The View at St Joe Bay — Restaurant in Port Saint Joe

Beware of how they treat people! It should be a happy occasion for our wedding in a city dear to our hearts (the house was destroyed in Hurricane Michael). The lack of proper business etiquette and integrity is appalling especially by owners. We contacted them and then spoke with Lauren (owner) on the phone gave us pricing for buying out the venue and food. I asked detailed questions so it was clear what was included & not. She told me she is one of the owners & what a good price we were getting comparing it to what another person paid for their weddings because she saw their invoices (privileged information). She told me to text her with any questions, the next day I text her since we wanted to move forward & meet with her to hammer out details/sign a contract and she let me know that she was at her other job (honestly, I didn’t need to know it had nothing to do with what I was contacting her about) and said she would shoot me a text the next day. A week goes by and I have not heard from Lauren. I message her & she texts me asking me to e-mail her. I tried to call since I knew she was at her phone & she sent me straight to voicemail & sent me another text asking if I got her text about e-mailing her. She called me & was rude making excuses for not contacting me & saying she had been busy (she as a business owner should do what she says or ask someone else to). I asked her if she is too busy if we should be working with someone else? She said no she is one of the owners & the person who handles events; we set up a meeting to hammer our details with her, JT(chef/owner) & Amanda(manager). After she sends a second e-mail that seems she has upped the price of the event & mentions for only part of the restaurant; there must be some misunderstanding but will be fixed at the meeting. We arrived for the meeting to find out that Lauren didn't show up, nor is she going to. We speak with JT & Amanda talk menu options & set-up of the event but inform us that we have to speak to Lauren about pricing/contract. We set up another date 3 weeks out to do a tasting with JT & e-mail Lauren asking her to be at the tasting so that we can finalize. She responds with “Glad you guys have chosen us for your special day. The [date] looks good to me but will double check & make sure I’m not on call. I will get back to you this evening on the date.” She never got back to us so we assumed she would be there & if not as a business owner she would let her customers know. We show up & again Lauren was not there! We were obviously upset that Lauren has twice not shown & is hard to get a hold of & JT said as an owner he can just handle it. We told him everything that Lauren quoted on the phone & the pricing she added, he crunched the numbers for us. We picked our food & told him we were happy & would like to move forward. We received an e-mail from him that night with everything: pricing & breakdown of menu. We responded we wanted to work with him, he told us we would have a contract in 2 days. Well 2 days went by we reached out a few times, but because of the holidays thought they must be busy & weren’t worried since 2 owners told us we were good. We then found out that the restaurant had some changes & that everything was forwarded to Lauren & that we needed to reach back out to Jason (DOP). We called Jason & didn’t hear back so then e-mailed. We received a response 2 days later that was nice saying they would like to mirror what we had agreed on with the owners. We were told they didn’t have any information about our event, which is absurd because Lauren had also been e-mailing us (but has still forgotten to email back). We shared everything that was agreed upon & forwarded e-mails. Jason told us he was going to take this to the owners & was sure we would have a contract in 3 days. The next morning, we received an e-mail from Jason (not a phone call from a business owner) that the owners (Lauren) are not interested in moving forward...

Edit: Just saw your reply to this review. I would like to know how much each meal was supposed to increase by as it seems like about $9 for each lobster course. I don’t have a picture of the menu but by basing it off the prices on your website (which seems about what the menu said) we were charged $10 extra dollars on the lettuce lobster cups ($31 instead of $21), $9 extra on lobster Mac ($32 instead of $23) and $8 on each tiny lobster roll ($32 instead of $24). I would love to get a refund if we were somehow accidentally over charged. Also funny that you didn’t mention any of the other horrible service we received including missing meals and many other items out of stock, and the worst being not letting the other table know of the increased prices at all. We will not be giving the restaurant another chance.

