Blue Mermaid — Restaurant in San Francisco

We are staying at the Argonaut and thought we'd give the hotel's restaurant a try. We visited during breakfast and was met with unfriendly, non-smiling staff after waiting for several minutes to be seated. We ordered the egg and ham benedict, the Sailor's omelette, and an order of plain French toast with any seasoning/berries on the side. We emphasized this point to our waiter. The waiter brought out overcooked egg benedict and my egg omelette was hard and dry. The French toast was covered in powdered sugar. Asked the waiter to please bring us plain French toast as our little one won't eat it with anything on it. He hesitated and made it seem like it was our fault. Food was uneventful. We thought maybe we got an overworked waiter and gave 25% tip to help cheer him up even though the service was terrible.

We decided to return for dinner as it was super convenient and was hoping for a better experience. Was greeted right away. Ordered the crab and corn chowder in a bread bowl, butter chicken, and an order of French fries. We come from Seattle and have had our fair share of decent chowder and seafood. My husband is Indian and upon trying his butter chicken dish, he had to stop eating it as the rice was undercooked and hard. We waited for our waiter to return to let her know but didn't see her. Asked for another waiter to let her know we needed her and still nothing. My husband finally got up and tracked her down to let her know the rice was too hard to eat. She showed up later at our table saying they have lemon rice. I explained to her that it's impossible for my husband to eat his dish with the current rice as it's undercooked and still hard. I gave them the benefit of doubt that maybe the rice was hard because it was the top layer or something. If the chef can't cooked something as simple as rice (being that he's Indian) for a butter chicken we weren't sure about the remainder of our food. She argued with us and said "no, the rice is not hard. It's cooked." I asked her to try it herself. She looked annoyed and flustered and left and came back saying the kitchen can make new rice but it'll take about 15 minutes. She left the butter chicken there expecting my husband to eat cold chicken with the new rice. I asked her to please bring back the butter chicken to the kitchen to keep it warm. She wasn't sure why we asked her to keep our chicken dish warm and grabbed it and left. No word of apologies, no smiles, just terrible service. My bread bowl was too salty and the French fries was cooked in old oil. If the service was better, we'd definitely return because of the convenience. But no way will we be back because of the service and the...

This was quite possibly the worst service I’ve ever experienced in my life. We arrived to a 1/3 filled restaurant only to be told that they were fully booked for the evening, but they did have a spot outside. The host graciously offered to turn on one of the heaters for us and it seemed like a good match. We were seated outside and it took something about 20 minutes for our waiter to show up. He took our orders for both drinks and food at the same time. my beer showed up 30 minutes later and was sort of flat. At that point we asked for the heater to be turned down only to be told bluntly no. The waiter then told us we needed to move to a different table and he attempted to turn on a different heater which also did not work. Eventually, a maintenance man came on and turned on ambient fireplace and it warmed it off enough to keep my kids warm. Our food arrived But neither the waiter nor the host or the busboy noticed. We did not have any silverware. We tried to catch someone’s attention, but there was no one to be found so we were forced to retrieve silverware for ourselves. We proceeded to eat our food which was fair at best. We were were just about finished with our food when our Waiter showed up with my wife drinks. Saying “don’t ask it took me this long to actually get this drink made” we told the waiter we no longer wanted that drink and we wanted our bill. 20 minutes later he did neither. Eventually, I had to walk in stand at the host station and ask every person who walked by for help. The host said he would take the drinks off the bill. I said “what drinks” I had one. The other one came after we had finished eating. It was at that point I noticed the people who were also sitting outside. We’re now sitting inside the same restaurant that had no available seating inside. The host attempted to give me a free dinner for a later date, but did not seem to understand when I said I don’t live in San Francisco. Great atmosphere. We had to order a pizza elsewhere...

After checking-in at the Argonaut Hotel, having been on the road all day to SanFrancisco , my family and I went to have dinner at the Blue Mermaid since it is right inside the hotel building. First of all, we decided to sit outside because it had been a very hot day and it was still early evening and we wanted to take an after dinner stroll down Fishermanˋ s Warf. The wait staff was unfortunately very slow and showed no particular interest in efficient and friendly service. After we had finally ordered dinner the waiting game began. In the meantime the evening became night, we started to get cold and after more than an hour we still hadn‘t gotten our dinner. When we reminded waitstaff the response we got was not only unfriendly but also quite patronizing. It seemed to us that our order had been forgotten but there was no apology for the delay and only lukewarm justifications. It took at least another 45 minutes for our food to finally arrive at which point my daughter wasn‘t hungry anymore and my husband was cold. A family next to us (from the Netherlands) had been waiting over 2 hours for their burgers and finally left without ever getting their food. We had been planning on having breakfast here in the morning but after our experience we will be eating elsewhere for the rest of our stay. The only positive note here is that the staff of the Argonaut hotel took our complaints very seriously and promised an investigation into the management of the restaurant. Unfortunately this was a quite disappointing start to our visit.

Also as a note: our main waiter was not only inefficient but seemed to be under the influence of something, can‘t say for sure but he seemed too hyped up for a...