Latitudes Restaurant — Restaurant in Jupiter

This one is a story of three different meals - 2 breakfasts and 1 dinner. Breakfast number 1 was good, island French toast, well prepared and very tasty, with the cinnamon cutting through nicely. The blueberry butter, beyond the purple color, didn’t strike much of a chord, with no significant flavor coming through from it. Dinner was predominantly very good, the starters - calamari and octopus were both truly outstanding, and worth the visit alone. Main courses were both grouper, one ‘naked’ and beautifully cooked, very tasty but the risotto side was over cooked. The other grouper dish (pictured) was the crab encrusted variant, beautifully presented, and the fish very well cooked. I felt the crab dominated a little too much, but this was a minor gripe. The polenta side was a little dry and coupled with the slight dryness of the crab made the dish a little too dry, but still very flavorful. Crème brûlée was interesting, I enjoyed it but my wife less so. Very well prepared, and tasty, the point of contention being a relatively strong taste of orange. We were thinking perhaps Cointreau but there was no mention of this in the ingredients, so we asked our server. He checked and indicated lemon zest in the cream, and though this would be reasonable for a citrus tang, we both felt it was orange not lemon that we could taste. This question around ingredients certainly came into play with the next day’s breakfast too. Breakfast on the last day was sadly another story. Major attitude from the greeter from the outset, who initially refused to seat my wife saying the kitchen was closed despite arrival at 10:55 where the restaurant is indicated as being open for breakfast until 11:00am. Sorry but if you indicate you’re open to 11:00 then you don’t get to turn people away at 10:55, if you want to close earlier then indicate your hours accordingly, and certainly don’t be giving hotel guests paying over $500 per night, a bunch of attitude. A conversation with the restaurant manager eventually got us seated, though not without some more snide comment from the same greeter. In an endeavor to be as helpful as possible we ordered quickly, my wife going for the crab Benedict, whilst I went for the island French toast as I had the day before. The crab Benedict was under seasoned but otherwise ok, coffee only tepid (as it was the day before) but decent tasting nonetheless. The French toast though was a different story, and markedly poor compared to the day before. More importantly though the French toast tasted very heavily of almonds, overpowering any other flavor, and being akin to trying to eat straight marzipan. I should perhaps add that notwithstanding a very strong dislike of almonds, I’m also allergic to them, and there was no mention of them on the ingredients for the dish. I raised this with the server, also pointing out a fairly obvious sliced almond piece that had been stuck in one of the toast slices. The server took the dish back to the kitchen and returned to say that there was definitely no almonds in it and the almond we could see was a piece of crab meat. Notwithstanding the server’s poor attitude at this point she clearly implied the crab was in some way from my wife’s dish, despite that it came from a slice under another slice of toast and was literally embedded into that toast. Either way, indicating that somehow crab meat contamination was better, was completely laughable. The idea though that there was no almonds in there was an absolute joke, outside of cyanide I’m not aware of anything else that tastes like almonds/marzipan, certainly not so strongly. And of course the server was then accusingly saying to us that we had not indicated an allergy to her (true but then if you have an ingredient list that’s accurate, I haven’t previously encountered a problem with it). Needless to say I didn’t bother ordering a replacement. So overall a mixed bag, some excellent food, some very far from it. Some quality service, and some amongst the worst...

First, the dining room was loud, the acoustics were terrible. There was a large table behind us of about 10 people that were so loud, we had to scream across the table. Since the dining room was less than half full, the hostess should have placed us in a part of the dining room further from this group. I forget the server's name as the service was good, not great. But there was another gentleman, Richard, he served our water and cleared plates. Richard was so pleasant, we had a long conversation with him, and he even sung to my Mom. I had Lobster Bisque, which had a crack in it according to the server, but it was horrible, tasted like a plant leaf. The Bisque was very tasty, would have been better with NO garnishes, only bisque. The quesadilla was not appealing, it tasted like there was a whole chicken breast flattened inside, and not much cheese. It should have had the chick cut into bites with lots of cheese. The Caprese, well it seemed that we were hunting for the basil. While I love Caprese (regular or Burrata), this was disappointing. For entrees there was Grouper, which was only good, as it was overcooked. Had it been cooked properly, if would not have been dry. I will say the sauce, which was a cream sauce with Capers was VERY tasty. I ordered the crab cake. It was garnished with lots of roasted pepper. And there was lots of red pepper IN the crab cake, this ruined it, as crab is delicate, and the roasted red pepper, especially in that quantity overpowered it. I ate 1/3 of it, and ordered another bowl of the bisque without ANY garnish. The soup arrived their normal preparation, then the second time it arrive with that icky cracker and the cold lobster claw (HELLO!!! That is part of the garnish!!!) I took both out, then ate. My husband ordered the NY Strip Steak. This was cooked perfectly (rate/medium-rare), and tasty. I would go back, as there is a large menu. But I would pay attention to the dining room when we were seated. Also, of the dishes we ordered, only the Lobster Bisque and the NY Strip Steak were worth...

There is no section above for rating for hostess, seating, and parking.

Starting with the required valet parking. If you can get over the fact that it's absolutely required, and there are barricades that don't allow you to self park. And five dollars is required for valet. Then you need to understand that our experience took 25 minutes to get our car. There was a party bus actually two party buses in the driveway which required loading of a large group. Which took 10 minutes easily apiece. This confounded the people coming in to park as well as the people leaving. There was definitely not enough valet Drivers. Once the car was finally appeared they shout your name because of the bedlam and we walked to the other side of the driveway. Not exactly door-to-door service. And while you're waiting, you have no sense of security that your car will ever show up. The drivers were very nice and polite. However, they were completely overwhelmed, and the whole system was , an experience I would like to avoid in the future.

When we were offered high top seating, I don't think we realized how loud it would be in the bar area on a Friday night so that was not exactly a desirable experience. Additionally, we came in at five. Surprisingly, we left before seven, as the food took a while to come. But the entire dining room was empty when we got there when we left and I think they certainly could've seated us in the dining room for our brief stay.

The birthday party in the back room reduce the number of seats so perhaps that's why we were relegated to a high top. Which might've worked out for another group, but my 87-year-old parents found it difficult to talk and here in such a loud environment.

The waitress did the best she could under the circumstances.

Additionally, we called for a reservation and we're told that we were going to get a text. We called back for a text. And there was no sign of our reservation so we called again. We ended up calling four times to secure this reservation and we never got a text.

Nice...