Seaview Restaurant & Lounge — Restaurant in Long Branch

Well, I wish we had read some of the reviews prior to going here. We had a reservation for the Seaview for Christmas day lunch, but when we got there we were offered the dinner menu, which we accepted. The appetizers were limited to two choices, which were adequate in size, but left the menu very thin for someone who didn't like vegetables, as the soup (choice 1) and salad (choice 2) were both vegetable based. As in other reviews, we were offered one piece of bread, which took some time to actually get. No basket was offered for the table. My wife and her 98 year old cousin (age will be important later) both ordered the Prime Rib dinner, and the portion size was huge. It took a considerable aount of time for the dinners to be served, and this was surprising as they were not that busy (we were told they were fully booked for 4 pm, however, half the restaurant was still empty). They were cooked as asked for, however, the sauce they used was not Au Jus sauce, but what tasted like a watered down barbeque sauce. My dinner, however, was disappointing on many levels. I ordered the Cauliflower steak after discussing it with the waitress, who said it was praised by others that had ordered it. Mind you, the Christmas dinner was a three course offering that ran $49.95 each. What I got amounted to a slice of a cauliflower head, which was slightly charred on the edges and had little flavoring - and was covered with some Israelie couscous and tomato bits. The entire offering of the entree' could be purchased for $5.00 at any local shop-rite and had NO PLACE on a Christmas menu for $49.95. If I was the manager of the restaurant I would be ashamed of that offering for that price. To fully understand why I found this outrageous, look at the two pictures below - the size of the prime rib offered against the size of my plate of Cauliflower (I took two bites of the Cauliflower before I returned it). Our service was as slow as mentioned in other reviews, and as before management never came over to ask any questions or apologize for the issues. We even asked of they had someone call out sick, or were understaffed and our waitress said no, it was just busy (which it really wasn't - and I would hate to see the service if they were full of patrons). My replacement meal was the Chicken which was tasty, but the piece served was a small portion from a cornish game hen. It took 45 minutes for me to get that replacement, and our server never showed back up to ask me how my replacement meal was. Our desserts took almost 20 minutes to come out. Again, the portion sizes differed greatly. Our final insult on this dinner was the bill. We were charged full price for all three meals - and my wife's 98 year old cousin (can you tell from the picture she MIGHT be a senior citizen?) was charged the full price and not the senior rate of $42.95. After waiting over 5 minutes, we had to flag another person (a hostess) down to ask this error to be corrected. The only recommendation I can give is to...

Went there for Christmas Day Dinner. Where to start? First, we had a 7 PM dinner reservation. We get there at 6:50 PM and didn't get seated until 7:40 PM. Evidently, they were short staffed and no one was able to bust the tables. Then again, the place didn't look busy at all either. So I'm not sure what the 40 minute hold up was there. Next, we get seated to our table and it took about 15 minutes for someone to come by to take our drink order. Then the hostess that seated us came by and gave us the regular dinner menus when we were told on the phone earlier that if we had a 7 PM reservation, we are able to order off the Christmas Day menu. So we had to argue with our waiter about that. Finally, the waiter comes back telling us we can order off the Christmas menu. After that, we get the menus and I had 2 small ants crawling on my menu, which makes me wonder how clean the place was. Then our waiter comes back to inform us that they're out of the special menu soup and salad on the Christmas menu and could only offer us a house salad. We then had to argue to get something more than a house salad as part of the Prix-fixe. Come dessert time, we were informed they were sold out of 2 of the 3 dessert choices from the Christmas menu and only had cheesecake. The coffee tasted extremely odd and horrible. The waiter (who is normally a bartender) did try his best to make the experience positive, but this place had so many things wrong with it, I would not recommend it to anyone. Between the wait to be seated, the miscommunication of the Christmas menu for our reservation, the short staff, and being out of so many menu items, this place was absolutely not prepared for serving Christmas Day dinner. I realize employees want off for the holidays and many businesses are closed, which I totally respect. But don't stay open on Christmas Day if you're going to do a horrible job with the service and be...

I don’t usually write reviews, but this dining experience was disappointing enough that I feel others should be warned.

To start, everything took over an hour to arrive at our table, and that’s not an exaggeration. From drinks to appetizers to entrees, the wait was painfully long. When the food finally arrived, it was unfortunately not worth the wait. The sea bass was rubbery and chewy, completely overcooked and poorly handled. The salmon was so dry and flavorless that it was basically inedible. The steak had a strange sour taste. I’m not sure how that’s even possible unless some questionable sauce was added, or worse, the meat itself was off. The drinks didn’t help redeem the experience. They were flat, watery, and tasted like they were thrown together with no care.

The only redeeming aspect of the evening was the ambiance and the beach view. The setting was genuinely lovely , scenic, and ideal for a fun night. Sadly, everything else about the restaurant failed to match the beauty of its surroundings.

To their credit, the manager was very nice and apologized profusely for the delays and poor quality. While his professionalism was appreciated, it sadly couldn’t make up for the overall experience.

In short: beautiful location, kind manager, terrible food, unacceptable wait times. I won’t be returning, and I can’t recommend...