Half Shell Oyster House — Restaurant in Spanish Fort

First of all, I don't dislike the food. Food is ALWAYS between 4 and 5 stars! But I'm dropping my rating to two stars based on my Father's Day experience. Management made a foolish decision to not accept call in orders today... yet I was told that I could come to the restaurant and place a take out order at the bar in person. This is just dumb logic... a place with excellent customer service would have simply put me on hold until one of the bar staff could write down my order - *It takes no less time for them to take my order in-person than it does over the phone... but it made me have to sit around and wait a lot longer for my food. I drove to the restaurant to complete this foolish ordering requirement, and while they were pretty busy at 1:25 I saw that there was no wait for people to be seated & there was no reason that someone couldn't have taken my order over the phone. To make matters worse... they say you can place your order online, but when you go online to try and place an order they don't have the same food options available. Management needs to improve customer service. Even a low quality place like Red Lobster takes carry out orders over the phone [often times the hostess takes that order], surely Half Shell can at least match the customer service of a place like Red Lobster?! I also couldn't order a lunch portion of the alfredo pasta at lunch time because they are greedy and want to charge dinner prices. Staff was polite at least. When I got home, this was what my $22 shrimp Orleans and grits...

To start off, the food was... not great, not good but somewhere in between. Not worth the price, but better than fast food. Speaking of fast food, my group was seated at 8pm. Our food did not arrive till 9:15 and this was on a Wednesday night with only 4 other tables to be served. I asked for no tomatoes, it came with tomatoes. I finished my drink, it took 30 minutes for my waitress to walk by and see I needed more. When the food finally came, one person did not receive his side item. He informed the waitress and she repeated it. Honest to Good, she came back 25 minutes later, without his side item, and had to be reminded. Then at the end of the "experience", she brought our checks and I informed her that mine was wrong (off by $25) and she assured me that she would fix it. Then she brought our receipts back and I was charged $17 more than I ordered! This is a huge deal breaker because now, not only do I have the over priced charge on my account, I have the correct charge on there as well. So I was charged twice for one meal. I know it will eventually be added back into my account, but till then, I have two different charges for the same dinner due to the inexperienced server. I will not be back and I will warn every single person that I come in contact with during my three week stay in the area to not waste their time or hard earned money in a place that believes they can waste your time just because they over price...

It WAS DREADFUL!!!!!FIRST TIME HERE AND WILL BE MY LAST!! This is half shell but the service I received was equivalent to a McDonald’s drive thru line…. We arrive and are seated so we wait for our server and she greets us with no smile……ask us if we wanted appetizers but didn’t offer us any bread….I had to mention it to her…. I had water and sweet tea to drink but none of my beverages were refilled….. Food comes out my steak is not the correct temperature…. That’s …. Not a big deal…. Our server never once asked us if we needed anything or brought us silverware to eat with or napkins…. Had to ask a manager…. We eat our food, it was average, still not a big deal…. I am noticing our server take care of her other tables like a great server that she should be but to EVERY TABLE…. It disgusted me for her to treat us like we didn’t deserve the service she was giving to her other tables…. I finally inform a manager, she offers us a dessert….. Lastly the manager NEVER COMES BACK TO THE TABLE to compliment us with the dessert she offered….I thought this would be the end of it but our server comes back to the table in a speedy manner with our tab and slams it on the table between my husband and I, as if (here’s the balance, I hope you can afford it) As you can understand, not all races get treated the same as they SHOULD…. At the end of the day, WE LEFT HALF SHELL WITH SUB PAR SERVICE….and a DREADFUL EXPERIENCE...