The Sardine Room — Restaurant in Plymouth

Sardine Room has lost its way! We arrived for dinner on Friday, November 8th; the first week of their "new menu" /format. While containing some of the previous wonderful small plates, the menu has been reconfigured to ( in the words of our waiter) "enhance efficiency and the customer experience"...really? Wow!

We are Sardine Room regulars ( or we WERE) and always dine out for the total Quality of Experience. That experience is diminished the moment you are handed the new menu. Printed on unremarkable medium weight stock, it looks cheap; the layout and graphic design might have been done by the owner's kid on a laptop! Reading it, a red flag immediately went up, as the number of offerings seems to have been cut substantially (vegetarians will now have a hard time here...).

For starters, we ordered fried green tomatoes and blue crab dip. Both were presented without any artful plating, on basic mass market white dishes you'd find at Denny's...both items were tasty, however.

For the main course, we ordered a S-Room signature dish and our all-time favorite, the scallops on pork belly, along with the shrimp and grits, and crawfish hushpuppies. The scallops now come paired with their delicious fries, saving a buck or two in the process (bonus!)

Sadly, the scallops and fries arrived LUKEWARM, slapped on a large generic white dish, without any flair at all. Previously, the scallops would arrive beautifully laid out on a long rectangular plate and dressed with care. The fries would arrive in a neat tin cup. Oh! And the scallops were gritty, which never occurred in the past. Likewise, the shrimp & grits were "slopped" on the plate, with nary a garnish nor thoughtful touch.

We sent the scallops back, and a new plate was delivered by the manager who was very apologetic. Fine. The second try was no prettier, but at least were a less gritty (!) and the proper temperature.

At the end of our meal (which usually included dessert to share and coffee-but not this time!), we conveyed our dismay to our waiter who intimated that several regulars, upon seeing the changes, got up and left the restaurant without even ordering! Our waiter was great, by the way, and he dutifully let the manager know our thoughts. The manager stopped by to take in our impressions first hand, promising that he would take our concerns to the owner(s). As we left, our waiter urged us not to give up on Sardine Room, and we told him that we would drop by again to see if anything had improved.

Okay, a long-winded review, I know. But we are passionate about good food, and when an establishment that was a standard-setter goes off course, it needs to be said.

For the sake of the fine folks who work at SR, and the sister restaurants (Compari and Fiamme Grille) I hope they get their mojo back. If SR thrives under this new, less-special framework, good for them...but it will be through a different kind of customer base,...

Simply put: decent, but not a Brunch spot I'd ever recommend. It's worth noting that this restaurant only does Brunch/Breakfast service on Sundays so we didn't expect them to be as well oiled machine as an actual breakfast centric restaurant, but all of the things we expected them to not have down (prompt service, kitchen turning out food quickly) they actually did well at?

The Good: We were seated promptly, waters were brought right out to the table, there were a decent amount of other diners but we didn't have a long wait for our drinks or food or service. The food was decent tasting and everyone we spoke to was polite.

The Bad: Three of the things we originally wanted to order weren't in stock today: cold brew, cinnamon rolls, and biscuits (for the biscuits and gravy). We found this out individually as we tried to place our orders rather than being informed they were out of certain items beforehand; so if they're out of any other items today I can't say but I wouldn't be surprised. Of course disappointing to find out and have to pick something else.

Less fun was that the food I did manage to order then didn't come with the items that were listed with it on the menu. I ordered the 'Housemade Waffle' which on their menu lists that it comes with 'local maple syrup, fresh berries' and chose to 'add fried chicken' (as suggested on the menu). When my chicken & waffle arrived there were no berries accompanying it, when I asked our waitress about it she said 'it didn't come with the berries when chicken was added to the order' because I've never been at a restaurant where adding and paying for an additional item then removed an original item from your order. I made the best of it and turned half of my waffle into a chicken & waffle sandwich. The taste of both were decent, but I think that's mostly due to the maple syrup I was dipping it in - there was nothing special about the flavor of the waffle or the chicken on their own. The eggs/hash browns/bacon were all similarly 'okay' - no seasoning to speak of same as you would find at any corner diner or ihop.

Also, yes it's a bar. We knew that, but the bar lighting and music was still in full effect this morning at 10am was unexpected; the problem with that is that you're in a dimly lit room with loud music and you can't hear your dining companion while you're trying to chat over breakfast - even though they're less than 2 feet away from you and there's nobody at the surrounding tables providing overlapping chatter. Typically at breakfast you expect to hear people talking and the clink of silverware, maybe a crying baby or two - there were other diners inside and even children there - but the music overlapped all of it. The most common word you're going to say while eating brunch here is 'what?'

So yeah, decent food, clean space, quick service, very nice and polite staff - but not a place I'd want a repeat experience of or recommend friends to make a...

Came here Friday with a group of 7 for a birthday celebration. We easily spent $300 here. I would rather have gone to a coney island. I was highly disappointed in this place. I'm new to the area and read wonderful things and thought the menu sounded amazing so wanted to try it. Let me also say, I am well-traveled and very cultured. I've been to 23 countries in less than 4 years and hadn't heard of many of the ingredients on their menu - Holy trinity, pepitas, shishito, fresca just to name a few. That could be appealing, but it definitely wasn't!!!! Everything was disgusting. One person got a burger; the meat was dry as could be - couldn't chew it. One friend got jambalaya; it was so damn spicy and you couldn't taste anything else - the bread that came with it was dry. The salads were so small, it seamed like a joke and insult. The cod was greasy, too much batter and terribly over-fried. I picked the batter off and ate the little bit of fish that was inside. The fries were soggy as hell. The cole slaw tasted like someone had sprayed some cleaner from under the sink on it. The only thing I actually enjoyed was my friend's side of braised greens. The cocktail kentucky buck that I ordered was $10 and tasted like garbage. I didn't taste the strawberry at all, just tasted the liquor. The server was rude, inattentive, unenthusiastic and made us feel like just another table which killed the atmosphere. I will never try this place again and I will steer everyone I know...