Mateys Restaurant — Restaurant in Michigan City

Planned a trip to Michigan City for July 4th and called Matey's well ahead of time to make sure they would be open and could accommodate my celiac disease. They told me I could eat the steak & lobster tail and be fine. Excellent. Fast forward a couple weeks to the day of the 4th and we arrive, a party of 7, all over 21 except two 18 year olds. I called ahead to get an idea of wait time or if they take reservations. The person on the phone tells me They can take reservations for parties of 10+ and he only knows the wait time for the bar, can't tell me a wait time on underage seating. Not helpful to begin with considering we have to walk all the way over there. We traveled here from Indianapolis, so we are not familiar with this restaurant other than what I've gathered from their menu online and the telephone conversation I had.

When we arrive at the restaurant, there is no host to inform you where to sit. There are spaces that are "ok" for people under 21 and spaces that are not, but no one informed us nor tried to help seat us, so our giant party just paraded around this building looking for a place to sit. We sat down somewhere and were chased off when we apparently found ourselves in a not "ok" space for people under 21 even though there was a very small child a table over. So we found our way to a couple tables that were empty and we were planning to push them together to make them work but then we were stopped because one table that would hold 4 people was "reserved". When I point out I was told they didn't take reservations for parties under 10, they back tracked and let us push the tables together. Annoying that it took us 15 minutes of parading around a building with no guidance just to find a seat.

Then when we received our menus I noticed there was no steak as promised by the menu listed on the website. When I asked the server where it was, she pointed out you can only get that if you go into the 21+ bar downstairs. I tried to explain to her that I literally could not eat anything they had on the menu she offered me and I had called ahead and was advised to eat the steak and lobster and she rudely told me "Then you can go downstairs." The problem is I have two 18 year olds not allowed in their 21+ only steakhouse. Ridiculous.

So my husband and I had to abandon our party to go downstairs to this bar, order our meals "to-go", and have them brought upstairs to join our party. What a fiasco! Why the restaurant couldn't just do this rather than make such a big deal about it is beyond me. The only reason I gave 2 stars instead of one is the bartender that was helping us order our food. He was very polite, understood my dietary needs, and even carried the food up behind us. He's the saving grace of the whole experience.

Once I did get my food, an hour into arriving, I was disappointed. I ordered my steak rare, very rare. We even joked with the bartender about how rare I wanted it. Once I sat down and cut into it, I realized it was well done. My husband's was also well done and he had ordered his medium-rare. At this point, I didn't want to wait another 30 minutes for food, argue with people more, etc. They made their case. Don't come back. Noted.

I'm just so disappointed because we had planned this trip with our friends and I thought this place was going to be really cool and fun with good food but it turned out to be disappointing, ran by rude servers and apparently mediocre food. On top of that, we almost missed the fireworks because of the time it took between finding seats, getting food, and paying our bill. What an...

My aunt and I like to take my kids to Matey's after a day at the beach or the zoo. We've always had a good experience, but our visit 2 days ago was not the best. For starters, they were offering a limited menu. I'm not sure why, but that was what we discovered when we arrived. If you look at the menu online, it has many more options than the menu we were presented with. At the top of the limited menu, it states that their full menu will be returning soon. The kids' menu remained the same. The biggest disappointment was the service. I feel like our waitress was doing the best she could, but she had too many tables to cover. We waited a long time for drinks and drink refills. It was a very warm day, and we were sitting outside, so cold drinks would've been nice. The first unsweetened iced tea I received tasted funny, and the waitress seemed surprised when I asked for sugar packets. The sugar packets I received contained hard clumps of sugar. The second iced tea I received tasted normal, and the sugar packets were also normal. The food arrived quickly, and it was good. Our salads came first, and we didn't have silverware when they arrived. We also ordered these expensive wedge salads without blue cheese, but we received blue cheese anyway. The only salad dressing they offer is ranch, but don't worry because they won't give you very much of it. Our waitress didn't come back to check on us for a while, so by the time she did, it was too late to ask for extra dressing. My aunt ordered the breaded shrimp basket with cocktail sauce. Instead of cocktail sauce, she initially received two sauces that should have accompanied the coconut shrimp, not the breaded shrimp. One of the sauces was very spicy. When our waitress finally came by, my aunt was able to get the correct sauce. Both of my kids had the chicken tenders, and they were fine. We felt like the food was a bit pricey. Our wedge salads were over $10 each, and they were nothing special. My cheeseburger and fries cost over $20. They charge extra if you want lettuce, tomatoes, and onion with your burger. They call this deluxe. The burger comes with chips, but you can upgrade to fries, which I did. Paying over $20 for a burger and fries just seems a bit excessive. Unfortunately, this was not a great experience at Matey's, which made us sad. We always look forward to visiting this restaurant, but this time, we left disappointed. Overall, the food was good, but when you don't have silverware or condiments in a timely manner, it kind of ruins the experience. The expensive bill also puts a...

VISITORS BEWARE! This place advertises itself as a restaurant, but what we experienced last night was more of a nightclub than anything else.

We came to town from southwest Michigan area hoping to find a decent sit-down restaurant for a late night dinner. With the time difference of an hour, traveling to Michigan City gave us more time to do so as it was around 11pm EST, and only 10pm there.

After a 40 minute drive, we arrived at Mateys. The place looked packed and had flashing lights, but from the road, there was visible seating upstairs away from the "nightlife", so we figured that we may be able to be seated upstairs.

We parked and walked inside. There was a security guard doing a metal detector search and a bouncer checking IDs. There were visibly drunk people outside and inside. We were very confused about what was going on.

After getting through the security checkpoint, my husband went up to the bar to ask where the restaurant was. I was standing with my deaf cousin kind of close to the security area. There was a drunken blonde woman who randomly touched me inappropriately and I turned around and told her, "Don't touch me!" firmly. At that point. I was so anxious and ready to GTFO of there.

I asked the guy checking IDs if this was a restaurant or a club? He replied, "you have to walk around, they might be taking orders still." I asked if there was another entrance outside or where that was at because we had never been there before. He explained, "you have to walk around the bar and there's a door over on the otherside of the bar."

Okay. So, we walked through the crowd to go around the bar to the room in the back where there was a quieter area and just a few people.

There was a bartender behind the bar in that area, and we asked if this was a restaurant. He told us that they were serving some food, but that it was just him and so the offerings were limited to three options, like onion rings and something else I can't remember. Basically microwavable foods as he was, "the only one there."

We asked if there was somewhere else in the area that was more of a restaurant, and he recommended Buffalo Wild Wings. Thank goodness for that! So, we left out of the side door that went to the parking lot and went to BWW, which was not a nightclub and a lot less chaotic.

Mateys Bar and Grill Restaurant is NOT A RESTAURANT, either after some point in time in the evening or on a Saturday night. If you are traveling from out of town, this is NOT the place to go for an...