Half Moon — Restaurant in Keansburg

Half Moon is currently in the process of building out their restaurant space, which will hopefully open in September. In the meantime, they have opened (beginning in June) an outdoor space which they call The Lot. The Lot has a bar, and offers a limited menu of items, all of which will be on their full menu once the indoor space opens. We were told that the full menu will have approximately 30 offerings. There is also (currently) a kids menu available, which offers a single slider, grilled cheese sandwich, and a couple other items.

We visited about 5:30PM on a Sunday, and there were just a few other diners. We were told by our waitress Liz, that Sunday evenings are generally quiet, but that other evenings are quite busy.

It was comfortable sitting out under the tent as we could feel the breeze off the water. I ordered the Morningside Margarita, and it was tart and flavorful. What I didn't realize was how potent the drink was, but I found out when I went to stand up when we were finished... and that was after only having the one drink! My daughter ordered the lemonade, and it was quite sharp, tasting like it was made with bottled lemon juice, not a drink to be ordered again.

My daughter ordered the Smash Sliders sans the caramelized onions and special sauce. She said they were tender and flavorful. My husband and I shared three items, the Blistered Shishitos, Harpooned Shrimp, and the Cajun Fish Tacos. The Shishitos were flavorful, especially with the togarashi powder. I personally prefer them a bit more blistered, so next time I will make that request. The shrimp was two skewers of five shrimp each. The shrimp were plump and perfectly grilled. The sauce was mild, both sweet and spicy. The Cajun Fish Tacos were two street tacos, each with a nice portion of tender perfectly cooked Mahi-mahi. The seasoning was very mild, and to call them Cajun is a stretch, but a delicious taco nonetheless. My daughter finished her meal with a Good Humor ice cream bar.

Our waitress Liz was super friendly and answered all our menu and restaurant questions. Our food came out quickly, everything was hot, fresh, and tasty. We're looking forward to trying more menu items, and we would definitely order all the items we had tonight again in the future. My Margarita was strong so there was no way I could have handled more than one drink, but I'm looking forward to trying some of their other specialty cocktails! The only "miss" of the evening was the lemonade. Definitely a nice addition to the Keansburg beach area.

Note that a surcharge is added to the bill if paying with a...

PSA… DO NOT BRING YOUR KIDS unless they are silent you will basically be asked TO LEAVE!!!! I made 5:15 reservations for my family with a 4 & 2 year old. We arrived to an empty restaurant with a few people at the bar, we ordered drinks and food (more expensive items NY Strip Steak, Lobster Mac, Shrimp, Drinks etc). While we waited my children were playing with their toys at the table (bc we try not to put them on iPads when out to eat) someone from the kitchen came out and asked us to have them be quiet because someone at the bar was complaining. For people that have small children know this is not so easy to do, which is why we try to go out in-between 5-5:30pm. At that point it made my husband and I extremely uncomfortable/unwelcomed; they didn't actually make us leave. He did try to be very polite about the entire thing but we knew we were not wanted there so we immediately left and offered to pay for the drinks offered which they told us not to worry about. This was our first experience and it will certainly be our LAST (with or without kids). If you want to cater to people drinking the cheapest happy hour drinks and ordering no food at the bar instead of families spending significantly more looking for new places to go then that's up to you..it's your business. My family lives 5 minutes away and this could have been somewhere my family frequented over the summer but there are plenty of other places in the area that will not treat families this way and are happy to have the business. We have been too TONS of restaurants in the area, many which are higher end places then Half Moon and have NEVER had this happen. To the owner of this restaurant I regret to inform you that it is in Keansburg down the street from the boardwalk full of rides/games and if you wish to not have children at your establishment this should be mentioned prior to making reservations. I did feel bad for the waiter as we had absolutely no issue with him, and ultimately the staff suffers from poor business decisions like these. Ultimately the only people that this truly affects is the wait staff missing out on larger tips and the businesses bottom line. Maybe your restaurant wouldn't be half empty on a Friday when it's 80 degrees and located across from a beach/boardwalk if you had a different business approach and catered to a...

My friends and I were very excited to try out Half Moon. The menu looked fantastic and we really liked the vibes of the restaurant. When we got there, the restaurant wasn’t very busy, which should have worked in our favor for service. While the food was absolutely incredible, the service was subpar. There were a couple people at the bar and three other tables while we were at the restaurant. During this time our server was terrible at checking in with us. As I said, the restaurant wasn’t busy. In fact, it was slow enough that the owner came and interacted with two tables near us - but not us. The servers were very attentive to the other tables but our table of four was mostly ignored.

We were not checked on until we were mostly through our food which made asking for extras such as condiments incredibly difficult. We received our food in a timely manner and it was all incredibly good, especially the seafood such as the fish and chips and the frito misto. Our drinks were hit or miss with about half not as great. Unfortunately I received a drink that I wasn’t a fan of and sat with it while all my friends finished their drinks. About 10 minutes after they had finished our server showed up (the first time since dropping the drinks off), and immediately said what’s wrong. I explained that I hadn’t liked the drink at which point she asked why I hadn’t liked it. Honestly, it just wasn’t to my taste but being out on the spot was very uncomfortable. I understand wanting to improve as the restaurant is new, but it was not approached very friendly. They did remove the drink from my bill thankfully, but the overall experience at Half Moon was disappointing — especially after...