Two Friends Patio Restaurant — Restaurant in Key West

TLDR: Mostly fresh seafood BUT no flavor + dishonesty about promo

WHEW I don't normally leave long review (or reviews at all) if I don't like a place, since I don't want to hurt small businesses, but this was such a negative experience.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: Came here with a group of 9. We were excited about this place because of a great review we saw online, plus we heard fantastic things about the key lime pie from their sister restaurant (Pepe's). When our entire group discussed the meal afterwards, no one had anything very positive to say about their food. We were so confused why people had rated this place so highly. Everything was mostly fresh, but mostly flavorless. Drinks were decent though. There's no shortage of restaurants nearby that serve better seafood at a similar price point.

DETAILED MENU BREAKDOWN (If you are unfortunate enough to already be sitting down): Key Lime Pie (4.5/5) Pretty good, wish it was a bit more sour. There's an ice cream/pie shop around the corner that we tried after (and liked more), so I wouldn't come here for this. Fish Tacos (1/5): Flavorless fish (could be mistaken for chicken) placed on a cold, flour tortilla. Covered in sauce to try to give it some taste. Both the tortilla and the shredded cheese tasted like they could from your local grocery store. Broiled Seafood Platter (3/5): Chose a loaded baked potato as the side. I wish it was just a full plate of their scallops because all three pieces were delicious! Buttery and flavorful. But Mahi mahi tasted flavorless, shrimp lacked flavor and was extremely overcooked and rubbery. The baked potato was very dry and hard to swallow or finish. Coconut Shrimp (2/5): Too much sickly sweet sauce that lacked the coconut flavor. It got passed down the row...everyone in the group had some, and none of us could finish it because of the sauce. Oysters Dozen (1/5): Oysters were on the smaller side (which is fine), but they had no taste to them. Many of the oysters didn't even have liquid, which means they were very old or not handled properly. Had much better oysters the day before. Snow Crab Legs (4/5): Standard in taste, lots of meat, worth the cost. Calamari (3/5): More chewy than crispy. Not terrible, but seasoning could use more flavor. Seafood Penne (2/5): So thick with large chunks of meat that it was hard to eat. Had to split with a friend.

MAIN ISSUES: They had a promo for a free key lime slice per entree, as long as we showed them the promo photo from their sister restaurant, Pepe's. There was some initial confusion as there were two versions of the promo, but we showed the correct one, and our waitress explicitly confirmed that the promo was valid. She asked us how many slices we wanted and stepped away while we decided. I guess we could've ordered 14 slices lol (...good thing we didn't, as you'll read later on), but we all only wanted a bite or two. We decided on 2 slices, and she left to put in the order. Pie was pretty good, we paid the bill and left without looking too closely (lighting was also pretty dim). Only a few hours later did we realize that she charged us for the slices.

It was a minimal amount of money split between all of us, but on principle, we thought it was ridiculous that she confirmed the promo, then charged us for it. I doubt it was confusion because we had already asked for the check, then remembered that we had the promo. We didn't decide the number of slices until after asking for the check, so she had to have gone back and purposefully added the 2 slices to the bill. No clue what the point was to charge us the extra $14 bucks. Hope it was a mistake...but really hard to tell here.

It had also started raining in the middle of the meal. We were seated at the edge of the patio and the rain blew in on us. The rest of the restaurant was quite empty even though it wasn't close to closing yet, but the waitress did not even check in on us or offer to move us to another table. Honestly, none of us truly minded (because it's just rain!), but we did have to move ourselves away...

A group of us took our boats from the Cape to key West, docked/stayed out of the Key West main area. I personally love asking locals for non tourist local restaurant favorites, are they always truthful? No, but sometimes they are 😉. We asked four different stores what they suggested for local casual restaurants with seafood. Three of the four suggested two friends, one changed their mind to two friends after I questioned their other suggestion.

We were definitely not disappointed. I like to check out restaurants my news outside before walking in and wasting everyone's time and saw something I wanted. However, when we got inside it apparently was on a different menu, to which our the two different menus to order from. It was extremely hot and humid during our visit end of May/start of June, as it always is, and it's difficult to find a place that has any air conditioning attempt. Luckily this place had a somewhat inside / patio type setup, with a somewhat enclosed space that had running AC, not just the typical fans.

Our waiter was super friendly, helpful, attentive, blah blah blah. We were there during the live singer's birthday, female, who was very talented and had a possy too. I believe one of the tables was probably friends and family but the ladies at the bar I'm not quite too sure LOL. That was fun, also, it's nice to hear live entertainment that doesn't sound like Saturday night karaoke in a college town.

Bonus points, that were completely unrelated, there are freaking chickens and roosters everywhere all over Key West, a whole family-chicken mom rooster dad, tiny baby chicks came into check out the vibe. This is apparently a normal expected thing for Key West but we loved it.

The price was great, especially for what you get at two friends. The atmosphere/"vibe" is great, if that's for you. A person I was with was suffering from sudden sensory hearing loss and was extremely sensitive to louder noises, so would make note of that, although I'm not sure if they always have live entertainment / loud music etc. A for the air conditioning situation, this is not a place you're going to go when it's hot and humid AF and get the freezer temp relief you're maybe wanting. However, is it better than sitting outside with a fan, definitely.

If you're in the Key West area and want to check out what seems like a more low key/local kinda place, that has good food and great staff, id...

I would NOT recommend this place for a large group. We are a big group from NY and wanted to great seafood and this place was recommended to us. We called ahead to see if they would be able to Accommodate my party of 21 at 9:00pm and they told us yes they would be able to. They even called us at 8:30 to confirm we are coming. When we got there they only had one server to assist our party and he tried his best given the circumstances which was unacceptable. Our drink orders got Messed up. One of the kids In Our party ordered a sweet tea and they gave her cranberry juice without even telling her. WHAT IF SHE WAS ALLERGIC TO CRANBERRY… she could had DIED. They need to disclose what they are giving people especially kids since they are so much food allergies out there. When our food came out the the presentation was nice the snapper meal were delicious however all the shell fish meals that we ordered like crab lobster and shrimp Were cooked to death. We had 5 of the same dish and were all over cooked. They were like rubber and dry this was a meal we were looking forward too. This was very disappointing that we came all the way from NY and have such a bad experience. It wasn’t a cheap meal either. They keep telling us that they had no staff that people went home and other excuses. Plus the put stuff on our bill that we didn’t order. Our bill was almost $1000.00 and we got a one meal taken off for the inconvenience and bad experience. What they should have done was tell us they are not able to accommodate such a large party because of they circumstances vs leaving us with such a bad experience at the end of our trip really put a damper on it but it was just for the money for them. They manager basically told us there nothing he can do and...