No beer, no feta, out of chips, $9 meal increase for all lobster meals, 3 forgotten meals we reminded them about 3 times and didn’t get until everyone was done eating (one we canceled at this time because they ate off everyone else’s plates while waiting. There were so many issues with this restaurant. After ordering drinks, the waitress came back to say every one who ordered beer would have to get something else because they only had one yuengling, no other beer. We were told their beer delivery had not come in yet. Tried to order the feta dip, was told no feta either. Then ordered lobster and was told that there was a $9 increase in lobster. We asked “$9 per meal???” And they said “no, just per lobster, but you will get the happy hour discount since you are here during happy hour”. We were very confused but assumed each meal would be adjusted per pound of lobster or so. When the check came, we saw that it was every meal that was increased by $9. Then was told by the other table that they were never told about the increase at all. Completely unaware it would be different from menu price. That’s horrible!! Then meals came out and the lobster roll was the smallest thing i have ever seen. Like 2-3 bites for $32. I felt so bad for the ones who ordered it. At least it was served with a bag of chips, but when one person asked if they could trade their jalapeño for salt and vinegar like someone else had at the table (they don’t do spicy), the girl rushed back with the Jalapeño, thrust it back at him, and said they didn’t have any others. Then after the food was delivered they asked if we were missing anything and we told them the 3 meals we were missing. We got “yes that’s almost ready” “yes that will be done in a sec”. 20 minutes later everyone was done eating and the other 3 had not come out. We tried for a while to call back the server but it was like we were being ignored. We finally got her and 5-10 minutes later one meal came out and we still waited for the other two. After a while we canceled one and still waited for the other while some of us walked down to the beach. That one meal was taken off the check. I can’t believe we paid this much for this service. Absolutely not...

EDIT: I am adding this edit to my review because of the absolutely asinine response from the restaurant below. We tipped 20% because unless the service is terrible, that is our bare minimum when we go out to eat. The waitress should not be penalized for the faults of the kitchen and the owners. Servers make their living off of tips, and the food issues were no fault of hers. As an owner I think it's awful of you to suggest we should have tipped her less. We almost finished the appetizer (4 small mushrooms) because as I said it was ok, not great, and we had been building our appetite in preparation for eating at your restaurant, expecting it to be a culinary delight (which it wasn't). We ate as much of our meals as we could, because as I mentioned we were incredibly hungry and just wanted this disappointing outing to be over. Instead of complain and try to get something for free, we dutifully ate and generously tipped. Additionally, how on earth could we have a personal grievance??? We don't know anyone associated with the restaurant. It is sad that instead of taking the feedback and improving, you search for anyway to discredit an honest review. My purpose in leaving this review is to give people (like my husband and myself) who read reviews to get an idea of the quality of food before they go to a restaurant, an honest account of our experience. If you don't like what we thought of your overpriced and mediocre at best food, move on or do better.

My husband and I just had a meal here after looking for a nicer restaurant in the area via a Google search. The pictures, menu and reviews looked promising so we were excited to give it a try. We decided to start with the crab stuffed mushrooms, which were just ok. The waitress brought out the bread and visually it looked like it would be delicious, but alas it was dried out and not worth eating. For my meal I ordered the Parmesan snapper, which came with mashed potatoes and veggies. The potatoes were good, the veggies were ok, but the fish tasted like fish sticks. The snapper was so overly breaded that it overwhelmed this light fish, and the lemon sauce was so thick and sweet that it looked like a toaster strudel. My husband ordered the Hawaiian Mahi over risotto, and his meal was barely edible. The risotto was a solid brick under the fish, overly salted and overly herbed, not even close to what risotto should taste like or feel like in your mouth. The Mahi was reminiscent of canned chicken. The service was fine, completely average but acceptable. Bottom line, this place doesn't live up to the reviews we read before choosing to come here and certainly doesn't live up to the prices they charge. We love going out for a nice meal, and have no problem spending a pretty penny on quality food - unfortunately this was not even close...