Drunken Fish - Central West End — Restaurant in St. Louis

I have enjoyed the food each time I have dined with drunken fish & that is why I gave them three stars.

I am not one to complain, I am a very understanding person but this evening I had an extremely frustrating experience with Drunken Fish Customer Service.

I called to place an order at 9:35 pm (it’s a Saturday and they close at 11pm) for pickup. I was told I had to make an order online. I got on my phone to place an order. It said it would be ready for pickup in 30-40 minutes. I went to click submit at 10:01 and it said it could not go through and it was past the time to order for the evening.

I called back to drunken fish and explained the situation and double checked they didn’t close until 11 pm. I was told “yes we close at 11 but we stop taking online orders at 10 to assure the person ordering gets here on time”. I assured them I would be there on time, could pay ahead and asked if I could order over the phone. I was told no, BUT I could drive in and order at the host stand in person & wait for my order. I explained I did not want to wait 30 minutes in the restaurant waiting for my food to be ready and it would be more time effective for both parties if I could order over the phone. I was told “okay, just a minute”

Ultimately I was placed on a hold and a new voice came on “How can I help you”. I re-explained what happened which is again frustrating.

I was told that they couldn’t place an order or take payment over the phone and that my only option was to come to the restaurant in person, order at the host stand and wait for my food to be ready or see if a third party app would let me order for pickup.

I ended up ordering pickup for drunken fish through Door Dash (which takes online orders until 30 minutes before close) make it make sense & I will be going in to pick it up in 30-40 minutes when it’s ready.

At the end of the day it was just a very frustrating and wildly unnecessary run around to put a customer through and better systems should be put in place.

I write this in hopes drunken fish improves their customer service as I do...

We went to Drunken Fish last night and our experience was bad to say the least. We tried to order off of their mobile menu as required after scanning the QR code. It would not accept my boyfriends card and kept saying “card declined for unknown reason.” It took forever for someone to come over and help bc you don’t really have an actual server bc of covid. My bf literally showed them he had money in his account and they told him to try another card. We tried my card on his phone which got the same response. We then tried both cards on my phone thinking maybe it was the phone/browser with no luck. My boyfriend tried to pay in cash pulling out a $120 in cash. They refused to accept the cash swipe our cards manually. They said they couldn’t because of covid (even though they most certainly swipe cards for to go orders or type the card number in manually over the phone). I found it interesting that they would not accept our cash or touch our card because of covid but had no concerns about the cleanliness of the restaurant. The bathroom was filthy with toilet paper and paper towels thrown everywhere. Their was a light fixture with no cover above me with wires hanging out. The dial soap container contained about 1/4 inch of soap that was mixed with water because it was clearly almost out so someone tried to dilute it. Even more concerning I had seen an employee leave this restroom right before I used it so I question their use of proper hand hygiene. The ceiling in the restaurant clearly has water damage as it was taped together with blue tape throughout the restaurant in places. After spending almost an hour in the restaurant trying to order food we decided to take our cards and $120 in cash and leave and they had no problem with that. But neither did we...

All five stars go out to Richard!

As a restaurant industry worker, I had heard about guests ordering everything themselves at the table. I was excited to try it but soon realized this new way of using Toast was a swing and a miss for me. The food was decent but I soon realized I was so busy trying to order another round of drinks for the table or split checks that I was not fully able to enjoy the meal. I also felt that it lacked human interaction. For me, I love being able to go out and get to know our server. The food runners in this case were not very personable and I felt as if I were the server. It might be fun for those who are not use to using the Toast POS but it left me feeling weird about who’s receiving my tip and whether I should tip out the food runners when I took the orders. The standout of this meal hands down was RICHARD, the busser! I have never left a review anywhere and have felt the need to applaud this man almost four days later. Even though the whole table felt this meal lacked human interaction, Richard made up for it all!! We all went home talking about him and how he made our week and made the experience. This man deserves a raise!!! His continuous friendly smile and positive attitude when working made us naturally spark conversation with him. A natural to the service industry! I have never seen someone enjoy their job more than this man. I can only hope he is being compensated for his work because we were speechless with how he went way beyond his job description. We can’t wait to come back and see Richard, hold on...