Island Bakery — Restaurant in Port Aransas

This place came highly recommended. Overall, good quality food...but needs a few tweaks to truly be special...has some weird issues.

First odd experience - I ordered a pint of Guinness while waiting for the food to be made and for the 1st time in my life they didn't fill it to the top and refused to do so. "This is full for us". So when you order a pint you don't get the full pint...they minus a few inches on the top weirdly. Has anyone else ordered a Guinness somewhere that wasn't the full pint?

I ordered two types of seafood tacos and the general ingredients were excellent but both were missing the type of sauces and accompimments that fish/shrimp tacos normally comes with...so despite the good quality ingredients they ended up tasting bland.

I ordered To Go so the presentation may be better when dining in. However, the Coconut shrimp taco came with the coconut shrimp on lettuce in a taco with nothing else. It was odd to see 3 shrimp alone in lettuce in a taco. No tomatoes...or anything and no sauce to match the coconut flavors. I think both tacos were supposed to come with a mango pico de gallo type stuff but only one came with it. Definitely seemed incomplete. Typically coconut shrimp pairs with a sweet sauce of some kind. They weren't particularly sweet in general for coconut shrimp.

The second taco a grilled Wahi had a more full list of ingredients and there were red and green salsas that were decent but fish tacos really need a white aoili or garlic type sauce to go with them..normal red and green salsas don't really work. The white sauce from Fuzzy's taco is among the best example of this but it's pretty standard anywhere. To be fair, they may have had something like this that I could have asked for but I didn't realize until I got home that the tacos were rather "naked" and unadorned.

The tortillas themselves are homemade and were above average...and the seafood seemed good quality. They just need to add more sauce options and fix some of these minor things to go to the next level. It felt like getting a good quality hamburger somewhere that for some weird reason has no ketchup or mayo on it. Why go so far with great quality ingredients and then forgot to finish the dish?

Finally, the guy in front of me mentioned that they had been featured on the Food Network the "Crab Rellenos" which sounded really good...so it may be I ordered the wrong thing or it was a rookie chef in the back.

Ps - When they say "Big Taco" they definitely mean it...one taco should be enough for the average person. Two if you are really hungry. The taco is halfway between the size of a larger taco and a burrito.

The atmosphere is cafeteria style and the service was slightly above average for Port Aransas.

In general though if you are expecting good service in Port Aransas...don't...things move slow here and I think most of the people working at restaurants are probably sick of all the tourists....we haven't met a single friendly employee in a week in this city at any restaurant. No one has smiled or been friendly or nice. We were visiting from Dallas so it's a big city and hardly the high bar for friendly people but for a small town in the south there isn't a lot of southern warmth here or friendliness. It's possible they were just slammed because I noted some of the other reviews mentioned friendly servers.

Irie's though I would definitely come back and try some more of their menu. They have some creativity in their menu combinations and and some very tasty looking things..Hope they make those small tweaks to take it to the next level. I would like to recommend fully...but can't quite do it now.

Also, come early to avoid the rush...the lines get really long. After we came in suddenly there were 10-15...

Bada bing bada Iries. We go to this place every year during our fishing trips. The place is very small, maybe 6 tables, but they have space outside. BTW, parking is better behind the restaurant. The food is always good. We had a salad, flounder and shrimp meals. They have a soda machine for refills. Be in the island mood and don't expect take out food speed service. It takes about 10 minutes to get served after ordering on the counter. Relax and enjoy some down time. You can go dressed up or in beach / fishing outfits. Doesn't matter. Here is a pic of my son chowing down on a shrimp po boy.

Update: Went back March 2021. I changed my multi-year 5 stars to three stars. The location has moved from the main strip to a side road. The restaurant is now much bigger and there is lots of indoor and outside seating. It took us 15 minutes in line to get to the counter when we were told food is taking an hour. There were many tables open so the cooking staff must have been short. Fortunately, we had time and were grubby from fishing all day. We ordered and came back in 35 minutes. I saw numerous food bags on the counter but we sat outside. I thought they were not ours as we sad we are eating there. At 50 minutes I went to check and there was our food, one of the bags, sitting for at least 15+ minutes. We ordered a hamburger that was well done and dry with not a lot of flavor. We had the fries which were good. We had a corn cup which was good. And we ordered a shrimp and avocado salad which was small and a bit bland, even with the ginger dressing. I am not sure how long Irie's has been in the new location, but they have some work to do to up their game in terms of speed and...

This was our third time to eat at Irie's, and as much as we want to have a good experience there and support it as a business, I don't think we will go back. Each time the food has been okay (so-so), and the service slow, but still friendly and with a smile. However last week, the manager crossed a line. After a customer seated near us rightly raised her hand to ask where her food was bc it had been a long time and people who ordered after her had been served a while ago, the woman who identified herself as the manager spoke very rudely to the customer and eventually said "I can serve your shrimp to you raw, if you'd prefer that?" I couldn't believe it, I can't describe how rude and out of line it was. After I heard this I raised my hand to tell the manager that we were in a similar boat, that we (my husband and I, a party of two) waited for 45 minutes for our food and watched as a family of four, and others, who ordered well after us, were brought their food before us. We ordered similar items. And, there was another table that had been there before us, and when our food finally came, they still hadn't been served - they were pissed. Basically the whole restaurant kept looking around at each other like "what the heck is going on here?" She had a lot of excuses and was a smidge more professional with me, sounds like her kitchen staff just wasn't paying attention to the order of the tables. Anyway, knowing that mistakes happen and everyone has rough days, that a manager would tell a customer who has had to wait over 45 minutes for her food "I can serve it to you raw if you like" makes Irie's a...