The Nautilus — Restaurant in Nantucket

TL;DR: $400 spent on the most mid meal ever. Avoid if you like spending $ on good food.

I am writing this review in hopes to help diners avoid throwing their $ at an overhyped meal. I, too, fell for the Nautilus’s insta photos, google reviews, and exclusivity. But in no uncertain terms - this is not a restaurant that is worth staying up until midnight a week a head of time to try to get a resy for. Re: the people in the reviews - “incredible food”, “speechless”, “one of the best restaurants on Nantucket” - I am convinced they are either 1) lying or 2) don’t know good food from the back of their hand.

The food wasn’t bad per se, but it also wasn’t good. Vietnamese fried shrimp tasted like a PF Chang’s dish - overly saucy, quality of shrimp was meh. If you had told me you’d air fried them out of the freezer and mixed them with a provided sauce packet, I would have believed you. Summer salad was soggy and flavors were all over the place. A $42 sashimi don bowl that comes with pre-made seaweed salad you can buy at Costco? Let’s be for real.

Highlights of the meal did include the beef tataki and the chicken frites. The bartender was definitely on his game - the drinks were delicious. Being impressed by 2/6 dishes just did not do it for our party.

Service left much to be desired. Lady with the pen in her hair acted too cool for school the entire time. Everyone has bad days, but her vibe definitely did not help make up for our experience with the food. At the end of the night, we joked that we should have gone to Stubby’s instead bc the boys behind the counter there are always lovely.

Nantucket has certainly changed from what it was 10, 15 years ago - and even moreso after Covid. Food quality is down across the island while prices have skyrocketed. Most of the island crowd is OK with throwing a few hundred dollars at a mediocre meal. This review is to help those of us who aren’t. It’s also to help the folks that stand outside of this place in the evenings hoping to get a table. I was watching people look longingly inside the restaurant during the duration of our meal.. To those folks, along with others staying up until midnight to get a resy - it is not worth the effort. I wish I...

Given how difficult it was to obtain a reservation, we expected a great dining experience. We were sorely disappointed. My Old Fashioned cocktail was the worst I have ever had in a restaurant. It was so watery that I think the bartender must have been so busy that he mistakenly substituted water for simple syrup. All of the food was overly salty including the Shishito peppers, mushrooms a la plancha, scallion pancake and the blue crab fried rice. The service was poor - when the food was delivered the plates were slammed on the table and accompanied by a grunt. The atmosphere was horrible. The music was too loud and the tables were too close together. It was difficult to hear what the waitress was saying to us and it was difficult for my wife and I to carry on a conversation. We have spent the last week on Nantucket and this was our worst dining experience. Every other restaurant that we ate was markedly better including The Pearl, American Seasons, Cru, Toppers...

Our hotel highly recommended the Nautilus and we were excited to try it. We secured reservations for the week after Christmas, our first time on the island. We arrived and there was a line outside. Atmosphere was nice, music was pretty loud and lights dimmed with a happy energetic crowd. Menu options were either tapas or 'large entree' - we went with tapas.The food was good. A nice selection of asian, vegetarian, complex offerings (like delicata squash with blue cheese and pepitas). The squash dish was not quite sweet or soft enough. Contrasting flavors normally would have been good, but not cooked enough/too firm. It wasn't quite the complex ingredients or technically cooked dish we were expecting. The poke bowl was good, pork buns were ok (we had better ones in Newport RI). Did the food blow our minds? No. The gingerbread creme brûlée dessert was delicious. Service and overall experience was really good. Will we return? Maybe. Stay tuned for our next...