Dolphin — Restaurant in Santa Cruz

We were walking on the Santa Cruz Wharf and after enjoying watching the sea lions 🦭 we noticed the Dolphin Restaurant right at the end of the pier and thought we would try it out.

We asked to be seated inside and when we went in I was immediately disappointed by how small the dining area was. I think I was fooled by the mirrors on one side of the wall in thinking it was much bigger.

We ordered several items because everyone was hungry and we hadn't had breakfast yet. The fresh orange 🍊 juice was quite good but unfortunately that was the highlight of the meal. The Spinach Omelette was plain and flat. The Florentine Benedict was pretty nondescript as well. The fish 🐟 in the Fish & Chips were so overcooked they were almost burnt. The same almost burnt fish was also in my Fish Tacos but the overcooked flavor was drowned out by the overwhelming amount of sauce. The Hangtown Fry was the worst. The oysters tasted barely cooked and had an awful flavor. I like raw oysters so I didn't know what was done to these oysters to make them taste so terrible. I was a bit concerned they were far from fresh. At least the Clam Chowder was pretty good.

I know it's hard to find good food on the Wharf which is a tourist trap. Next time we'll stay hungrier for longer and try to find a...

We came for dinner after a full day of fun at the boardwalk. Heard good things about this place, unfortunately the service we got was awful. Standing at the front door for over 5 minutes, no one greeted us. There were 4 servers chatting and just looked at us and keep chatting. I was about to leave until finally one guy came and seated us, he threw the menu on table and left. Another server came took our order, she was okay. I ordered crab cakes with chowder and fries; hubby ordered burger. Waited for about 10 minutes, another server came rushing from the back mumbling about chowder, I thought he asked did you order chowder? So I said yes. I should’ve asked him to repeat what he said earlier since we didn’t really know what he was talking earlier. Then, he start yelling to the kitchen, THEY GOT THE CHOWDER!! Waited again for a while, finally we got our food. My crab cakes was good, hubby’s burger was way over cooked. Even though he asked for medium rare. And obviously I never get the chowder. No one came and check how we was doing, all the servers just busy chatting and hiding at the back. After we done, we have to wait for another 15 mins to get our check. We paid, and leave, and no one thank us. Very...

In the end that made an effort to make it right.

We arrive at 10:19am and and had the waiter dumb the silverware on the table. No but deal. He even took our order. At 10:28 nothing no food, heck no waters or coffees either.

Finally flagged him down and he got us a manager. Only took him 2 minutes to get the coffee and waters finally once they were paying attention I guess. Of course I guess they figured we only needed 2 eaters to share between the 4 of us.

Atleast we weren't the only person having an issue. The people behind us were kissing half their order. The people across from is had eggshells in their scrambled eggs. We had plenty of time to see what was going on while not having any food.

Side note it only took till 10:55 to get our food to us and only a few minutes more for the extra water to arrive.

They did seem a bit more focused by this point to make sure our coffee stayed full. I will say the food was good, and the servers were friendly. I'm not sure what caused them to be so slow today as it wasn't busy enough for that.

They comped up a clam chowder bread bowl and the coffees. So it was a decent comp for what we ordered and how...