Alchemy Bistro & Bar — Restaurant in Port Townsend

I'm gonna be fare and start off honestly, the food was good. Made reservations earlier in the week, called day before arrival to confirm. Showed up and no reservation? Hmmm. It's ok, they got us a table. When I saw the sign posted at hostess station saying short staffed on a holiday, and our missing reservation I was like ehhh, maybe we should go? But we'd driven so far for this Valentine's Day dinner, decided to stick it out. It was chaotic to say the least. Fortunately my husband and I both are patient people with good sense of humors and we're able to turn the night into a good time regardless. But here's how our night went: 6pm reservation. Sat at table. Bussers bring us menus. Bussers are only staff members attending guests. (3) Hostess's (1) being owners wife all who seem to be aimlessly walking through restaurant pointing at bussers telling them what they need to be doing. (2) Servers for entire restaurant. When you have a pri fix meal that consists of 90% steak options, you take (2) note pads and pens toss one in a Hostess's hand and another in bussers's tell them to go take orders: table number, how do you want your steak cooked, what sauce? Simple easy peasy. Not what happened. After being seated for quite a while our server finally showed up, took our drink order and we told him we were ready to order our dinner same time, took order and away he went. Bussers begin delivering appetizers (good kids, could tell lost but really, really trying hard) 20 mins later our drinks arrive from server, no ask how is everything, can I get you anything? Drink drop run (He was 1 of 2 servers for entire restaurant, very busy) bussers again keep running a muck doing their very best. All the while my husband and I sitting in a restaurants listening to every table surrounding us complain, from menu, staff to tacky decorations. We politely smile but are dying inside. Dinner arrives. Steak is wonderful, cooked well and tasty but we just couldn't handle another moment of listening to everyone around us complain. It was obvious they needed help and were short staffed, and service other than the bussers was mediocre to say the least. However food was good. I might be willing to try again maybe during lunch on a Wednesday. Prices of food claiming to be high end restaurant with that lack of attention, ehhh. Idk. But really wanna give Bussers a good job, they really were doing everything they could and taking all the verbal backlash on the chin with a smile. If I were their parents...

Where do I start. I start with a total non-recommendation of this establishment. Worst experience ever. First off...we made reservations and arrived ontime to an empty restaurant. Not one other customer to be seen. That should have been a huge red flag and we should have left. We received the menus and they were totally different than a menu posted online. We asked the waitress about that and she replied, we have had an ownship change. Red flag number two. Should have left. We ordered some drinks and two drinks were delivered first and then about 5-10 minutes later we get the other two drinks, bizzare! Red flag number three. No seafood options except scallops on pasta, does not sound good. We ask about other seafood options and the waitress says we do have two pieces of sockeye salmon. NO thanks!!! (How old is that salmon?) Flag number four. Waitress tells my wife that we can do scallops with potatoes and string beans and some kind of mashed up tomatoes. HUH? What kind of a combination it that? I ordered a lamb dish that came to the table in a bowl/plate that was mostly grease and a nasty brown color. YUK! My wife's dish consisted of four scallops, about three dried out small potatoes, green beans, and this funky red stuff. Nothing really went well together. YUK! The other two people we were with shared some kind of beef dish that did not look appetizing at all. I have never ever had an experience like this. The waitress was not very professional with the way she was constently reaching in front of us getting very close to our faces. We tried very hard to have a good experience, but it was far from it. Also, we noticed a help wanted sign on the window after we had our meal. Another flag. We learned a big lesson here, do not ignore red flags in the future. Wish we would have just left after flag number one. And the prices were very high for what was served. Way over priced.

Almost forgot, waitress brings over the dessert menu that was written on what looked to be a circular chalk board. She holds it up and shows it to us and then mentions that half of the items on the menu is not available, and a few of the description lines were half erased and unreadable. Was I still on the planet Earth?

Needless to say one star (which is too much) and no recommendation. There are way better places to eat in Port Townsend. Cross this one...

To be fair, this restaurant is as short-staffed as are so many others both in and out of the kitchen so we were pleasantly surprised at most of the food that arrived. The mussels were rather large and just a tad undercooked but hey, they were BIG so no fault there. The seafood creole was tasty with just a hint of spice and gobbled down quickly so we were all in total agreement with the earlier reviews. That said, a few stars got dinged for the steak strip sandwich which was advertised by two waitresses as "thinly sliced" pieces of tenderloin with an au jus in which to dip the sandwich. But here I would advise passing on the sandwich, one which arrived with big chunks of rather tough meat and a watered-down au jus. The waitress apologized and offered a free dessert to make up for the meal and offered to box up the rest but forgot to do so and thus another star vanished. Perhaps we hit a bad night, even if it wasn't that busy; and to be fair, we didn't mind having to ask 4 times to get more water (we were used to it since restaurants were indeed having trouble finding good or any help). Our bill arrived and had to be taken back for a few corrections (waitress apologizing again). When she returned (another wait to pick up our payment), we asked about the to-go boxes we requested for our uneaten portions but she admitted that she had completely forgotten but that if we could wait she could have some additional items prepared (uh, no thank you). So bottom line, we knew that we had hit a bad night but we felt that perhaps the manager or someone could have emerged to try and correct the misunderstanding; alas, nobody appeared. The chef may have been new, the waitress the same; but it did put a damper on what seems an otherwise highly positive place...hey, it happens. Times are tough and places are struggling...just avoid the steak...