The Boathouse At River Islands — Restaurant in Lathrop

The owner, Marcus, was incredibly rude and unprofessional to our party. We were previously regulars at this establishment along with a number of our family members but we will never return after how we were treated today.

Due to Covid, my brother and sister in laws wedding has been all but ruined (as I'm sure many can relate to). So we have worked hard to create a small wedding shower for my sister in law that was cancelled on us at the last minute due to the smoke in the air here in the valley. In an attempt to save the shower, we called The Boathouse on Thursday and spoke with a lady to see if they could accommodate a party of 8 on Saturday at noon, and if we could decorate the table. We were told to arrive at opening (11am) as they do not take reservations, and we could decorate our area as long as we did not use glitter or confetti. We were so excited that The Boathouse was willing to save the day for us.

We arrived at opening and waited to have a gentleman seat us. My husband offered to move the 3 tables together for the server as he was the only person working and seemed busy, so we did the moving ourselves. We decorated the table with some palm tree leaves and a Miss to Mrs Banner. That's when we were abruptly approached by Marcus.

Halfway across the patio he yelled "who gave you permission to do this?" My mom started explaining who and when she spoke to the gal on the phone. Marcus literally stood on the middle of the dining patio yelling at us about how "never in a million years would he allow this to happen" and "whoever approved this didn't have the authorization to make such approvals." After being berated for 5 minutes in front of a patio full of customers I asked how would we have known who had authority to approve what. He just stormed away and never came back to us.

Our meal was 2/5 stars. The 8 meals came out very staggered, within 30 minutes of each other. 2 people got salads, and the last person got cheese pizza 30 minutes later. The food was "decent". Definitely not worth the price, but not inedible. However, I did choke on a piece of glass that was in my iced tea. If this review allows me to upload a photo I will. I did not bother telling management as obviously they do not care about their patrons.

After leaving, we called to speak with Marcus and voice our dissatisfaction. He couldn't have cared less. Instead of merely listening to our concerns, he tried to throw the issues back at us, saying we were rude and demanding to his staff, which was so utterly far from the truth (my husband did his staff's job!). There was another large party dining at the same time as us, they were given glass cups to drink out of and treated as guests of a restaurant, we were given plastic solo cups and treated like a burden. It was embarrassing and we will...

I don’t want first impressions to ruin the experience. If I’m dining during peak hours, I don’t mind lag in service. Our first time was quite a blunder. I texted myself the menu and time stamp was 6:26pm. It was 6:48 and no server to be found still. Told my husband to go to the bar to get drinks at the bar. When he came back, no server still. Then 7:10 rolled in. I said to call for a to go order and pick it up to eat at our table. He called and asked to deliver it to our table. To the establishment’s confusion, they finally have someone come over. We got two apologies: one from our server (who we’ve seen many times help tables near us but he somehow didn’t see us) and one from who I assume is the manager.

Let me start with drinks. I ordered a pina colada. It tastes watered down. Yea it has blended ice but I didn’t ask for flavored blended ice. Hubby ordered beer. Wished they had chilled glass, especially in the heat. Hubby says he does like their choices.

For food. Presentation looks good. Portion is good.

Hubby got the juicy juicy. What came out was a double cheeseburger. No cheese in the center of the patty. If you Google images of juicy Lucy, or even recipes, the cheese is in the middle of the patty.

Kids’ serving size are good I guess. Their burger is same size as adults.

I got the jambalaya. Not what I was expecting. It was okay.

Food at most is average. It’s not cuz I feel upset about service but I’m not impressed at all. I’ve lived in many places and been to different places and it’s not a place to want to being friends or family visiting cuz they “gotta try” this place out.

I think service would be great on any other time. Our server does seem nice and mistakes are made but I wish he or the manager did more to compensate for their mistake than a simple apology. Don’t let us know that you’re going to figure out what happened and not do anything to help the situation better.

Maybe next time will be better. I don’t want first impressions to kill our experience. Maybe other items on the menu are...

I went here for my birthday because I had seen photos of the restaurant and it is absolutely beautiful. The photos were true, the restaurant inside is beautiful, it was clean and I loved sitting on the deck having the river view - the ambience was fantastic!! However, the food was not nearly as good. I ordered the nachos, the first hint was when the chips were on the side, I soon learned why. The beans were watery, I could actually fill up the spoon with the juice that was in the beans no wonder they put the nachos on the side or they would have been soggy. I ordered the chicken nachos the chicken had absolutely no flavor what was most prominent about the nachos were the hot spicy jalapeños - maybe the jalapeños were supposed to make up for the lack of flavor.

Two of my birthday guess ordered Caesar salad with shrimp. They both said the shrimp was delicious it was a good size it was cooked nicely it was tasty but the salad greens taste like they’ve been doused in ranch dressing - no Parmesan cheese no Caesar flavor just ranch dressing. We also ordered cocktails. I tried one of their signature drinks - Shelly’s Press. The details of the cocktail was written beautifully on the menu so I knew what I was getting. What the menu stated and what I received was not the same thing. There was lemon and oranges in the glass and they had clearly been pressed so the flavor was there however the rest of the cocktail was watery it tasted more like when you put too much water in fruit juice. When we told the waiter that we didn’t care for the drink he looked and said “well you know it is pressed”. He did not offer to remove the drink from our bill or to provide me with an optional cocktail.

I gave it two stars because the restaurant’s design deserved accolades for how beautiful it is.Overall, if the restaurant manager and the chefs took as much heart, interest and time in the food as obviously the architect did in designing the restaurant it would be a fantastic place to eat and spend time with...