Carmen's Seafood Restaurant — Restaurant in Sea Isle City

I am writing this review of Carmen's Seafood in Sea Isle City NJ. They have lost a customer that has been going there for over 20 years and our 8th year purchasing lobsters for our parties. We have always shared our positive experiences with family and friends and could not complement Carmen's enough and recommended them for any seafood needs UNTIL yesterday. I placed an order for 19 large lobsters & 1 smaller size lobster 2 weeks ago. I received a phone call at 8:50pm the night before we were to drive 2 hours and pick up our order, the phone call was to inform us that Carmen's Seafood was not able to fulfill our order. We were having 22 people the next day for our party that were expecting the size lobsters they wanted. The problem I have with Carmen's is not the fact they didn't have the supply in hand but that they knew 2 days before that they were not going to be able to fulfill my order and did not notify us. At almost 9pm the night before this left us scrambling on what to do. I sat in tears and disbelief that this was happening. But I do want to thank Carmen's employee Addison who was so helpful,kind, sweet and just so nice to work with, she could not have been more apologetic when we were there yesterday morning at 7am. Non of this was her fault at all but it all falls on the owners of Carmen's Seafood. We did get 18 very small lobsters that were poor quality and a few were Culls from them, this was not what we wanted nor ordered but by calling us so late at night we more or less had our hands tied. We still purchased them as I had to supply something to our quest. We were even told they tried to find other lobsters from other sources but were not able to find any. Amazing, as we were able to purchase lobsters that were only 24 minutes away and get the large sizes that we needed. Guess the management didn't try very hard. There was not an excuse of any sort on why they did not have the courtesy to contact us so we could make other plans and try to find the sizes we wanted. This is not how you treat your customers, shame on the owners, I guess they don't care and it all comes down to money and please don't blame it on Covid as that's not a good enough excuse to your poor customer service. So people beware, don't ever count on Carmen's Seafood to fulfill your orders, they really have gone downhill.

On a happier note, after doing online research we were able to find a whole seller that is open to the public that did have large sized lobsters. So I want to thank Goff's seafood for being so helpful. We will be ordering...

Where should I start? In 1999 I went with my extended family to Carmen's for dinner. Sometime after we ordered appetizers and unknown to us our server quit. We should have gotten up right then and there and gone to another place to eat. It took forever to be served and it was less than satisfactory as far as the food was concerned. The fact is it was bad. We never went back. There are many great restaurants to go to in Sea Isle City and Carmen's is quite possibly the worst. Fast forward to 2021. It's almost post pandemic, hopefully, and not all restaurants are up to speed so we went to Carmen's because it's on the docks at picnic tables and we had some kids with us and thought it might be a faster turnover. How wrong we were. Our reservation was for 7:30. We finally were seated at 8:15. Now they don't have alcohol so we went right to appetizers(fried calamari and clams in white sauce). The calamari was well over done and the clams were over cooked and tough. At 9:30 I suggested we leave and go grab some pizza and call it a night because even though the place was full when we were seated it was only half full when we where finally served at 9:35. A four top 2 tables away came in after we were seated and were finishing up dinner before we got our food. I could go into detail about the poor cooking ability of the back of the house but why bother. The broiled fish was over cooked and anything fried was also. I called for a manager. All she did was make lame excuses for the poor performance of her kitchen. And to be fair the serving staff was good and competent. My 14 year old nephew summed it up quite accurately when he said, "the manager was less than professional". She was looking for confrontation and not resolution. It was an expensive $500 mistake on our part. Be smart and don't make the same mistake that we made. It was 20 years between the 2 times we went to Carmen's. It wasn't long enough. Do not go there under any circumstances. Go get...

Once again, a wonderful seashore establishment gets a bad review because of Christopher McClure and his dim-wit girlfriend.

Let's break down his review:

"She forgot she hates steamed mussels but ordered them anyway?" Dude, its not the restaurant's fault your girlfriend is a moron! "Hmmm, I think I'll order the steamed mussels...oh wait, I forgot - I hate them." (Lemme' guess, growing up she rode the "little" school bus, right?)

This one is great - "She complained the whole time about her dress being too small?” Uh, Chris - the dress is the same size its always been. Maybe Connie should cut back on the cupcakes before bed. Besides, size-sixteen girls don't wear dresses - they wear tents! I mean, I'm not sayin she's fat, but I heard that when you two were on the beach Greenpeace tried to roll her back in the water; and that once she was in the ocean, she was claimed by Portugal. Hey, is it true that her scale is made by 'Richter?' But seriously, look on the bright side - if you ever have trouble finding her you can just yell, "Hey Kool-Aid!" Or, if she's walking backwards, you can just listen for the beep-beep-beep.

"All she wanted to do was talk about politics." - That reminds me, I heard that her butt had its own electoral delegate. How did he vote? Probably for Clinton because I heard that Trump wanted to "cut the fat" and "get rid of the pork."

"She spilled wine on my sandal?" Wow! I hope she reimbursed you for it – that’s a relationship-breaker right there. If my wife spilled wine on my sandal, why I think I would probably... well, actually, I would wipe it off. Your girlfriend sure sounds like a keeper! Do I hear wedding bells in the distance? Oh wait, its just the bell around her neck; never mind, must be milkin' time.

(Weirdo!)

Anyway, food here is amazing and service is always professional. We eat here at least 5 times throughout the summer and always enjoy a...