Salt Kitchen & Bar at Hotel LBI — Restaurant in Ship Bottom

We dined with 9 guests this past Saturday while we were in town for a weekend girls' trip. For most of us, this was our first time in LBI and it was the first time at Salt Kitchen for all of us. We had an 8pm reservation and were greeted by a friendly host and seated right away. It took about 10 minutes to be greeted by our server. Not the end of the world- I think there may have been confusion on whose section we were in as our server, Ally, was not who the host said our server would be initially. She was very friendly right off the bat. Unfortunately, the experience went downhill after that. After putting in our drink orders, we realized it had been a while since we saw our server, checked our phones, and saw it was 8:40. 40 MINUTES since we sat down and we had yet to receive our drinks or put in any food orders.

We flagged down a manager, I believe his name was Casey. He apologized, insisted we "restart" our experience there and that he would take care of us going forward. Our server rushed our drinks to our table immediately after that, but it was clear these drinks had been sitting at the bar for 30+ minutes. All the ice was completely melted, the glasses were dripping in condensation, and the white wine was warm. One of our guests actually requested an extra shot of Aperol for her Aperol Spritz as it was so melted down the drink was basically clear. We hoped that would hint that these drinks were dead, but it did not so we had to flag down Casey again to request they be remade, which they were. At this point, it's basically 9pm, one hour after we were seated, and we finally all had drinks we could enjoy. We never received any real apologies from the server for the delay. Frankly, I think she had just completely forgotten about us because even if the bar was backed up, she should have come over within those 40 minutes we were waiting to communicate that with us. If she was that busy, why was another server or manager not at least running her drinks for her from the bar?

Once we ordered, the food came out relatively fast considering our group size, although our appetizers and entrees all came out together, and it felt like the kitchen had run out of potatoes for the orders that came with them. For example, the amount of potatoes on the first order of Beef Cheek was about double the amount of what came out with the last order. The one saving grace in our experience was that the food was absolutely delicious. The beef cheek, seafood pasta, and oysters were all delectable. We ended up finally getting our check around 10pm and were surprised to see that not even our first round of melted drinks was discounted or comped. Yes, I guess at the end of the day they were re-made... but I mean come on. We had to ask 3 different times to even get the drinks to our table.

We understand we were there on a busy Saturday night, and we were prepared to take our time and enjoy each other's company, but we watched tables our size that were seated after us leave before us. This restaurant isn't cheap, and the service should reflect the price you're paying. Mistakes happen, servers have off nights, but there's ways you can make it right and we didn't feel like all that could have been done to redeem our...

Me and my wife got married at the hotel and we were excited to have our second wedding anniversary dinner at the salt restaurant inside the LBI hotel. How’s diagnosed celiac disease the year we were married my wife called the restaurant and asked said they had gluten-free options and they said they did. When we showed up at the restaurant and looked at the menu, it did have a lot of items listed as gluten-free when I asked the waiter if he could double check that the french fries were gluten-free even though they were labeled on the menu you told me they were cooked in a shared fryer with other gluten items. I was very disappointed that their gluten-free menu was very misleading as that could make me very sick given that I have celiac disease. When our food came out, the presentation was nice, but the serving size was very small compared to the price. This was a huge disappointment to me and my wife And tell The portion sizes and menu is fixed. I don’t see us coming back to dine in the restaurant in the future if you have celiac disease, please double check with your waiter if you eat at this establishment to avoid getting sick. The picture below was the fingerling potatoes and filet mignon. The portion was very...

Was there a few days ago for a special occasion in a group of 10. Service: 7/10 was good but the young guy had a few too many tables to handle. Appetizers: 5/10 calamari was good but the others were very blah. Drinks: 4/10 very expensive and very stingy with the pours. Dinners: 1/10. Very expensive, small portions and most were inedible. Three of us had tile fish and it was so undercooked it was inedible. Crab cake was a small single cake (for about $35-40) and was cold and had no taste. Four others had the rib eye steak and all ordered it medium. All four came out so rare that it probably should not even be called rare. More than half the group got bad stomach issues an hour or so after we left. Deserts: 8/10 a few deserts were ordered and those who ordered all liked what was ordered. Manager: came over and took 1 dinner and a round of drinks off the bill. Something should have clicked in his head when he came over and viewed 8/10 people leave 75% of their dinners on the plate uneaten. Value for $$$: 0/10. $1300+ for the ten of us, and most went home and sat on the toilet bowl. Probably the worst dinner I have had in...