2nd Jetty Seafood — Restaurant in Sea Bright

The first time we came to 2nd Jetty, the service was unmatched, the food was incredible, we left satisfied & so excited to come back! Last night, however, was the complete opposite experience and it was extremely disappointing. My boyfriend, who I came here with both times, & I have both worked in restaurants, and I am still involved the service industry myself. We both fully understand what it's like to operate in an overwhelming work environment & have a lot of tables to take care of when it's busy. Neither of us have ever written a bad review or even felt compelled to before this. Just want to put this out there & make sure it doesn't happen to anyone else!

Our reservation was for 7:45pm, for which we arrived right on time, we were not seated until about 8:15pm. It was a busy Saturday night, we didn't think too much of it, hung out by the bar, & were excited to enjoy our meals. We were sitting for probably 30-40 minutes before our appetizers even arrived, & our drinks arrived about 10-15 minutes after appetizers. The appetizers we did get to eat were great!

This was the really disappointing part. Our server came over & took our entree order aand in the meantime a new table of 4 was seated next to us. After 45 minutes of waiting for our food (yes, almost an hour!), the same server came over and asked if we were ready to put in entrees..We looked at each other very confused because we had put them in long before this, and with the same person. At that point it was evident that our order had been forgotten.

We had to get home, so we decided we would give it 15 minutes to see if our food would come & if not, ask for the bill and leave without our food. We gave it another 20, told our waitress we were ready for the check, and she ended up boxing up our food for us and charging us full price.

We never received an apology for the service, or that she had forgotten to put in our order. I didn't even get asked if I wanted a second drink, nor was our water refilled once throughout the entire (almost) 3 hours we had already been at the restaurant. Mind you, the table of 4 that had gotten seated way after us had gotten their drinks, appetizers, and entrees all before we had even asked for the bill, and they had only been seated for about an hour, maybe less.

We felt completely overlooked & that even the bare minimum, like refilling our water, wasn't reached. We traveled over an hour to come here, just to leave 3 hours later, hungry, with what was essentially a takeout order. We would give it one last chance because of how much we love the food & atmosphere & how amazing the first time was, but don't have high hopes because of how short this experience fell. We definitely should have spoken up sooner in the evening, but nonetheless, just wanted to bring this to light so hopefully it doesn't...

first I want to say that I totally understand the difficult situation this pandemic has probably put this and every other restaurant in with navigating new parameters frequently and being a furloughed flight attendant both my wife and my self I hate to complain when it comes to customer service especially in these trying times. That being said i made a reservation for my wife and I back on Sept 5th to celebrate our anniversary on the 21st at this restaurant. We had never been but have been looking forward to try this place out for a while. When we showed up we gave our names and were told we weren't on the reservation list. When I told the hostess I have an email confirmation she ignored me and just grabbed two menus and sat us in the front dining room and said "here" and tossed the menu on the table. When I asked again if she wanted to see the email she just walked away. Then another couple came in after us with the same time for a reservation and the same hostess asked them if they wanted to sit inside in the back or outside. Options we weren't given. Every reservation after that were given that same option. We chose not to say anything at that point because we had already received apps and we thought our waitress was lovely which she was. While we were eating our apps two women were sat at the booth to our right which was at best 3 ft away but they were very nice so they moved all the way into the booth to create a comfortable space. Maybe 10mins after that the table to the left of us which was also no more than 3 ft away was sat with a party of 6 and a seat was placed at the end of the table where someone sat so close you could touch them. We haven't gone out very much during this pandemic and this was our first time eating in doors and the only reason was to have a special night out for our anniversary. When I asked to speak with a manager I was told there was none and that the owner was away. So we asked to take our 60.00 seafood fra diavlo and our 27.00 Caribbean plate to go. Our bill in total was 130.00 and to make up for a ruined night we were offered a slice of cheese cake which we politely declined. To make matters more upsetting when we got home which is 5 mins away in Highlands to eat our fra diavlo it was ice cold and the swordfish was bone dry on the Caribbean plate. It was just an incredibly disappointing experience from a place that we've heard such great things about and were looking to enjoy on our special night. I've waited to write this review because I wrote a letter to the restaurant to give them an opportunity to make things right and got no response not...

My boyfriend and I were here the other night because we heard great things the weekend before from two separate people. However, I was very disappointed.

Our waitress only served us our first round of water and our bill at the end while another waitress and busboy served us our apps and meals. Oh actually our waitress also served us a plate of one crostini.

The busboy served us our app - coconut lemongrass mussels which tasted amazing! BUT, the crostiniS (plural) never came with it and when I asked our waitress about them, she said "I can bring SOME out to you"...but shouldn't they have been automatically been served? Well when she came back, there was ONE small crostini on the plate. Funny, when she knew we were sharing the app...

The busboy didn't notice when he placed our app down that we were never given small plates, utensils and napkins, so we waited about 3 min before we could ask someone (same busboy) for them.

5 min after we were served our app, or 2 min after we started eating it, another waitress came by with our entrees and noticed we had just started on our apps and said she could take the entrees back. I told her that's fine and to bring them back out in 5 min.

The entrees actually came back out after 20 min by that same waitress and told us the food was "new", but the first bite I took of the fries was room temperature so I automatically knew the food wasn't new. I ordered the lobster roll and the garnishes on top were wilted, meaning they had been sitting on the previously warm lobster for a while.

The lobster roll was disappointing because the menu said it was served on a buttered potato roll, like most lobster rolls are. It's a specific type of roll with no crust on the sides so it can be buttered and toasted. However, this was a regular white hotdog bun. Stale, hard and crumbly.

My boyfriend got the fish tacos and they looked pitiful. It barely had any fish on it and cabbage/salsa. If you put all the fish together, it would have maybe been half a portion of a normal entree fish. You could get the same amount of tacos for less than $15 with more topping options and a whole lot more to them from Surf Taco.

After the check was given, it took about 10 min before our waitress came back to pick up the credit card.

Overall, the food could be great but it needs some work, but they really need to work on their service. The place is run by young students who don't have a desire to provide good service and you can tell they aren't well managed. Would I go back?...