Salt Life Food Shack — Restaurant in Saint Augustine Beach

I cannot recommend this place is the short answer. Read below if you want to know more.

This was by far one the most disappointing dinner experiences that I've ever had. Starts pretty average with asking to to be seated inside and told there was a 20-minute wait. Then when I get the text that the table is ready but it's for an outside table Not inside but we didn't want to wait any longer to be seated so we accept. So I'm now annoyed and then when my sandwich shows up it was just two pieces of bread and a grilled chicken breast. I did asked to remove the coleslaw not realizing that the entire dish was basically coleslaw so that was great and When the server brought out the food they asked me "Does that look okay?" So she knew it looked like crap, they didn't even include the pickles that I didn't ask to be removed. At this point I'm pissed. I send the food back, let the server know my opinion politely. Shortly after a manager came out and said they wanted to make it right and I could order whatever and it's free, well, at that point I didn't want any of their food or to support their business any further. So I politely declined.

I hung around to see what the other food looked like that our party order and besides the sushi, portions were small, The captain's platter that came out was basically 80% French fries. For what you get, I have not seen somewhere as overpriced as this place. The people I went with were more tolerant of the subpar food again, excluding the sushi which was apparently great.

If you're asking why I didn't order see food well. First off I don't care for it and second off a year ago when I ate this place I got food poisoning so I was not taking the risk.

Response to Salt Life: I already had a bad impression from eating here before this was me giving this place a shot. So i was not giving out more. What you said about my order was partly correct but i did have the aloi on the side and there were no pickles when i received the plate. Also you may have improved your food handling from when i got sick but it still happened. You can try to deny it all you want. I'm all for...

It baffles me how this place has so many good reviews. Maybe we just visited on an off day? My wife and I wanted some good food and margaritas after a day on the beach, but instead believe we’re in for a night of churning tummies and possible food poisoning (jury is still out, will update later).

We ordered the Lump Crab Spinach Dip (it was highly recommended according to our waitress), and I could tell from the second it came out that we’d be disappointed. It SMELLED like old fishy crab. Sure enough, we start to eat it and it tasted like it smelled, with curdled cream cheese (don’t know how they managed that). We both ordered the Elevated Patron Margaritas and they tasted like dirty Sulphur water, only to look over at the bar and see the reasoning for the nasty taste being because they were filling margarita glasses from a water cooler instead of hand making them. We asked if they could be remade and after dirty looks from one of the bar tenders when our waitress told her how we described them, we watched them fill the glasses from the same dirty water cooler. When our waitress asked if they tasted better, we said they tasted the exact same and were met with “well maybe this just isn’t the drink for y’all.” Still got charged for them even though we didn’t drink them, which is whatever. We just expect an “Elevated Patron Margarita” to not come from a dirty cooler. My wife and I order the overpriced tacos - the Woodfired Mahi tasted like nothing, the Tuna Poke was fine (edible at best), and the shrimp had undercooked (boarderline raw) shrimp on them. Chips were stale. Queso was edible.

Atmosphere would have been great if the table we were sitting at didn’t have an air vent leaking on me the whole time. Live music was lackluster.

Honestly, worst $90...

A nice place. They have a nice outdoor patio with tiki torches for atmosphere (and heat on the evening I was here). The torches were lit though hard to see in the picture I posted. I went for a before dinner snack and enjoy a draft beer. They appeared to have a pretty good selection of draft beer but ordering one that looked interesting, I was informed they were out of it. I chose another and once again was informed it was a no go. Turned out they were out of at least 6 of the beers on tap. Maybe remove the tap handles of those you're out of? Though I was looking forward to something different I settled for my tried and true favorite, Yuengling. $4.75 for a full pint is about standard. Had they had a full rack of drafts on stock, I'd have given it 5 *. For my snack I decided to try the AVOCADO FRIES $11.99 Sliced wedges of fresh avocados lightly breaded and fried to order. Very nice! Perfectly ripe avocado slices and just as the menu says above, lightly breaded. Throughly enjoyable! Had I been here for dinner, the menu looked great. I was happy to discover the aquarium installed on an episode of 'Tanked' on the Animal Planet network, years ago. I remembered there was a Florida tank installed at a seafood restaurant with 'salt' in the name. It was a "wave" tank as you can see from my photos. Lo and behold, this was the place! The show and the company are gone but a piece of them lives on at the Salt Life Food Shack! Well done SLFS! I will go back next time I'm...