and waited for food to arrive. Our apps arrived quickly and our two guest shrimp specials arrived maybe 5 minutes after. About 10 minutes after their food arrived a very nice woman came over to tell my husband that they were now out of Grouper. Whomp whomp... so he swapped for Flounder. Another 20 minutes go by and our food still had not arrived but now our guest were actually done eating while we waited for ours. It shows and we finally chow down. Mine was okay, super heavy handed on the blackened seasoning to where it was literally coating the inside of my mouth, hard to describe. My husband said his was just okay.

While waiting on the food we did take notice of the restaurant a little more, would definitely suggest updating some of the interior, specifically the lighting. The fans were kind creating a blinking sensation from the lights.

All in all it was just a "meh" experience for almost $100. Not really a date night atmosphere but would probably grab the shrimp specials to...

I'm not posting to tell anybody not to eat at this place. I'll tell you why I'm not. Wife walks in orders food. Waits 45 minutes before anybody figures out the ticket has been lost. She asks for money back multiple times. They kept saying they would recook food which would have been another 20 minutes or more which was bull... you fill in the blank. Nobodies food in my tax bracket is worth over a hours wait. Manager cops attitude because we don't want to reward poor job performance by waiting twenty more minutes or probably more. Also a sarcastic "people make mistakes" thrown in. Well you did and like I said I don't reward that. Food is excellent. Service ok till this. Have eaten there before no problems. Matter of fact we were driving almost a hour to buy food at the place. I wasnt even going to do a review. If the manager ,who is supposed to be a leader and set the example had kept her sarcastic mouth shut, owned the mistake and refunded the money on the first request I wouldn't have just wasted minutes of my life posting this. My money is my power over someone like that. And that's why it will be spent elsewhere. Actually the other place we ate at later comped our meal after hearing the story about this place. Go figure. The one star I gave would have been no stars...