Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen — Restaurant in San Antonio

We arrived for our 6:30pm reservation at 6:21pm. We had a party of 10. We were celebrating a birthday for my 18 year old daughter. We had with us a cake, several gift bags and a balloon. In short, hands full.

I approached the host stand attended by Alex (female) and mentioned we were here and she asked how many were there. I said 5 currently, and her reply was that she could not seat us until at least 7 of our party had arrived. She was not kind. No where does it say this policy during the online reservation process either.

So there we are holding all of our things (cake, gifts etc.), I figure, okay maybe the table is still occupied. So we wait, I had a full view of the dining area and notice at least two empty and ready to go 10-top large round tables. The rest of the party arrives shortly thereafter and we are led (by a different hostess) to one of the 10-top tables I had noticed available earlier. We stood holding all of our items for no reason what-so-ever. Just because Alex decided so. Unkind.

We arrived at the table I noticed immediately that there are only 9 chairs and relay this to her, the hostess mentions that she will get another chair. She proceeds to stand there unmoving waiting for everyone to be seated to place the menus down, impossible because there were not enough chairs. So I grab another chair from another table and she snaps out of it with an "oh sorry" with all the life and exuberance of sleepy the dwarf.

Not only did we wait to be seated for no reason, the table was not even prepped properly with the correct amount of chairs. Dinner proceeds, my chair-back was toward the walk way, and was bumped several times by the hostess staff throughout the evening, somehow all of the other patrons and waitstaff avoided, but not your hostess staff repeatedly. Parting shots I suppose, from a poor performance.

The bill was nearly $400. I have had better there and expect better there.

Honorable mentions: Santiago our server was great. Friendly, accurate and attentive. The food was as we have come to know it and met expectations. Were it not for Santiago I would have 1-Starred without question, we tipped beyond the 20% due to his efforts. I did not relay to him, management or anyone else about our earlier experience as I opted to not cast a pall over the birthday events.

EDIT: Found this earlier review below. Alex appears to be an on-going problem.

My father and I were dining in today and we had a terrible experience. Our waiter was mid to OK when we tried to address the issue with the hostess because he was taking too long with our check due to chatting with another table and we had to leave, so we politely requested to speak to a manager after our hostess gave us a lot of attitude, Alex, the hostess continued to try to debate while having an AirPod in her ear, I noticed she was watching a podcast, so maybe she was frustrated with us interrupting her entertainment time. Then, as we were waiting on the Manager, she continued to talk about us in front of us to her coworker, fellow hostess while even looking right at us.! Like what, hello at least wait for the customer to leave forgot you start talking about them.! I dont quite understand If ask for a manager why would she feel the need to combat with me I feel over all ashamed and terrible at this experience and the delicious meal we ate is now turning in my stomach this was just a horrible experience that just got worse! I’m so upset I hope someone can talk with that hostess cause she was very rude ugly and...

Soft Opening - As soon as we sat down at the bar, we were greeted and offered an appetizer of raw oysters which we readily accepted. Ice cold, plump and juicy, these bivalves were top notch. Then, as if on cue, our phone buzzed as we slurped the last oyster down to be escorted to our designated table. We were seated towards the center of the restaurant and in line with the front door that had been blocked off with a "training session" sign. The sweeping green vine pattern of the carpet and the openness of the dining room reminded me of one of the grand old hotels in N.O. French Quarter whereas the other location has more of a lush, green courtyard vibe like you might find on Chartres St. The romantic ambiance provided by the soft light from the gas lamps was carried over from the other restaurant, but they were strangely augmented by modern theatre lights which provided muted illumination for each table. Once seated we were quickly greeted by our waiter Guillermo who handed us menus and explained that we would be ordering one entrée from “column A” and one from “column “B”. Actually, there were two different pages of entrees that we were allowed to pick only one from each. I was more than delighted that my favorite, red snapper ponchatrain (now with a tarriff of $34.95), was available for one pick. The other pick was mostly from fried selections and we chose the fried shrimp. We were also allowed to select an appetizer from either mozzarella sticks or shrimp cocktail. No hesitation there . . . it was the shrimp for us. The pace of the dining room was frenetic and reminded me of the scene from the movie “The Polar Express” where the youngsters were served hot chocolate by an entourage of acrobatic waiters all juggling trays and making trips from point A to point B with great alacrity.. No acrobatics here though with the exception of tray dodging and table weaving. The wonderful hot bread baguette that they serve was soon sitting on our table with plenty of whipped butter. We devoured that loaf and requested more. Then the shrimp cocktail arrived with perfectly boiled shrimp on a bed of ice. That rapidly disappeared with the aid of some “horsey” fortified cocktail sauce. Great start! As the wait begin to grow longer and our bread foraging begin to occupy a larger and larger part of our available meal capacity, the waiter appeared and made a vague allusion to getting the order wrong and that it would take a bit longer before we were served. O.K. Since we are not ones to eyeball oral equine generosity (you know . . .the gift horse in the mouth thing), we resigned ourselves to smile, relax and eat more bread to assuage our growing appetite. But, oh was the wait worth it! I can still taste that mild flaky white fish fillet, moist and tender on top with just the slightest crispness on the bottom, smothered in unctuous brown butter sauce that yielded just a hint of lemon and was crowned with a number of crab claw meat chunks and 4 mildly spicy grilled shrimp. Served with their savory dirty rice, outstanding! The fried crustacean dish consisted of 8 oh-so-crispy, butterflied shrimp with the wispiest of crusts like a fine panko style breading. Wow! The only downfall was the slightly over done, but very generous...

Let me first say that this review is mainly for our server and the manager on duty that night. The food, The bartender guys outside on the patio and the atmosphere would have received 5 stars but our experience with the server is what spoiled the whole experience.

First, the food was delicious (although slightly cold) it was delicious. Our waiter was a woman named Alexandria. Either she was too overwhelmed to work on a Saturday night or she was having a bad day but her service was very unacceptable. Through the duration of our visit, we only saw Alexandria roughly about 3 or 4 times. She never checked up on us, never refilled our drinks, never asked us if we were finished with our plates, and every time we attempted to to look up to catch her attention, she was never to be seen. When we first ordered, we order some water with lemons (we had alcoholic beverages while we waited for our table to be ready) and an appetizer. She never said "alright, I'll get that right in for you and be right back with those waters" nothing... she just wrote our order down and left without a word. It took almost 30 minutes before we received water. Then again we couldn't find her to ask for straws. So another waiter who was close by who was named Loyal, now he was amazing! He was so funny, very charismatic and got us straws with no hesitation, he was so kind and very epic with his customer service. We all wished he was somehow our waiter and that we could tip him instead of our current waiter. Almost an hour in she finally brings us our entrees which is room temperature. We looked around again to try to ask for a water refill but again she was nowhere to be found. Once it was time for us to leave, I asked her if I could get a final receipt and the change. She hesitated and stared off into space like she didn't understand what I just said. When she came back, she gave me the wrong receipt for another table. Once she was done talking and laughing with the table next to us, I waited till she walked away and informed her that she had given me the wrong receipt. She said "oh" and I just left. I was frustrated by the time and when my step mother talked to the manager on duty, the manager just apologized and left. We were very upset with tonight's service. Yes I understand it's a busy Saturday night but when you're spending this much money for the quality and atmosphere, it's expected to get somewhat decent service from the waiter. Loyal on the other hand was back and forth, back and forth with his tables and we couldn't understand why our waiter was giving us this type of service... very...