Montana's Miami Beach — Restaurant in Miami Beach

Montana’s is quite good at what they do - provide reasonably tasty food while separating you from as much of your money as humanly possible. It’s impressive how good they are at this. 1). No prices on the menu for drinks. Otherwise you might balk at the $35 mojito, $15 non alcoholic beer, and $8 Coca Cola. However, this is south beach, so that’s kinda to be expected. 2). When asked “what type of water”, I answered “tap”, only to be brought a big bottle of spring water, which of course is not free. 3). My wife wanted a salad as a side to her pasta- the waitress pointed at the salad menu and said “these are our salads”. My wife assumed that meant they were available as sides, but no- it was the full huge $20 salad that arrived. The staff doesn’t lie to you, they just don’t fully explain. 4). A 20% gratuity is automatically applied- sure, that’s standard, but the waitress then pitches a story that the 20% is required to be shared with the full staff, and she’ll only receive a small portion, so would we please consider leaving more in cash. A) no- 20% is already more than fair b) sharing means you get part of everyone else’s tips too, so you’re not really suffering here. This really put us off. The waitress does carefully go over the full bill at the end of the night , so there is no funny business at all, just massive sticker shock when you realize your fine but somewhat ho-hum dinner cost more than the dinner you were supposed to have at Joe’s Stone Crabs (almost $400 for two adults and two teens). This food is NOT worth the same as Joe’s. So just know all this going in! Beautiful location on Ocean Drive, though!

Edit to add: cue Montana’s owner responding to this review “Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Dishonest practices have no place in our establishment. This matter will be investigated. Thank you”. Or something like that, as they’ve posted on 50 other reviews decrying Sandra’s unethical practices. They obviously don’t care as it’s been going on for a year and nothing has changed. Any other place, she would...

After walking away, something felt wrong about the amount I paid. I added up the items we had (~$110) and the sinking feeling of being scammed by a tourist trap set in as I ended up paying $177 (tax and tip was 60% of the food subtotal).

I thought I had seen every tip scam, but this was outright diabolical. Instead of a paper check, our server (Sandra?, she said she had worked on a cruise ship in Hong Kong before) showed me the food on the wireless POS device. Food prices looked ok, and as I know other places already include service charge I asked our waitress if service charge was already included. She thanked me for asking and told us “no, and I have only received three tips today as a result”.

I pay by card on the wireless POS device, and the waitress quickly skips over the tipping amount screen, instead showing me a custom tip menu “$00.00” for me to input (while she stood there waiting). I tipped over 20% since she said service charge was not added already. After thinking through what we ordered, and reading other 1 star reviews complaining of this very scam, I knew we had in fact paid a 20+20% tip :(

This left a really sour impression of Miami Beach for me and I hope other customers read this and double check itemized receipts and...

I would have given a much higher rating for service, but I don't appreciate how I was lied to/scammed by our Serbian server when it came to pay our bill. Before adding a tip and swiping my credit card with the handheld device, I asked the server if the price listed included the 20% service charge that I've been paying all week in Miami. She replied "No" and I asked again just to make sure. She added that not all places in Miami add a service charge and that you have to ask the establishment. I proceeded to add a hefty tip (25%) and pay the bill. I was shocked to see a $28 service charge plus my $36 tip. When I brought this up to the server, she claimed that the service charge is not a tip for her, but rather goes to the bus boys, etc. and not her. However, I read the contrary later. In other words, I was scammed out of my hard earned money for mediocre service by an untruthful server....