Stern Seafood Restaurant — Restaurant in Scarborough

Worst restaurant meal I've ever had in Maine, possibly anywhere.

I generally only leave review for places I enjoy (check my other reviews), but this was a "special case". I would have given Stern an extra point because of service and atmosphere, but the food was so bad that I can't. Two of us each ordered the "ROASTED NORTH ATLANTIC HADDOCK spinach • lemon cream sauce • panko • veg du jour • linguini". It was priced at $34, way steep for the type of restaurant, but we decided to give it a try, based on prior experiences with the place. We live nearby and were coming home from the beach, and had been looking forward to eating there since springtime. For the money here is what we got. The "roasted" haddock was actually smothered in a gloppy sauce so thick it was hard to distinguish the fish (what little there was) from the sauce. This was covered with possibly panko bread crumbs, so soggy that it could have been any kind of bread crumbs, topped with squiggles of what I suspect was cheap mayonaise mixed with botthed lemon juice. The linguini was overcooked pasta in what can best be described as bad mac 'n cheese sauce. The vegetable du jour was actually not bad, roasted asparagus. All in all, with a soda and glass of cheap white wine, we paid ove a hundred dollars for a meal I wouldn' want to feed to a stray dog. That included a 20% tip, because, as said, excellent service by someone who bore no responsibility for the food quality. Several years ago this place was called "Rising Tide", and was a rough and ready little seafood shack associated with the local and attached fishermen's co-op. It served plain and fresh food, well prepared with no frills. I morphed into Stern, which started out as about two notches upscale, and which had delicious fried haddock sandwiches which were inexpensive and fresh. Last year the place was about the same, but with slightly smaller portions and higher prices. I don't know how to characterize what it has become this year, but I'm hoping that something emerges from this dumpster fire of an eatery that is wort...

Great service, our server and the bartender were wonderful, very kind and attentive! However, 3 out of our 5 meals were not good. The good was the Brussel sprouts, cheeseburger, beet salad, chowder and haddock sandwich...but the halibut special was overcooked and the fingerling potatoes were undercooked and unseasoned with a tomatoey sauce which just was undesirable. The haddock was in a casserole with breading but there was hardly any fish in it but lots of breading and a lot of cheese it seemed. My son had the swordfish which was in an orange juice type sauce, just not delectable.

We told our server our thoughts, they ask 'how was everything?"...we are going to be honest!! She felt awful and understood and went to speak with Marina, the manager, who took off 15% off one meal...$6...Our server then had the manager come over to speak to us (which she should have done without being asked to)...she listened but really didn't care. She mentioned that most of the meal was eaten which was so incorrect. We didn't eat any of the sides and barely half the fish...

Upon leaving, and paying our bill, I made a point to go chat with our server again and tell her she was great, I pointed to the bartender and told her the same....at which point some random guy, sitting at the bar stood up and said to me "your food really wasn't that bad was it?" in a very cocky way. I was stunned....I said "who are you?" "did you eat my meal?" and he walked out the door without continuing the conversation that he interjected himself into....I asked his friend that he was sitting next to who he was? he just shrugged his shoulders and turned his back to me. So, the mgr must have been sharing our unhappiness with patrons at the bar???? how unprofessional is that???

We are locals!! We were not looking for free meals...we would have come back for just the basics and not get something fancy but now I doubt...

Server was great, food was amazing. Aftermath not so much. We had reservations and asked if we could have separate checks. We were told we could. Our server made some mistakes on the division of the checks and gave us one less check than we should have had. The couple that did not receive a check asked for it several times and they were told that they made a mistake and just put their dinners on everyone else’s check. The restaurant called several times after we left but our service wasn’t that great. We attempted to call back that evening and no one answered. We called the next day and told them we knew there were some errors and that we had reservations for Sunday brunch and we would straighten it out then. They said that was fine. We called Sunday morning to change the number of our reservation and that we would still settle up what was owed. We were told that per the owner’s request we could not be seated until we settled up from the prior dinner. We then went down right away to settle up the bill. We were told that we should have brought this to their attention that night so they could see on the table what we actually ordered. We told them that we received everything we ordered and that the food was great. We reviewed the bills and everything we ordered was on there just not billed to the right people. We did square up and paid what was owed. We cancelled our reservation for that day as we were not too happy with the way it was handled and how we were treated. Most owners would have taken it as a loss instead of refusing to seat us. It wasn’t our fault. It was the staff’s error. And we were made to feel as if it was our fault. Again, we loved the food and atmosphere but do not think we will go there again. Their form of customer service left a bad taste...