Harbor View Cafe — Restaurant in Long Beach

My wife and I dinned here this evening, 10/18/22 arriving at about 6:30 PM. We were greeted at the door by a young man that took us to our table. Our server this evening was Marie. She provided adequate service for us. Made table checks to see if we were in need of items. The quality of eating utensils to me doesn't really impact my opinion of an establishment if it is clean and in good condition. My wife got a soup spoon with her cup of soup that had a roughed sharp edge on it that gave a small cut on the inside of her upper lip. Marie replaced with one that was okay. If you use the least expensive grade of utensils make sure it doesn't have rough edges. I had a cup of Seafood Gumbo which had very good flavor and my wife had Roasted pepper soup also very good. For dinner she order a Caesar Salad with chicken. The salad didn't seem chilled the greens were a bit wilted, there were no red onion slices and the Parmesan Cheese is the jar grade of powdered Parm. A bit of grated Parmesan would be better received. We asked Marie for the onion slices and she got them quickly. I had a seafood combination platter. It came with fries, hushpuppies and a condiment cup of Cole Slaw. The condiment sauces were fairly ordinary and I chose not to use them. On the whole this charming little restaurant that we remembered from 20 years ago with a solid reputation for quality left us a bit disappointed. Our food was mediocre at best. There are probably menu items they provide that are better. There seemed to be some patrons that very much enjoyed their PoBoys. Marie did a very adequate job for us but there weren't many smiles to be seen in this restaurant. Not from the host or Marie, though I did manage to coax a few from her. She got 15%. I was a bit disappointed with our visit. It could have and should have been better. In these times of short staffing, they seemed adequately staffed. Maybe a training issue, but smiles; there should have been some more smiles with more than the regulars that come in several times a week. I tip an average server 15%. Better service with some more smiles and gets 20% and great service and and heaps of charm and smiles and proactivity gets 25%. I have been a Chef of the Coast here having been a working chef from Biloxi as the Executive Chef of the once very busy Clubs of Keesler AFB to Chef de Cuisine of the fine dining room of The Amazing Randolph and Tuscany at The Hollywood Casino as The Casino Magic in Bay St. Louis. Connie and I also had a Catering business on the coast The Chefs' Lambert. Connie was the Catering Manager of the Coast Collaseum and ran the NCO Club on Keesler. We know a thing or two about the restaurant business.

I would like to add that the General Magager did respond to my review. This reaffirms my faith in the reputation of this long respected restaurant. We will return when we return to the coast and our beloved Long Beach,...

We went to Harbor View Cafe today for lunch. This can be difficult because I do have allergies but a lot of times restaurants are very understanding. My husband and I ordered a club which on the menu says it comes with chicken, turkey and ham and then fully dressed with lettuce, tomato and mayo. So we ordered the club with no ham. We made sure the server knew very specifically only turkey and chicken. When the club came out it had bacon on it. I called the server over and let her know. Hey I'm so sorry but I'm actually allergic to pork. I can't eat the sandwich. It has bacon on it and I have to have one remade because I can't just take the bacon off of it because I am allergic to the bacon. The server took the plate back to the kitchen and had a conversation to try to get the problem fixed and we had someone who never really introduced themselves but I can only assume was a manager come tell us they were going to remake the sandwich but we're going to have to pay for both sandwiches because it was our fault that the sandwich was made incorrectly. My husband asked her how is it our fault when we said the sandwich only needed turkey and chicken and then they sent it out with bacon. She said well it comes with bacon. It says it on the menu. My husband said it doesn't say it on the menu. The manager stormed off and a few moments later the server came back and let us know that they were remaking our sandwich and they weren't going to charge us for two sandwiches. This whole interaction with a manager Miss Robin put a bad taste in our mouths and we just got our sandwich to go. Whenever we were walking out we made sure to take a picture of the menu where it doesn't say anything about bacon on the club and we made sure to ask this rude lady, I'm that had come to our table to tell us that we made a mistake and we needed to pay for two sandwiches, her name. Because again I don't even know if she's a manager because she still never introduced herself. I wish I could go back and eat the food again, because it was really good, but I cannot see myself going back to a restaurant managed by people like this. There are too many restaurants that care about their guests needs on...

My family visited this establishment for the first time at the beginning of December when we had family visiting from out of town and we were so impressed! The food was absolutely incredible! We were back in Long Beach today (December 23rd) for an appointment and we wanted to go back for lunch however we knew we wouldn't have time to dine in as the restaurants hours on a Monday are till 3 so we ordered from their menu online to be delivered about 2 blocks down the street. The order said 35-45 minutes which would have been right at about closing time. We ordered our food at 2:20pm and didn't see our food till 4:20pm (I have eyewitnesses!)! All of it went in the trash. It was completely hard and cold, the roast beef was made wrong, The fries didn't have any dressing on them.. The poor delivery woman told us that the staff at the restaurant told us "tell them we closed at 3" so it would seem our food (and to stick it to us) was left sitting on the counter for an hour before they even let the delivery staff know they had an order! Please note this delivery went literally 2 blocks so us waiting 2 hours was absolutely uncalled for and my kids went hungry because of their negligence! The delivery woman was pleasant and apologetic when it wasn't even her to blame. I am disappointed as I had very high hopes for such a nice looking local place especially when we had a decent experience the first visit but $43 was completely wasted all because some young person didn't want to do their job because it was too close to closing time. Apparently 40 minutes till closing is not a good time to place a to go order. I will not be returning here for quite some time. If they would have been open after we received our food I would have marched right up there and got my money back. $43 for old food that was left sitting out that went right in the garbage is...