The Lobster House — Restaurant in Lower Township

The Lobster House, Cape May NJ in May 2024 was a very good restaurant experience. At 5:00 p.m. we easily got a table and were seated. The website clearly says that there are no reservations. The crusty bread which came to our table was filled with spices on top and the bread was a very nice texture of crispy and dense. I had calamari appetizer and it was very tender. My partner had snapper soup and liked it very much. My partner had the crab imperial dinner and enjoyed it. I had the special of the evening which was a stuffed salmon with side vegetables and a salad. I enjoyed my dinner because the salmon was cooked to perfection. Wait staff was attentive. View of harbor was nice too. When I'm in the area again I'll definitely revisit the Lobster House. Gave 5 stars.

Update May 2025 5pm dinner- a different experience indeed. Wrinkled tablecloth, bland dinner, inattentive wait staff. The details- we were led to a table outside the bathrooms in the main dining room. Soon our waiter arrived with menus & then came back for drink order. He did not mention any dinner specials. I ordered the Cape May scallops & chef veggies & Cesare salad. Cesare salad had chopped up boiled eggs mixed in and I can't say I was a fan of that part, fresh anchovy filler on top which was good, but arrived within minutes of receiving the calamari. We ordered calamari appetizer for the table which was good, waiter added the salads to the table on far side and left quickly so we could go get them when we wanted them?! My scallops were bland & were served with an odd sweet white condiment and potatoes also arrived. My dinner arrived in eight different plates, that's interesting, but I had to move everything onto one plate so I could eat dinner since my waiter did not at any point removed used dishes. My waiter was inattentive and I had to call him over to have my water glass refilled twice. I waited for the check for 20 minutes after asking for it to be delivered. He dropped it off in front of my companions place setting and turned around and left without saying a word. He did not ask if she wanted dessert. She dined on stuffed flounder that she said was bland. After I put credit card into billfold waiter took it but no greeting, thank you or anything. Did not thank us for dining tonight. Did not introduce himself or check on our needs at any point during dinner. Dinner specials? I asked at desk on way out. No specials tonight? Well the board at the entrance actually did list specials, go figure! In ladies room was a lady on her cell phone who got up & handed me a paper towel from dispenser. I guess she expected a tip ?

Ok well tonight earned Lobster House a 2 star review from me. I act down from five stars to three stars overall for this restaurant for the two years I've...

Came here with a group of 6 adults and 2 toddlers. We had called ahead because of the note online about being kid-welcoming (except crying or unruly ones?) and not seeing a kids' menu. They confirmed there was a kids menu, so we made our way over. We got super lucky with timing -- last weekend in June, Saturday night, arrived around 5:30 with a big group... they had 2 tables to push together and we could be sat right away, huzzah! The next party behind us of 7 people was told a 45 minute wait. Woah.

We sat down and the tables they had pushed together were round and wobbly. It wasn't really accommodating for a party like ours and perhaps we should have waited for something that made more sense. It felt like we were in a family room because almost every other table in there had a high chair at it. Which is fine -- I was already getting the "we hate kids but don't want to say it out loud" vibes from this place so putting us all together was fine. We had to ask for kids' menus even though the request for a high chair and walking in with 2 toddlers made it pretty obvious we had kids in our party.

Food... Was kind of in a burger mood personally but that's only available on the lunch menu so me and my husband ordered a few apps to try and sample things, and overall I wasn't blown away. We had lobster bisque (tasted more like a sauce to me than a soup?), calamari (average, regular pub food style), clams casino (flavorful), and fried tomatoes tacked on as a side (pretty good and for $7.50 the portion was massive). Kiddo had chicken fingers, fries, and applesauce -- probably overpriced but she enjoyed it. The rest of our party got entrees like steak and crab cakes, and no one had complaints but also nobody was like "omg you HAVE to try this, best ever!!"

No dessert menu offered. Not sure if they have one... just the check dropped off. We asked our waiter to separate the checks, which admittedly we should have done from the start but I had seen him writing our meals down by seat number and thought it wouldn't be a big deal... Nope, we had to "remind him what everyone got" which turned into an awkward marking up of the check. Then he disappeared while the toddlers were getting antsy to go and we had to wait a bit to close out.

Overall impression: This place is overhyped and definitely don't bring young children here. They don't actually want to serve families despite whatever the website says. 2 stars for decor and because the food...

Yesterday we visited the Lobster House as has been an annual event in celebration of my birthday for the past 5 years. Typically we enjoy our visit as well as our meal but yesterday was the first time the dining room was open, probably due to the imminent storm and we sat in there as opposed to on the schooner. Our waiter Bill was absolutely rude, his service was despicable, we were seated by the window and initially he came over to our table right away and asked if we were ready to order a drink. I advised him we were and that we were also ready to order our meal. We sat there and watched him take orders from two other tables, one directly beside us, and the other on the other side of the room, both of which were seated after us. He approached them in a friendly manner, took their orders, brought their bread, drinks and appetizers before returning to our table to take our drink orders. Before returning with our drinks he served their drinks, bread and appetizers. After about 35-40 minutes he finally brought our drinks, then after ensuring the other tables didn’t need anything he decided to take our meal orders. The clam chowder was good, the flounder stuffed with crab imperial was mediocre and didn’t look anything like the picture on the menu. The portion size was very small; a small piece of flounder was wrapped around a sizable scallop surrounded by a small amount of crab imperial, topped with two small shrimp and a good mornay sauce. The fried flounder platter consisted of 4 small slices of thin flounder pieces. The roasted potatoes were overcooked and hard. The bread was really good. It wasn’t until our waiter came to collect my soup bowl and our salad plates did he ask if we’d like a refill on our drinks, by now one of the other 2 tables were leaving. Needless to say that although we left a tip I hope he felt our disappointment in his service. I can’t say we won’t return next year but I can say that if we are seated in his area of service we will ask to be seated elsewhere. I can also say we will stick to ordering lunch items instead of dinner. Unfortunately this is the first time I’ve ever experienced such subpar service and I have never written a poor review but I feel compelled to write this one in hopes that our experience next year is what it had been during the...