Salty's at the SEA — Restaurant in SeaTac

We searched through Google and was excited to try Salty's with all the amazing reviews we saw....As we were greeted by our host, despite being tired from our long 30 hour flight itinerary, we were all smiles and told the host about how excited we were to eat all their great seafood. As we were being escorted to our table, which was just 5 ft from the entrance, we kindly requested our young, female, Asian host for a seat by the window, overlooking the runway. After the journey we had been on, we were hoping this would be granted to help us relax....Now, we were very keen on enjoying the food, as the 2 stars I did give were for the food. The entirety of the bill came out to about $200 for just only me and my wife....Unfortunately, our request was denied by the host. She said that because of the availability of the servers, the "only 2" tables she could offer us are the ones that's 5 ft from the entrance. We respectfully asked, as we wanted to be away from the busy foot traffic of the entrance, we were hoping for a spot where it was more peaceful and we could relax and unwind. She then replied and said that's the only 2 seats available for us....We didn't respond to that any further, but we found it odd how those were the only 2 seats available. We couldn't help but think she wanted to give customers to a server in that area of the restaurant, because clearly, I don't think anyone else wanted to be seated at that spot, right in front of the entrance.....Unfortunately, I kid you not, the next 2 set of customers that came in, as of course we were now conscious of these "limited seats", were seated where we first requested to be seated, by the window! To add insult to injury, the first group seated by the window was a family of 4, and the next set was a couple. You can just imagine how much we tried to hold our peace.....Now onto our server, in the latter part of eating our lunch, he came over and said they're going to have a shift change, as he was going home soon. He then gave us our bill. Now, this is lunch time and we had ordered a lot. I'm not sure if this is customary for your servers to be giving our bill when we didn't ask for it yet. We weren't done eating yet, and we could have ordered more. Yet, he came prematurely into the course of our meal with that bill.....So, we asked him what would happen if we wanted to order more. He said we would have to order w/ our new server. Much to our dismay, we just scratched our head and said that's fine, as we really didn't want to go through another bill and server. We said would just finish our food and pay the bill. That said, although we were not done with our food yet, a bus person almost came by and tried taking our dozen of Oysters platter, which clearly still had 4 oysters in there. I quickly stopped him and told him we're still working on that. Although he did apologize, we found it disrespectful that he didn't even ask before trying to take it.....To make matters worse, 5 mins later, we actually met our new server, he asked us if we were done. Trying to contain our disappointment, I just smiled and told him his coworker was just here 5 minutes go, and again said we weren't done yet. With all the food we still had on the table, why ask repeatedly. It was so disappointing that even the table besides ours noticed the bad service already. My wife and I tried to reflect-- what did we do you deserve this outrageous experience? In all honesty, since the beginning, we were understanding and patient, and we honestly just tried to keep a good vibe demeanor to not waste time complaining. We even patronized their food by ordering a lot. As you can see at first, I only gave the low rating without a review because I don't believe which I do try my best to avoid any bad vibes. To not waste time and remember bad experiences. I have been busy and continuously traveling for business......However in fairness and as courtesy, in light of the manager/owner' request for feedback for my 2 star rating, this is what happened. Would have been 0 rating if not...

got the Prawn Puttanesca

starting off with the biggest feature of this dish - the price the dish cost 35 dollars, which meant with tax + tip the overall price of the dish ended up being close to 45 dollars this is quite expensive, so let me just start with that. Is it worth the price? No - it's going to be hard to justify that and this doesn't get there this is airport food - so I know this is going to have a certain premium regardless - but it's probably a better idea to buy something cheaper at the airport the only reason I went here is because I knew this meal would be covered as long as it was below 50 dollars

however, just because it doesn't live up to its price doesn't mean it wasn't good in hindsight, I do wish I'd ordered something a bit more unique than what was in essence a relatively basic shrimp spaghetti, especially for the price, but I can only review what I got

