KingFish — Restaurant in Louisville

Walked in and sat at the bar. Waited for ten minutes before being acknowledged. Bartender made a couple of drinks and left them for those ten minutes on the bar back, then returned with Tropicana juice and topped each off with about a centimeter of juice and sold them to a couple of customers. I hope they enjoyed their flat drinks with melted ice. Neurotic bartender came over and asked what we wanted. Ordered a sweet tea, and she just stared at me, then finally said "and?" I replied "and menus." She said that they weren't serving food at the bar, despite a couple sitting to my left, finishing up large entrees. I said fine, then I suppose we will go elsewhere. She launched into a lengthy explanation as to how she is the only one there, and she doesn't have time to serve food, and rambled on and on. I stated "Fine, if you're not serving, you're not serving." Maybe if she didn't feel the need to ramble on as to how put-upon she was, she'd be able to get more accomplished.

I went to the hostess stand, and found hell's waiting room, with about twenty individuals waiting for tables. I thought surely this was large parties or people waiting for the rest of their party, but when I heard a party of two called for, I bailed. There were multiple empty tables both inside and out and they were still forcing small parties to wait.

Of course, there were four employees milling around, acting lost and as if they didn't know what move to make next. I had to wonder if it ever occurred to management to put one or two of them to work doing something useful, like running food for the bartender or maybe stocking her bar with Tropicana so she didn't have to spend ten minutes looking for it.

I wasn't about to try the dining room again, the last time I did that, there truly was only two other occupied tables and the waitress would disappear for ages before showing back up. Meanwhile, another waitress was laying in a booth, playing on her phone and rolling and grinding around like an eight year old child during our entire meal.

I get that there's a labor shortage because most anyone in the restaurant industry that was halfway clever is laying at home collecting 3x their salary in unemployment. But I don't know how this place is ever going to recover if they don't utilize commonsense and teamwork to sell their product. A lot will have to change before I try this location again. We went to the Jeffersonville location, and found a staff that tried and worked together and did deliver satisfactory service, given that they are facing the same labor issues as the...

The staff were all phenomenal. Initially our group consisted of four people, so when my husband and I arrived first, we requested a table for four. Not long afterwards, we received word that our group had grown to six. The staff moved a table to make extra room, as cheerful and helpful as you could ever hope for.

Not only that, but when we realized that one of our group would likely not be comfortable in the seating just adjusted for us, the staff - three servers at once - fanned out across the seating area, sliding in and out of booths, sitting at tables, all to find an optimal place of comfort for the rest of our group. They were smiling and laughing and checking with us the whole time to make sure of the requirements.

When the rest of our group arrived, it was more of the same cheerful enthusiasm from everyone on staff. Everyone in our group was comfortable, and the table service was outstanding. Three of our group - including myself and my husband - had never been there before, and the others were locals. The table server was wonderful in suggesting dishes to try, truthful in acknowledging when she had not tried something herself, and asked other servers to come and describe dishes if we showed real interest in them.

The food was very good. In a group environment, there is usually a fair amount of talking while eating, which was true with our group - at least, with the locals and one of the non-locals. I found my meal so tasty that once I dug in, I pretty much remained focused on it until I was done eating. The loaded sweet potato was very well done, and the steak was also lovely. I was not a big fan of the hushpuppies, which were very large and round, about the size of a raquetball. Too bready for me. I'm used to much smaller, elongated hushpuppies. But your mileage may vary.

Everyone at every table seemed to be enjoying their food an time at KingFish. It is definitely a place I look forward to returning to when/if I am in...

I won't lie, I'm a little baffled by the 3.9 average.

This was the absolute worst seafood restaurant I have ever been to. Oh wait, it's the worst restaurant of any sort we've been to. And we've eaten in some serious dives overseas.

There is nothing to recommend this place. At All.

There was no hostess, so some random (Olympic Speed Walker) waiter grabbed a bunch of stuff, mumbled "follow me", and zipped off. A couple minutes later we found him and the table we were assigned.

The waitress was awful. She messed up our drink order, forgot the soup--twice (and I never got it)--and "lost" our check and we had to go hunt her down so we could pay and get the heck out of that awful, awful place. I guess she was the bartender in addition to being our waitress...? So the bar and her friends sitting at the bar were way more important than our table.

The food was, with two exceptions, terrible. The WORST (ever) onion rings. The WORST (ever) fried seafood. The WORST (ever) frog legs. The WORST (ever) breading. The hushpuppies they gave us when we first sat down were not awful, and the ranch on the salad was fine. Everything else was awful. And we didn't eat most of it.

The breading is one problem. It's that THICK, super THICK, really THICK cornbread breading they use to hide the fact that they are giving you tiny bits of seafood and it does not taste good at all. And that is problem because the food hidden within the breading also did not taste good.

No matter how hungry you are, no matter how long it was since you last ate... Do not go here. Go somewhere else. ...