Dooger's Seafood & Grill — Restaurant in Seaside

This was a really disappointing experience. I went there for lunch with an old friend who really wanted seafood. We hadn’t been there in years and I’ve always had good food there. We were greeted by two teenagers/early 20’s buddies at the host station. These two were joined at the hip, which was odd as I’m pretty sure they had two different jobs. I noticed them buddying around, lightly horsing around in the background as we had lunch. The music was a bit loud as well, difficult to have a quiet conversation.

The waitress was heavily pregnant and being shadowed by her eventual replacement waitress. Both were professional and did their jobs well. Unfortunately the food was another story. I ordered crab cakes with sweet potato fries and iced tea. My friend ordered the oysters. I was really looking forward to some good crab cakes. They were quite the disappointment. I’m quite sure my entire plate came frozen from Cisco or another frozen food processor. The crab cakes were perfectly round, flat as a pancake, about a quarter inch thick and full of filler, no lump meat was to be seen, such a shame. There was nothing special about the fries, I’m sure they were from frozen. My friend didn’t say anything, but she barely touched her oysters. They didn’t look good to me at all. My iced tea was horrible, definitely not freshly brewed. I only took a few sips, then stuck to the water.

It’s sad what has become of Dooger’s. I used to go there all the time with my parents who absolutely loved good seafood. I know they would have been disappointed as well. It seems Dooger’s is in a death spiral and trying to get out of it with frozen food and cheap labor. That’s exactly the wrong thing to do. From what I saw the other day, it won’t be around too much longer if they don’t change.

Reply to management: I’m glad you care! No, the host didn’t affect my review of the food, especially since we had a great experience with the wait staff. That’s why I rated the service highly. The food experience really was a shame. I was soooo looking forward to great crab cakes. I didn’t mention that my sister was also with us and we both ordered the same thing, less the iced tea, both of us were disappointed.

If you are being honest in thinking those cakes are freshly made in your kitchen, someone may be cutting corners behind your back. I’ve had hundreds of crab cakes in my life and none, other than yours, were perfectly shaped, exactly 1/4” thick and exactly 2-1/2” round. Your staff would have to be making them with a machine or at least a press. No self respecting chef would be proud of that, they’d want them to be clearly hand formed if they had any pride in them. I’m not sure how involved you still are in the kitchen after 42 years, but if you believe those should have been fresh, I highly suggest you ask some questions of your staff.

Also, I’d reconsider serving them with a dollop of tartar sauce on them. Some people don’t want tartar on a fresh crab cake. Also, when you put a mayo based sauce on a just-fried item it yellows and doesn’t look terribly fresh.

I wish you the best and hope you get things sorted! Especially with those...

My partner and I got takeout yesterday, which was mother's day, so the staff was understandably busy and seemed a bit overwhelmed. We went to the restaurant about 20 minutes after ordering, I waited inside about ten minutes for them to finish preparing our order, which doesn't bother me because that usually means it will be hot and fresh.

I had overheard another customer on the phone say they were given different food from what they ordered, which made me decide to check mine in the car in the parking lot after picking it up. We ordered two crab dinners, mine was with sweet potato fries. My partner's was with the "rice". We also ordered key lime pie, which is our favorite dessert so we try to get it everywhere it's offered on our travels.

The crab dinners were $55 each. The crab portion of the dinner was really good, it was a large portion, I would say 7 outta 10 (10 being the best crab I've ever eaten), but the rest of it was kind of horrible. When i checked the boxes in the car my sweet potato fries were soggy and cold, i didn't understand how they were cold if our food wasn't even ready when i arrived, my assumption is they made them first for some reason. They were really unappetizing. Definitely some of the worst sweet potato fries I've eaten, I ended up throwing them away at our hotel after eating just a few. The "Rice", which was the only description, was actually rice pilaf and it was decent but also cold in the car literally 2 minutes after it was "done".

One of the worst things was the key lime pie. When I opened the box it looked like someone had scooped a couple spoons from a non-formed key lime pie into the box. It was liquid and had zero whipped cream, and wasn't even slightly the shape of a slice. I really kindly went back in and asked one of the hostesses about it, I had the box opened and I asked "Hey, I don't want to be a difficult customer, I'm just curious if this is supposed to look like this? Does it normally come with whipped cream?" She looked shocked at how it looked and immediately said "Oh my gosh, let me take care of that." And walked away. She didn't actually answer my question about the whipped cream. About 5 minutes later she came back with a box and said "I'm so sorry, here you go!" And walked away quickly. I had a sinking feeling for some reason, I opened the box on my way out and it still looked terrible, like a slightly more formed piece of pie.. still partially liquid, no whipped cream. Either they have a bad recipe or something was very wrong with the pie on that day. I didn't have the energy to deal with it since everyone seemed to be running around and after standing at the door outside for a moment, I decided to just deal with it. As far as the taste, it tasted like key lime pie yogurt and had the same consistency of yogurt. Pretty nasty, we didn't have more than a bite. I included a photo i took right after leaving the restaurant of the "New" piece of pie. My partner thinks they just stuck it in the freezer for a few minutes and handed me the same one, I...

It's clear Doogers has not retained its quality. It -was- my grandmother's favorite place and one of the restaurants I was excited to go to when visiting.

Service- My mother was a server and bartender for 25 years in casual breakfast, bar, and find dining spaces and was appalled by the service. She likened it to a Denny's. It wasn't very busy, but our table was never bussed with the dishes piling up from appetizers and salad just sitting there for 3/4 of the meal with us stacking them to make room and only taken away once asked. The server also tried to pass hot plates down via the customers rather than walking to the correct person and set it down. Then when my mother expressed she wasn't comfortable handling the plates/it's not her job, there was clear tension with the server. Her husband went to find the server twice at a point when we'd waited to ask for something for awhile.

Drinks- My grandmother tried to ask for a double shot of vodka on the rocks with a splash of soda. That's not what she received. The second drink she tried to request it as clear as possible...after drinking the first one to be nice. And they kept serving her a tall glass with soda to the top. The server wasn't around, after she waited awhile, so she went to the bar and see if the bartender could assist. And instead of what was requested it seems like they just added more vodka to the original glass and changed out the straw (which was not the goal).

Appetizers- The clam strips were great, but the calamari was confusing. I've never seen such a lackluster appetizer of calamari. There was barely any on the plate, and both appetizers had four giant pieces of bread as if they were trying to fill out the plates. Maybe use a different sized plate? I wish I'd taken a picture of it. It was like 12 pieces of undercooked calamari. Probably looked like it was too much for us... because we didn't finish it as a table of six?

Dinner- It kept seeming like bread was being used as filler. My scallops were rubbery, but I wasn't going to make anything out of it. However I heard positive things from another person in our party about their surf and turf. One person mentioned you could taste how the quality of ingredients has gone down and everyone agreed.

I think by this time we were disappointed by the appetizer, drink service, bussing, and such that the food needed to be good to feel worth it. Then the server tried to ask us about dessert 3-4x (most she seemed to have cared that evening even though we said no?).

By the end, we realized that maybe it was nostalgia that led us to go there. The service was bad, portion sizes were confusing, and...