Mitchell’s Seafood House — Restaurant in Rochester Hills

I was Highly disappointed with my restaurant visit. To start off, the hostess gave me a dirty menu with food smudges and stains on it. That tells me that nobody pays attention to menus before handing them to guests. Everyone is on autopilot and just grabs the menus and walks the guest to the table. That is concerning that staff is careless & not mindful of basic menu appearance standards. A customer should not be the first to observe this especially when the hostess isn’t doing anything else besides standing there. Learn how to utilize work time & multi-task.

Secondly, I ordered a lemonade that was watered down and the top 2-inches of the glass was left open with air. Thats robbery to charge $5.00 for a glass of lemonade with half a cup of ice inside & not even poured to the top of the glass. I fault the server for not catching this. Another example of the staffs work performance being on Autopilot & them not understanding basic processes.

Thirdly, I ordered a 1/2 pound Add-on King crab leg for $40 and was served the shoulder of the king crab (the white part only) with a half piece crab leg attached to it with only 1/3 of meat inside a broken shell leg. Furthermore, the crab was COLD.

The manager explained that their crab legs are weighed and their crab leg shipment contains shoulder pieces (she called it a knuckle) so the shoulder I received at my table was normal per company standards. Well, if that’s the case please state this on the menu because this is misleading. Customers are looking for the full king crab legs they can crack open. I can go to Costco & buy whole King crab legs instead for $20. I didn’t come here for a shoulder piece filled with impurities.

I had other issues, but I’m going to stop here and say that Mitchell's Fish Market did NOT live up to their self-proclaimed title of being a “premier upscale-casual seafood restaurant with the absolute freshest seafood” (description condensed from website).

I would like to see the higher-up executives arrange a refresher training course for all staff including management.

The hospitality industry is competitive. There’s a reason why Mitchells was not fully booked durning my restaurant visit. It’s because they are mediocre at best. The residents of Rochester deserve better!!

In conclusion….I’m not looking for anything free. I don’t want a complimentary desert. I want to see a culture change. I want to see the Kitchen Managers ordering higher quality pieces of the crab or either revising the menu description to alert customers the restaurant serves the shoulder piece. I want to see chefs preparing entrees to perfection that are Instagram-worthy photos. I want to see the servers saying to the chefs, “wait a minute, I’m not even going to serve this can you please remake this?” I want to see managers taking some ownership verses becoming defensive against their customers & quoting company standards.

Managers need to open up their minds & challenge processes and stop living on autopilot with the mindset of, “that’s what the company always does”

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We have been to Mitchell's several times before; and enjoyed the experience. We decided to go for our anniversary; 4pm on a Wednesday afternoon. This visit was an adventure for sure. We ordered spinach dip which was pretty good. The chips tasted a little stale but edible. We aren't big complainers so just dealt with it. I ordered clam chowder which I have had here before and it was quite delicious. This time it was watery at best (SO THIN!) and had a very off flavor. I'm a huge clam chowder fan and can tolerate most any version due to my overall LOVE of this particular soup; this however was not good at all. They did remove it from our bill and were very kind about the situation. For our entrees my son had kids fish and chips (was fine), I had surf and turf (6oz filet and lobster) and my husband had the shrimp scampi pasta. I thought it was a little odd the surf and turf came out without the warmed butter or steak sauce, but they did bring it out after bringing the entree plate to the table. (Also no steak knife?) My food was luke warm; the augratin potato was actually cold. By the time the butter warmed up the tiny lobster was ice cold but I figured whatever; they clearly were having some kitchen issues. My husband's meal though- it was as if the whole shrimp shell (not just the tail; I'm saying large pieces of shell!) were all scattered in the pasta dish. The first bite we thought okay, perhaps it was just a mishap, maybe fell into the sauce. Second bite full of shells, third bite was disgusting- mouth full of shells. We called for a manager and they of course offered to replace the meal. They agreed it looks like the shrimp were not deshelled- apologized and asked if he wanted anything else. He was pretty put off by the experience but he got fish and chips and it was fine. The restaurant itself was tidy but the booth ledges and furnishings were very dusty. The lamp on the table had old coleslaw splattered on it...just overall cleanliness could have been better. The waiter (Tyrone) was quite friendly. The manager on duty revealed he actually was normally the chef but was out on the floor serving as the manager that day. He did apologize for the experience. I do realize things happen and we're normally pretty easy going but I have to say although the staff was incredibly friendly, it was not at all the anniversary experience we were looking for at $115. The quality of the food this trip was just not at par with what we've had in the past and just didn't justify the tab. The friendliness of the manager/usual chef and Tyrone are the only reason for the 3 star review; unfortunately after that experience I likely would have considered this a 1...

Mitchell’s is not who they use to be. We were so looking forward to dinner here since it had been awhile that we’ve last ate here. The hostess was great! We were sat and greeted by our waitress in a timely manner. Our entire order was taken from drinks to our main entree. Our waitress said she’d be right back with our drinks and some bread. Half hour later still no drinks or bread aside no water brought to the table. Another waiter noticed us sitting there and asked if we had been waited on. Yes, but we asked that we could get some water while we waited. He brought us water. Another person brought us both our soup. At this time I mentioned that you brought me my soup but I still haven’t received our drinks. Shouldn’t my drink arrive prior to my soup?! At this time the manager came over to apologize the the drinks were taking so long. He proceeded to tell us it was due to one of the ingredients in my espresso martini had been misplaced and they were trying to find it. Really, over a half hour to make a drink? Because they couldn’t find an ingredient that goes in it? But yet the waitress told me they make these all the time when I asked prior to ordering the drink (it not being on their drink menu). Once I received my martini it looked like they forgot to fill it to the top. The manager did come by and say he’d remove the martini from our bill. My soup was warm not as hot as I’d like it to be, but waiting for our waitress to come by to warm it would had been too long. The salad was very good. Our main entrees were Mitchell’s Trio and Plank salmon. The Mitchell’s Trio… the shrimp was too chewy/tough and the crab cake was mushy which usually indicates too much bread/breading and not enough crab. Both our entrees stated it came with smashed potatoes, but rather we received potatoes that were in chunks(no flavor at all). The asparagus was pretty good. We were very disappointed in Mitchell’s, they’ve really gone downhill in food and service.

Hostess was awesome, the manager addressed the lack of but mentioned it wasn’t the waitresses fault. Yet, the waitress was missing in action to take care of her guests in many areas. So the waitress gets only one star (she was part of our terrible experience), poor bar service and the food rates a 3! Sorry, but we will not be...