O'Brien's Bistro — Restaurant in Pensacola

We decided to try this restaurant for our 50th anniversary lunch based on their menu, photos & reviews. They did avail us the dinner menu for more options.

The main entrées were very good. I had the Baked & Stuffed Grouper over angel hair pasta with spinach au Parmesan and the mushroom soup a la Sherry. The soup was ok, but you have to like the sherry flavor, for it was prominent. The Grouper was perfectly baked & the seafood stuffing had a nice baked crust atop the Grouper. They had a little bit of white sauce over the grouper & pasta. It was very light in flavor & I added salt, which I normally never do, but the pasta was too bland without a little help.

My husband had the Black & Blue Steak with mashed potatoes and salad. The steaks were tender & cooked medium rare as requested. However, the blue cheese sauce was a bit too salty. So, the sauce was scraped off to taste the delicious steak. The mashed potatoes were made of red potatoes with large flavorful chunks, but the mashed portions were gummy like textured glue. The salad was fresh mixed greens with rings of red onions and cucumber pieces served with a good chunky blue cheese dressing. Which would have worked better on the steaks than the salty melted down blue cheese sauce.

We normally skip desserts, but in celebration, we ordered a chocolate mousse cake & chocolate lava cake with coffees. The coffee was good and strong in flavor without bitterness. The mousse cake was delightful, but the lava cake was returned. There was no lava! It was a sharable size round chocolate cake with a thin chocolate syrup poured on top with a scoop of (old?) crystallized vanilla ice cream & whipped cream on top. I cut into it to get the "lava" only to get nothing but a dry off bland chocolate cake. I tasted more salt and smelled more of an egg scent than chocolate. I couldn't eat it.

The total cost of the celebratory bill was $78 plust $20 tip. The waitress was slightly above average expectations. Expected more attentiveness with them knowing that we were celebrating our 50th anniversary today.

The atmosphere and decor were ok. We did like the framed pictures of other cafés on the wall. We had a French Sports bar cafe picture at our table. The bathroom was in need of maintenance (repairs) and servicing. Was a little on the tacky side and the fake plant needed cleaning.

There is no need nor...

Absolute terrible experience. Food was bland, and disgusting we didn’t even bother taking the left overs as a big middle finger to them. The prices don’t reflect what the menu says, we were charged for splitting, and then charged for the meat separate, and then another surcharge on top of that. Made no sense whatsoever and when we called a manager over to clarify just what in the world was happening, she was extremely rude from beginning to end.

My wife was not able to get a word edgewise and when she (the manager) finally concedes to discount $20 off the already overcharged bill, she announced it in front of the entire restaurant as to embarrass us and then proceeds to storm off huffing and puffing. Felt slightly discriminated against and it seems this isn’t the first time she’s been called over to explain the absurd charges. O’Brien’s, you would think it’s Irish, English, nope. Can’t make up its mind whether it’s Italian, Asian, American, Iranian. We felt very sorry for the already stressed waitress as she was sweaty, and seemed fidgety.

I imagine it’s a family owned business and they probably treat their staff like cattle. Goes without saying we’ll never step foot here again.

Per the managers request to call him, I did just that. It went as expected, the manager, David, has no customer service or hospitality etiquette whatsoever and it’s apparent. It’s mind-boggling that a restaurant that’s clearly struggling treats their patrons so poorly and proves my point about how they treat their staff. As someone pointed out in another review, even the fish don’t want to be there or maybe they can’t afford any. Wouldn’t be surprised if they served the fish (or lack thereof) to customers.

Regardless, the phone call ended with me telling David off because of his incompetence. Unlike you, David, I actually own up to my actions and have no problem admitting it. Two managers that handled a situation very poorly warranted my reaction. Had you just said “we’d like to make it right,” “we’re sorry your visit wasn’t what you expected,” that would have sufficed. But you decided your ego is...

Using Google and Yelp only, we found O'Brien's Bistro, made a reservation, and went for dinner after church on Saturday evening. It was a reasonably long wait from being seated to being approached by a server. Eventually, we ordered drinks, and upon delivery, our server said she would be back to pick up our appetizer order, but it might be a little while. It was. We ordered an appetizer (Brie) and waited another while before receiving it. We then ordered dinner entrees (Stuffed Grouper & Chicken Piccata). By the time we got our salads, we had been seated for nearly 1 hour. We discussed packing it in and paying for what we had received, but did not—a mistake. During this time, every table in our section had been seated, served, and left. Each table in our section was greeted by its server with the Specials for Saturday. We were never told about any Specials. Every table received a basket of rolls. Not us. I got up to stroll around a bit because I had been sitting so long, and a man, whom I inferred was in management, asked me how my evening was going. I said, "Not great." He asked if I was waiting on anything, and I responded, "Our food." Our food arrived a little while later, and it wasn't great. Look up any Chicken Piccata recipe. What my wife was served wasn't that. Of course, it is one of her favorite dishes, and she orders it everywhere. A Chicken breast, pan-fried in a skillet. Not breaded or pounded —just a dry chicken breast, browned on both sides. I smelled my Grouper coming before it was set down right under my nose. Let's say it was loud. We picked at both, asked for the check, and left. Nobody ever took notice of us, even though every other table turned while we sat, and two tables turned twice! No effort was made for any Service Recovery or apology. I mentioned church earlier because that is the only reason I maintained any decorum. The recency of being at church It was an expensive (both in time and money) and...