Azur Restaurant — Restaurant in Key West

The server began the night by asking us how we were. We answered, "Fantastic!" and with the food at Azur, the night only got better!

After calling other area restaurants that only had "one table at 9:30," we called Azur and were pleasantly surprised that a table was available at 7:30, the first time we asked for. We were seated on the patio, though I'd call it more of a porch. There is a roof with fans, and you are surrounded by low palms, masking you from the street. A fantastic atmosphere!

Our server was extremely knowledgeable about every item on the menu. He told us that the restaurant let him sample all the food for free, so he was able to give actual recommendations based on his experience. This was fantastic!

The meal started off with olives, roasted ricotta cheese and fresh bread. It was a small plate with all the flavors we could have wished, and was an excellent taste while we waited for our appetizer.

Our appetizer was a tomato and mozzarella cheese plate. The tomatoes were perfectly firm and juicy, full of flavor, and the mozzarella was so perfectly fluffy that it almost looked like egg whites. Fantastic!

After we finished with the appetizer, our main course came quickly. My wife had a swordfish steak, garnished with carmelized onions, capers, and other good stuff, on a bed of sauteéd swiss chard. Of course I stole some from her plate, and the combination of flavors was (you guessed it) fantastic! I had two items from the "small plates" menu, which can work out to fish courses for a meal if you are looking for that type of experience. I had the fish carpaccio with a local white fish cut very thin and arranged as flower petals on the plate, and garnished with with green olives, olio verde, crushed red pepper and Italian parsley. This was excellent, but naturally, being raw fish, not for everyone. The other plate I had was the seared jumbo sea scallops. These come three on a plate, and were totally sufficient for me. They are served with a sweet pea puree and a marinated tomato, cucumber and red onion salad. Again, the flavors complemented each other excellently, and there was the perfect amount on my plate to leave me absolutely comfortable, not stuffed as many restaurants aim to do.

After the cloth was drawn, we finished our meal with a capital 20-year tawny port. Our server chatted with us about the nightlife in Key West and recommended other local establishments that we might enjoy. As we left, the chef was in the dining room greeting the guests. We thanked him for an excellent meal, and returned to our room for champagne!

Overall, we can't recomment Azur enough. It...

Though we had a reservation, we were seated and forgotten about for a good ten minutes. Then a woman drove by our table and asked if anyone had helped us, yet left immediately without any attempt at being helpful. I was sure someone else would come to our table, but that same person came back about five minutes later. Then she got us club sodas. By the time she returned, we’d had ample time to look at the menu, which she had little to no knowledge of, but was ready to take our orders. We found out a little bit about the specials after we asked, though again, she wasn’t really able to describe them. We went for the tuna carpaccio special on faith, then proceeded to order what was supposed to be a goat cheese salad we’d seen and 2 fish dishes, both of which they were out of. We asked her to come back after we could look at the menu since talking to her about the food was getting us nowhere. She dropped the salad and tuna and left quickly. We had drained our glasses. The tuna was thin slices of tuna drenched in uninspiring soy sauce and loaded over with chives, and the salad was likewise slathered in sweet dressing with a hunk of “goat cheese” that looked more like Brie but lacked enough flavor for us to say for certain. When a man came by who seemed to know what he was doing and asked if we wanted to order, we told him we wanted the check. HE PROCEEDED TO TAKE ANOTHER TABLE’S ORDER. Then our original person came back and asked what we wanted to order. At no point did anyone ask if anything was wrong. There was no music, we never got a refill. $50 and an hour and a half of our lives wasted. We would highly discourage anyone from wasting their time with this bad food, terrible atmosphere and horrific “service.” Zero attempt at indicating...

Changing this review from 5 stars to 1 star after my experience last night! Took an hour and a half to get our dinner... nobody stopped by to give us an update. When our meal was delivered by a food runner the server didn't stop by either to check in. The place is small and the server passed us at least a dozen times and didn't look at us at all. Had to wave down the server with my credit card to get the bill (which feels so awkward to do). Food is decent (chicken was rubbery this time), but doesn't make up for a terrible service experience. I wouldn't have changed my review if they had at least stopped by to check in on us and let us know that the food was going to take awhile. We would have gladly paid for more drinks while we were waiting, but nobody stopped by to ask if we wanted anything else. Won't be returning.

Old review: A friend recommended we try out Azur and I’m so glad we did! We enjoyed the toasted gnocchi, the tile fish, chicken, and cauliflower (yes my husband I always order too much food and we enjoyed every bite!!!!). Everything was amazing but the highlight was the potato/string bean concoction under the chicken. Took me back to my childhood summer days. Adam & Lucas were the loveliest servers, and the rest of the team was friendly too! Besides the food, the thing I enjoyed the most about the restaurant was the fact that everyone working there seemed like they were having a blast taking care of their guests. Will definitely return (hopefully for brunch- the menu...