Boil Bay Cajun Seafood & Bar - N Chesterfield — Restaurant in Midlothian

Boil Bay in North Chesterfield Richmond is having their “soft opening”, which helps them to work out their kinks with new staff etc. We were greeted with smiles and our server was very helpful and polite. I love the atmosphere and bar, I could see coming here for a beer and enjoying a football game at the bar. The restaurant itself is huge! You could get a lot of customers in there. The menu choices were excellent and just what I would expect. The food was good, they didn’t have their liquor license yet but that’s coming. Again, it was a soft opening. My concern for this place is it’s location. It sits next to a busy Dollar Tree, which is good, but there’s also an empty old Toys R Us that’s no longer in business. There are plenty of shops nearby that do good business, but this shopping center is off to the side and not noticeable from Midlothian Turnpike. I hope that things will change for that shopping center with the addition of BB. Turn that Toys R Us into a Trader Joe’s, that’ll put it on the map! So…why four stars? As I mentioned, the food that we had was good. Any seafood restaurant worth their grain should have good hush puppies. It’s a given that hush puppies are expected with seafood. We didn’t care for the hush puppies here. They were kind of small and commercial as opposed to the nice big round ones with a crispy outside texture. We ordered blue crabs, oysters and shrimp which arrived in a plastic dome covering, that was pretty cool, we liked the presentation. The problem was that the crabs were so small that getting any “worth the effort” meat off of them was impossible. They provide you with all of the necessary tools but the crabs were way too small, I’m not even sure that they were legal. I lived in Maryland for awhile so maybe I’m spoiled, I don’t know. The sauce in that bag though…amazing! Loved it! I could dip things in that sauce all day! The shrimp were slightly overcooked. Hopefully they will work that out during their soft opening. Peel and eat shrimp should be tender and the shell needs to peel off easily, that’s just good shrimp. The breading on the calamari and the breading on the catfish were identical. They had the same flavor with a different texture. If you’re going to order fried foods, just get one and enjoy it. Two or more will taste the same. The calamari was good, the catfish was good, but the two together was too much of the same thing on the pallet. The cajun fries that I got with the catfish were really good! Next, paper straws. At first I was like okay, maybe save the bay. A lot of places are doing away with straws all together to cut down on plastic but, BB used plenty of plastic everywhere else. Boil bags were plastic, cups were plastic, plastic garbage bag for shells etc. The paper straw, after a few sips, starts to get soft and not very enjoyable. Yeah, I could have set it aside, next time I will. I can’t remember, but I think that you get plastic ware to use as well, I could be wrong. So, to sum it all up, good food choices, get the hush puppies if you must, don’t order multiple fried foods if you’re looking for variety, friendly and helpful staff, nice atmosphere. The beer choices to come looked really good too! I will definitely go back again but with a better experience of what to get and what not to get. I hope that I’m not being too harsh, just honest. We had fun and really enjoyed our dinner mostly. I’d like to be a regular here as I enjoy eating the things that they offer on their...

We're here now. A family of 8. We had a 7:30 reservation and arrived at 7:22. I had requested a 7:00 reservation but was asked to push it to 7:30 to ensure there would be enough servers. We were not seated until 8:00. We were told it was because the party before us had been here since 4:00 and were unexpectedly still here taking pictures. Okay, fine. Our drink order wasn't taken for awhile and it took over 20 minutes to receive water. Another ten for drinks. That's fine. It's a busy holiday weekend. I did not receive my beer until 9:17 pm when the appetizers came out, well after everyone else had received their drinks. Beer. The one on special. Everyone is enjoying their food in their appetizers. So far I feel horrible because I recommended this place because I've enjoyed the Virginia Beach/Norfolk location. Our server has been really inattentive compared to the others in our section. I hate complaining but this is ridiculous. So my mom has had to ask for the manager. Will update this review once we have resolution and our main course.

Edit to add: manager came out to discuss service with my parents. Said that four servers quit this week and the kitchen was backed up. However, again, the other server in our section was incredibly attentive to her tables and while ours disappeared for 20 to 30 minutes at a time and was also seen outside vaping. But the manager was awesome in personality and apologized. Our main courses came out about 20 minutes later and was delicious. But our spirits were deflated after such a long exhausting, confusing, experience. I personally will stick to the location in Virginia Beach and unfortunately my family vowed to never return to this location again no matter how much they enjoyed the actual food. My father did receive 10% off his and my mom's check, in the end. That was nice! Happy Mother's...

This has been my favorite seafood spot in the area since it opened, but unfortunately my latest experience was disappointing. It’s Mothers Day, so I always give restaurants the benefit of the doubt because it’s such a chaotic day, but this was just random and unnecessary. I sat down with my family and maybe five minutes in, there was a group of at least six or seven kids running around yelling, hopping in and out of booths, and playing tag on and around the stage in the back of the restaurant. A worker did come up to them, but seemed to only change the channel on the big TV for them instead of trying to calm the situation. These kids were LOUD and did not stop running around for the remainder of our meal which was about an hour. Kids are kids, I have one of my own and I’m around them all the time and I get it, but it was bad enough to the point that I just wanted to leave because I couldn’t take the incessant noise anymore. I feel that an employee should have stepped in since multiple other patrons had looked in the direction of all the chaos and were also visibly irritated. I’m also typically happy with the amount of food we get, but I got a little less than usual. My snow crab consisted of mostly incomplete clusters with two tiny legs that didn’t produce much meat, if any. I only had one single cluster of crab that was full, so I mainly paid for the weight of only the shell and that was a bummer. Everything else was cooked to perfection as per usual. I give it three stars because of all of the wonderful experiences I’ve had before this, but if my first visit had been anything like this one, I wouldn’t...