SHUCKERS OYSTER BAR — Restaurant in Seattle

My colleague and I were visiting Seattle. We thought it was a no brainer to visit a restaurant called, "Shuckers", for great seafood.

THE GOOD PART: This place is beautiful! The ambience screams classic old money.

The oysters were OUTSTANDING! No question, no debate, [HARDSTOP].

THE BAD PART: Unfortunately, the salmon was unevenly cooked.

It had a '50% medium cooked, 50% opaque w/firm, dry tecture", ratio. Note: I don't blame the server for that, though he did mention that he would make a note to the chef not to over cook it. At $44, I expected it to at least be two levels above an Applebee's chain restaurant.

Our server was just, "OK". There were notes of, "are you all aware that standard gratuity is 20% in restaurants", in his interaction with us.

IMPORTANT NOTE: -----The server was the reason I didn't order more food and another cocktail. I hate spending money in places where I don't feel like a valued customer. I am what most would consider reasonable and beyond courteous + kind.

OVERALL: The ambience and oysters were the stars of this experience! YAAAY!

The server coupled with the "meh" food made this an experience I wouldn't mind forgetting.

I love fine dining, and it's been a while since I've dined out due to a challenging schedule.

Also, I think the server has an opportunity to improve if provided with proper coaching. I have a sneaky suspicion that he provided a better experience for the other patrons that looked different from my colleague and I. But, at least he learned that we were familiar with restaurant gratuity etiquette. YAAAY!

A shame he didn't discover that I normally go beyond standard gratuity when a server makes me feel like a valued patron vs. a piece of lettuce...

The good points - nice bread and salted butter - so often you get bland unsalted butter now, but what is the point of that? The cocktails were nice and the service was friendly and attentive, and we were seated within a few seconds of our arrival at the reservation time.

The restaurant has a nice decor, style and atmosphere with a smart bar along the side - all in all a pleasant place.

We had a selection of 3 local oysters types which were all tasty and very fresh.

However, the most important aspect of a fish restaurant, is the fish. We ordered the salmon and halibut, which were beautifully presented with tasty and well prepared vegetables. The beurre blanc sauce was excellent, but the pork broth though, was too salty. We jokingly asked the waitress if the chef smoked, and she said he did, which to be honest we had guessed, as it is usually a good indicator when food is over-salted, given the dimming of the senses.

Both fish meats were over-cooked and dry. Not enough to create the embarrassment and delay of returning them - they were edible - but with reluctance. At this level, delicate and expensive fish should leave the kitchen moist and flaky, not dry and tight textured. Somebody is not doing their job properly in allowing this - it's not for the customer to have to point it out at the table in front of other diners.

We explained this afterwards to the waitress. Of course the full price bill followed, with no further mention of our disappointment. So the lack of real service interest compounded the original offence. It's sad that customers are allowed to leave the restaurant not fully satisfied, as everything else...

Difficult situation with this visit.

My family and I visited for Christmas lunch. We believe it advertised as offering Children's menu, however, that wasn't the case.

The front of house was friendly and professional.

Chris our waiter was working his socks off! And did a great job keeping us informed.

The atmosphere, was probably as expected for a high end restaurant. In my opinion, atmosphere was lacking though.

Sadly there was no children's options and when we asked to possibly rustle up some pasta with cheese, we were told they had no pasta (I thought that was surprising!)

The first courses consisted of Prawn starter followed by Clam chowder. I'm not the biggest fish fan (I was looking forward to tradition Christmas dinner) but the fish courses were excellent.

The Christmas dinner including turkey, gravy, potatoes and Brussels was very disappointing. The turkey was dry, gravy minimal and potatoes far too soft in my opinion. We couldn't feed our daughter a share of this and were forced to send it back.

The manager and Chris were fantastic at helping us come to an agreement on the bill. We felt embarrassed because they were so helpful.

They shared our frustration that our daughter had to go hungry.

I think we'll need to go again and try the fish courses some more... Clearly...