Bourbon Street Seafood Kitchen — Restaurant in San Antonio

AVOID THIS ESTABLISHMENT. THERE ARE PLENTY OF GREAT RESTAURANTS, DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME OR MONEY ON SUBSTANDARD (AND ESPECIALLY AWFUL) ONES.

SERVICE: 0/5 MANAGEMENT: 0/5 FOOD: 2/5

First of all, I rarely write bad reviews. Most of my reviews on Yelp are 4 and 5 stars.

Second, I have never been treated more poorly at any restaurant as I and my family were treated today. Particularly by the bartender (CRYSTAL).

We arrived around 4:45PM on a Thursday (9/4/2025) as a party of 7. My wife's parents were treating us to dinner for my wife's birthday. We had our three kids (7 yo boy, 4 yo girl, and almost 2 yo girl). Arriving early we decided to take advantage of their happy hour. We ordered 5 drinks and 3 happy hour appetizers (NOTE: you must purchase 1 alcoholic beverage for each happy hour appetizer). We ordered 1 calamari and 1 catfish nuggets in our first round and a second calamari later on. NOTE: The calamari was good, the catfish was only okay.

The bartender (her name is Crystal) was unwelcoming from the moment we walked in. She gave my father-in-law a hard time for trying to clarify what the happy hour "well drink" was and was generally unfriendly.

My kids were reasonably behaved, but excited to be around their grandparents and at a restaurant. They were not being disrespectful or disruptive. There were two other couples in the bar area and one other single patron.

When our second order of calamari arrived, the bartender (Crystal) brought it to a small table that my father-in-law and I were chatting at. Before she sat it down we asked that she deliver it to the next table over for the kids. She responded to us with "You need to be more specific next time" which caught me by surprise.

At this point, we were getting hungry for our dinner meals. My wife asked if we could move our party into the main dining area (as we had discussed with front of house when we entered). NOTE: There was literally one single party seated in the restaurant outside of the bar at about 6PM.

Our bartender (Crystal) informed us that we were not allowed to take the happy hour appetizer out of the bar area. OK. FINE. I asked the family to come back to the bar area to eat the calamari before we got seated for the main meal.

My father in law asked the bartender (Crystal) to speak to the manager. He has some trouble hearing and was attempting to communicate and the bartender (Crystal) raised her voice and said "Get out of my face" which surprised us all. A bit of commotion ensued as a result of this outburst. At this point we made the decision to leave.

The manager (unfortunately, I did not get his name) did come to speak to us and he indicated that the policy of their restaurant was to allow happy hour DRINKS to leave the bar area, but not happy hour FOOD. A restaurant has the right to establish and enforce any policy they would like (regardless of how asinine it may be). He identified that he had apologized to my father-in-law and that we could take the calamari to our table if we wished to do so; however, this silly policy was no longer the issue.

We began gathering our things as my father-in-law closed out our tab. I have no idea what prompted it, but while we were preparing to leave, the bartender (Crystal) said loudly "This is a bar, don't bring your kids here" (which, if you have ever been to this location, the "bar" is not even separated from the main dining area by a wall...it's just the front part of the restaurant).

Upon walking out the door, I heard the bartender (Crystal) say "...leave and never come back" (I did not hear the first part of the sentence)

Again, there are a ton of great (and less expensive) restaurants in San Antonio.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. ...

This was our third time to visit this restaurant in a year, but that is because we have been disappointed in the past. We live close and think, lets give it another chance. But, we learned, there is always an excuse on service, the owner either says the bartender didn't show up, short on wait staff or short on cooks etc. Well, we just see the food is over priced and the service is disappointing. Tonight was the final straw, again, no bartender which should have alerted us to the ending saga because there were two separate couples seated at the bar waiting on a table and they warned us, no one was tending bar when we asked if there was a bartender. At that point, one of those couples stood up and walked out thinking this could be a long evening. Once seated, our waitress showed up with a smile which was nice! We order a bottle of wine which showed up very quickly. We ordered our side salad's and entree's five minutes later. The entree arrives 15 minutes later, I said to our waitress, we have not been served our salads! The waitress replies, Yes, you did! I replied, No, we have not. I said, we want our salad's served first and the entrees need to be returned to the kitchen. She gave me a non-approving look and walked away with the entree's without saying a word to us. She had lost her smile and kindness in an instant. My salad arrived with a 1/16th bag of the pre-washed, grocery store wilted, romaine lettuce and two small wedges of mushy tomato and 3 small hints of a red onion slice, my friend had the Cesar salad and said it was tasty and it did look appealing, the other house salad was covered up in blue cheese but same mushy tomato. Once our meal arrived, two of us had ordered the Shrimp and pasta dinner. The shrimp were very small and had no flavor. The pasta was over cooked and the sauce was too oily and lacked any flavor. My friend had an Oyster appetizer that he said was just okay which he finished. After the delivery of our entree's, the waitress only returned once when we had requested her to bring our check.

When you dine out often and appreciate quality food and especially, good service goes a LONG way, this was a disappointment. Three strikes and you're out! I really don't know how they stay in business but they do, we're just not going to be funding them anymore which they won't miss since we only went...

There was no one at the hostess stand when we arrived, so we had to wait a few minutes before the manager showed up to seat us. We seriously thought about grabbing our own table for a couple of minutes because nobody acknowledged that we were standing there. I was afraid this was going to set the tone for service, etc. but luckily, it didn't. Once we were seated, the service was VERY professional and efficient.

The food: The jambalaya ($18.99) had PLENTY of chicken and sausage - the chicken was chicken breast and was very moist - not dried out, which is easy to do with chicken breast. However, the jambalaya demi-glaze sauce and rice, seriously was no better than one of those instant mixes out of a box or a bag like Zatarans, etc. the sausage tasted very similar to the local SA brand Kielbasa. I just wasn’t impressed with this dish, based on the $18.99 price tag it flaunted. Who charges $18.99 for jambalaya???

The Pontchartrain Redfish entree ($31.99) is pan seared, served with mushrooms, crab meat, and shrimp in a brown butter sauce, served with dirty rice on the side.

Glasses of wine range from $8 to $15. Beer (Abita Amber) is $4.75 for a 12 oz bottle.

Substitutions are frowned upon here. The redfish entree includes two shrimp, but we asked if we could substitute scallops for the shrimp. The cost was going to be an additional 4.99 for the first scallop, and 5.99 for each additional one after that - but we were assured they were large scallops. We took a hard pass on the substitution and ordered it with the default of two shrimp. This dish was better than the jambalaya entree. The fish was cooked perfectly - not too dry and a good flavor.

Although the service was great, and the food wasn’t too bad, it will be a while before I return. It’s just too pricey for the quality and ambiance. There’s a handful of other places that I would rather drop this...