The Fish Shack Bar & Restaurant — Restaurant in Rockport

I’m so disappointed to write a bad review, as I was expecting this place to be a great spot for my friends birthday! She had flown all the way out from California and was hoping to try a lobster roll at a cute New England restaurant. Our experience was really unfortunate. To start, there was no hostess, so we just stood there awkwardly unsure of whether we should seat ourselves or not. We had to ask one of the servers who walked by whether we could have a table for three, and they looked annoyed. Then we all ordered a drink, and the manager came up asking to recheck our IDs. I’m not opposed to being careful, especially since two of us had out-of-state drivers licenses, but her tone was rather hostile as if we were trying to cheat her. There was no warmth or apologies for the hassle, even when she asked us to pull out MULTIPLE forms of IDs. Mind you, all of us are clearly over twenty one. When our drinks arrived, they were pretty watered down and lack luster. Then, the food came. My pasta was fine, but my friend’s buffalo chicken basket was incredibly dry and flavorless, like it had no sauce at all on it. Even worse, my friend who ordered the lobster roll said it was cold, flavorless, dry, and a super small portion. She paid nearly FORTY DOLLARS for it too! I felt so embarrassed to have brought her. The icing on the cake was the hair she found in her salad, which she had to pay a full $2 extra for a tiny bowl of iceberg lettuce and two pieces of red onion. Literally do not come here. If I was a braver soul, I would have asked...

The food here is good. Great clam chowder and the fish sandwich was excellent. We dined in on Sunday afternoon. Rockport was very quiet. When we arrived around 3 we were told it would be a 30 minute wait. Made sense, all the tables were full. The wait took about 40 min. We sat down, ordered, our waitress was nice, we got all of our food quickly and it was all delicious and hot.

What bothered us was while we were dining, multiple parties came in the host said it would be a 30 minute wait, with many tables open that could've been seated. The place wasn't busy. One party in particular had an elderly woman in a wheelchair and the host (a gentleman in his 20s) told the party it would be a half hour wait (multiple tables were open in the front of the restaurant close to the bar). He did not offer them a place to sit or even stand out of the way / to be comfortable while they waited. It was mind blowing to me that the restaurant had many open seats in the bar area (excluding the bigger dining room in the back) and seemed to be appropriately staffed and the host could not accommodate this party even during their wait time. His reasoning was "It's our slow season". Okay? Even if it's your slow season, it would be nice to see people treated with more respect and warmth rather than essentially telling them to come back when their wait time is up, especially when one member is in a wheelchair and it's raining outside. The host also had an airpod in his ear...

Upon being sat we sat and watched guests who arrived after us finish their calamari before a waitress even stopped to ask us what we wanted to drink. Had it been earlier in the evening we would have left, but this was probably our only option after getting sat at 720pm with most places closed at 8pm on a Thursday night. Granted there were many tables, there were multiple waitresses and hostesses, and it took the waitress with the nose ring to notice us between serving her table of 14 to start our dinner. She's the only reason I put 3 stars for service. She seemed to be the only one there capable of multitasking as she helped us and the largest table in the restaurant. She apologized for the oversight and offered us a complimentary appetizer that arrived as we watched the table next to us that arrived after us finish their main dish. Yes we made eye contact numerous with all the staff who walked by us like we weren't even there. Other tables even laughed along with us. Everything after this snafu was pleasant other than spending entirely more time in the restaurant than we had planned. We were there so long, my wife had to leave early to get cupcakes from a nearby place that closed at 9. For $40 lobster mac, it'd be nice to not wait forever to put...