The St. John Restaurant — Restaurant in St. Martinville

my husband & i have been here many times, it’s one of our favorite date night spots. the food is amazing the service is normally good. tonight we brought our family for their first time & i kid u not it was one of the worst experiences ive ever had at a restaurant. we arrived at 6 pm & waited to be sat. 7 pm we get our table & order our drinks and 3 appetizers at the same time. 1 appetizer came out before i even got my drink, cool. our drinks come out, an hour passes & we still don’t have our other 2 appetizers. there was a party of what looked like 20/25 people next to us, i have waitressed many years so look, i get it when it’s a busy night. our waitress passes so i call her over to check the status of our 2 other appetizers - she looks confused as hell & says she’ll go check on them. meanwhile the nice couple behind us that got seated after us received the same appetizer that we were waiting on. we order our food while waiting for our appetizers still. dimitri gets 12 pc shrimp & a small gumbo. the girls each got their own gumbo with fries. i got a salad & a ribeye. our waitress brings our appetizers at 830 and 1 gumbo. at this point my kids are hangry so i split the gumbo between them. no more gumbo comes out after this. we all get our meals after this EXCEPT for the other kids gumbo, both kid fries, dimitris gumbo, my salad & my brothers whole meal. it’s 9pm at this time so we just ask for togo boxes. she brings the togo boxes & checks, we are charged for everything that we did not receive & gratuity bc we had 6 adults & 2 children (8 ppl total) i let our waitress know what needed to be removed from the check and asked her to remove the gratuity. i was not a karen or an asshole about this by the way, i let her know i still wanted to tip her, ive waitressed many years, i get it. not ONCE did she check on us while we were waiting for anything, not once did she reassure us that our food would be out soon, anything like that! i didn’t think she deserved a $25 tip. she proceeds to tell me that she in fact did bring out 2 gumbos, roll back the cameras bc why would i lie????? let me speak with the manager, no manager comes, she does come back & says they are removing the meals we didn’t get & the gratuity. great, she’s getting a $10 tip from us & we’re leaving. we thought. the manager finally came & he did say we would get the food we did not receive taken off of our ticket but no apology or sympathy was given. oh well that was fine at this point we were just ready to leave. out waitress brings the corrected checks back & gratuity is still on the ticket. i understand we had 8 ppl but we did not even receive 8 meals. she says we can pay up front. we go to pay & the owner is there, he asks if everything we didn’t receive was removed & i told him yes sir it was, however the gratuity is still there. he says “yeah bc i told her to keep it” at this point im not gonna argue with anyone who obviously doesn’t care that their customers are unhappy. so we pay our tickets & my brother tips on top of gratuity. i loved this place and if they would have made it right we would still attend, i am sad to say we will...

The food was great and the service was wonderful. Only complaint I spoke to the manager/owner about was having Starbucks coffee signs on the tables. I am a strong believer in supporting your local businesses & companies from WAY out of state! He told me that he did serve Community Coffee & showed me a sign on the wall. I told him that was good, but not good enough. Starbucks was not acceptable & as good as his restaurant was, that was very disappointing for him to promote Starbucks. I'm not sure I got the point across, but I certainly put my 50 cents worth of what I thought. I asked one of the waitresses about it & she said that they had talked to him about it, but got nowhere. She pointed him out to me & I did my best. He seems like a wonderful person, except for this. I asked him if he used any seasonings other than local. He proudly said no & pointed to the Tabasco, etc. I asked him one more time to please consider getting rid of the Starbucks & I hope that the next time we come back, there aren't seasonings from New York. So, obviously the Starbucks sales person did a good job, so the Community coffee sales team needs to step up & make a better offer or at least match it. Thank you for listening & if you feel the need to offer another brand, then at least make it...

This is a quaint little restaurant with an inviting atmosphere and great menu options and wonderful staff. It looks like a repurposed building with a lot of history. All of the staff were welcoming and polite. The menu has the right balance of options while at the same time not being so big you don't know what to choose. We both had the ground rib eye filled with cheese and it was delicious, well seasons and a generous portion. The grilled veggies were very good but could have used a little more seasoning for my taste. It is on the river so I found the county view very relaxing. We will go back, no doubt. This would be a great spot to go with a few couples for a nice night out. (Guys - don't be fooled by the women's sign on the inside of the men's...