Hook & Fork — Restaurant in Shelton

I loved things about this place and hated others.

Firstly, the food was amazing. Chargrilled oysters were fresh and flavorful. We also tried the breakfast sandwich and sloppy biscuit, both of which were stars.

Other than that though, our experience was pretty bad. This is one of those places that makes you wait in line to order and then seat yourself. That’s fine, but there are only a few prime tables with waterfront views, most of which had nobody sitting at them, but we’re all claimed by somebody’s keys from a person waiting behind us. There is no system for seating people and there is nothing stopping a person behind you from claiming waterfront tables, even though you are ahead of them in line. We ended up sitting at a table with no view right next to the ordering line.

The hostess also verbally asks you for a tip when ordering and makes you say what you would like to tip out loud in front of the staff and other guests. Still, this is before you have tried the food, or experienced any of the service. I like to tip on quality of service, which is clearly lacking at this establishment.

We even tried to order drinks at the counter and were told that we had to walk next door to the market to get drinks. You also have to pour yourself your own water from a pitcher, retrieve your own silver ware and your own condiments. I see why they ask for tips up front.

So, to recap. You wait in a line to order food, you then have to wait in a second line in a second store to order drinks, you have to juggle all of this while trying to get plastic silverware from a crowded bin next the ordering line, then you have to hover over tables to try and get a decent seat. I suggest they hire a hostess because the customer experience here was truly awful. Very...

Lunch for 2 couples, $150 total including 2 beers and a can of root beer. Positives: great view and pretty good deal on half Dungeness crab for $20 including a bonus claw, staff pleasant. Also had “Little Lillies” oysters (6 for $21) — good. Negative: the seafood chowder was too small, contents of bowl smaller than a normal cup and no discernible seafood, mainly potatoes and veggies. The flavor was good. Now that I see photos posted by others, we were shortchanged for sure, I guess they were running low and tried to sell 2 more bowls? My friend got a drop of it on his shirt and exclaimed “darn I got $1 of it on my shirt!” At the end I asked the nice server if they were cool to get feedback, she said sure we appreciate feedback (nice) and I mentioned we liked everything except the skimpy size of each of 2 bowls of seafood chowder. She was nice and said “there should have been 10 ounces” to which I replied we got mostly potatoes, maybe four ounces of liquid, and no visible seafood chunks. She said thanks for the feedback. Were it my restaurant, I would have offered more (no such offer made, maybe they were out as it was approaching closing time at 4:00 PM) or offered a refund (no such offer). So while altogether pleasant, kind of put us all off given the expensive lunch of $150.00. Now seeing other photos of full bowls of chowder with seafood, I feel even more shortchanged and a bit angry at the person’s lack of desire to make right an obvious shortchange. We also had the pulled pork sandwich which was just passable. They were out of stout beer and apparently clams too. Don’t think we will come back despite the pretty good food and good view, as there are 100s of better places to...

After a video on Instagram went viral for the restaurant, they started to receive way more traffic. Unfortunately, they are not set up for that kind of volume of people.

We waited in line to order for 40 minutes and then waited an additional hour for our food after ordering. Bonkers, especially for how small their menu really is. They also ran out of menu items on a weekend after being open for only an hour and a half.

Once we got our food, we were incredibly disappointed. One of the menu items were the fish tacos. Both tacos arrived with cold, raw fish. Completely raw fish. It was obvious they were rushing and under stress so sent out an unfinished dish. We kindly asked to be refunded for the fish dish since we didn’t eat it and they agreed but we left before we got a confirmation, because they were so busy.

Overall, I would not recommend this place until they figure out how to run a restaurant. They have so...