just a quick note - I normally don't ever mention service in my reviews because I don't really care about it - but my waitress here was incredible - so friendly, so enthusiastic, and overall enough of a wonderful and charming woman to be around that it actually improved my overall experience at this restaurant. Props to Lisa for that

the pasta was pretty high quality I noticed this first in the tomato sauce - which is on a pretty different level from the cheap pasta sauces you'll find at grocery stores or cheaper italian restaurants this really did have a concentrated tomato flavor second, going off that theme, the spaghetti noodles themselves were impressive. again, at cheaper restaurants you might expect the noodles to be thinner and softer, but these noodles were thick and dense - you could tell there was a lot of dough involved here

the lack of cheese was slightly disappointing - other than the sprinkle of cheese over the top - I didn't get much else of a cheese taste anywhere else

the main protein here - the prawns, tasted very similar to how you would expect a shrimp to taste I did not like that they left the tail on the prawns - that made eating them a lot more annoying. I'd expect that especially in a restaurant with these price points, that the tails should have been removed however, the prawns themselves were really good. they were quite plump, which made each bite into them really satisfying, and they were cooked really well too, which meant that each bite cut through the prawn like butter. Was very easy and satisfying to eat

I also really liked the kalamata olives - these added a ton of flavor

My favorite part of this dish, and it's not even close, was the herbed grilled sourdough this was some of the best bread i've ever had it was grilled just perfectly, with the outside not being too charred but just crispy enough that it's essentially perfect the light amount of butter on the super-soft inside of the bread also tasted incredibly good - although I wish there was a bit more I loved eating the sourdough bread more than any other portion of this dish

While the portion size didn't look that big from the start, I did find this relatively filling enough

Overall, this was good food, and a really good side of bread, but there wasn't anything special about it, and especially for the price, it doesn't quite get to a top-level...

Context: At the airport at 9:15 AM on a Saturday.

Atmosphere: not very crowded, with many open seats and some people seated at the bar watching a game. It wasn't very loud at the restaurant. The waiters were nicely dressed and calm/professional.

Food: We ordered a cup of clam chowder ($12) and the lobster claw scramble ($37).

The morning menu is offered until 10 AM, which might have played a role into the quality of the chowder: it was one of the thickest and roux-iest/starchiest I've ever had. I like thick chowders more than thin ones, but this was too much. About 75% of the chowder solids were large potato chunks with comparatively smaller pieces of seafood comprising the rest. The chowder itself tasted a bit floury and wasn't really anything special, though at least it was warming. I don't know if this is normal, or if we were getting newly made or the last of the morning chowder, but I was not too impressed. But if you like chowder and are going to order it anyway, the bowl is only $3 more, so it might be a better value.

The lobster claw scramble is an ugly scrambled egg dish with a small pitcher of saffron cream sauce and a side of grilled sourdough bread. The ingredients you can see in the scramble are egg, lobster claw, capers, and tomatoes. It's actually pretty generous with the lobster and I think it was a pretty good value (for airport prices) if you like lobster. The lobster was briney and chewy, which I was told indicates freshness, but I thought it was weird in an egg dish (I don't eat a lot of lobster in general, though). They were pretty generous with the capers as well, so if you like capers, this dish is for you; otherwise, you might want to skip this dish. The tomatoes were surprising in a good way - they were cooked down a little so that they didn't just burst in your mouth, and they were also marinated so they were interesting and pleasant to eat with and without the rest of the scramble. The cream sauce was salty and flavorful. Honestly, I didn't like the scramble without it because of the odd (to me) combination of lobster, capers, and tomatoes. But the cream kind of overpowered everything and made it a dish. I didn't like this scramble too much, but my partner really enjoyed it as she is a lobster connosieur.

Service was good and quick and food came out in under 20 minutes, despite their quoting us 45 minutes.

If I were to go here again, it would probably not be during breakfast. But some of their other menu items looked enticing. I rate the food so low not necessarily because it wasn't good, but because it wasn't to my taste; you might like this place if you like seafood more than seafood...