Water Star Grille — Restaurant in Stone Harbor

Here’s the skinny. This has absolutely nothing to do with the food or beverages at the Water Star Grille because, full disclosure, we didn’t even GET to that point. First and foremost, I called over a week before our stay at the Reeds to make a reservation for dinner at the Water Star Grille. I told the person on the phone that we were happy to take a reservation Friday OR Saturday (and gave the dates). He said we would get a return phone call confirming our reservation once they figured out seating arrangements (I presume due to COVID restrictions). When I got that return phone cal days later, the woman confirmed me for a reservation at the end of July. I was confused and let her know the person who originally took my call must have written down the wrong dates. I could tell they were already booked for the weekend that I DID request, but I appreciated that she squeezed us in anyhow. Even THOUGH, that is PRECISELY the reason I called well in advance. Anyhow. We get to the restaurant on Friday evening for our 8PM reservation. Mind you we checked in with the hostess by about 7:45PM. Just to lay it out simply, we didn’t get so much as hello (let alone an acknowledgement of who our waiter would be) once we got to our table. My boyfriend and I jokingly asked one another how long we would wait to speak to a soul. As more than 15 minutes passed since we sat down, we agreed that we were irritated. The manager even came up to us at one point and asked if anyone had come around. We told her NO and it was clear that we were annoyed and she joked that our waiter (a young man) PROMISED her that he could handle 7 tables. Clearly he could not. So she left. Now. If I worked in the restaurant industry and was a MANAGER and saw that a table hadn’t even been acknowledged for 15 minutes, I would quickly take their drink order and let them know that SOMEONE is going to be around as soon as possible. That never happened. So 30 minutes passed. It’s now 8:30PM. I suppose in some world this would have been ok if we didn’t notice that couples who came in after us got seated, waited on and even RECEIVED FOOD before we ever could get to a hello. We quickly realized that unless you are an old, wrinkled rich guy who rolled in on his boat with his family, you are likely to not get treated with urgency. Little does the staff at Water Star Grille know, however, that my boyfriend and I absolutely love to waste money on overpriced, mediocre food. I was ecstatic to spend $65 dollars on macaroni and cheese when I sat down at 8PM but by 8:30PM it seemed much less delicious. We decided to leave. My boyfriend let the manager know, on our way out, that the evening had been spoiled. Unfortunately, it is likely to not make a difference to the owners at this restaurant, because they’ve got their wealthy crowd to keep the...

With high hopes and a fairly loose expectation of what makes a good experience, we came in here for dinner knowing that it was supposed to be some of the best food in the area- and has a reasonable focus on quality and sustainability - which of course matters to me.

But… a comedy of errors took away 2 stars from this otherwise lovely place. Getting seated wasn’t a problem, there’s plenty of space, and flexible indoor dining when the outdoors is rainy or inhospitable.

After being seated, they ran out of menus and it took about 12 minutes to even get water. Lots of staff running around but not enough waiting on tables apparently? Very odd. It was a Friday and 2/3 full but that’s still a note and a strike against.

After fixing that, appetizers came out conspicuously fast, making me worry it wasn’t even prepared fresh. Drinks were ok. Pricing across the board is fairly sky high so your expectations should be as well… but temper them. It’s tricky to find the winners here.

Oddly enough, the lobster was excellent - even in taste and texture and not at all “oceanic”. The caprese had lush flavorful heirloom tomatoes too… but sadly that’s where the “winning” ends. Especially with the tomatoes.

We found a tomato with the label still on 2 pieces in one of the entees, and when noting this to staff, the item was still charged at full price. If staff aren’t even taking stickers off the tomatoes in the kitchen… what other shortcuts are they taking? :/ The least you can do in that situation is refund the item.

Other members of the party noted that the restaurant / hotel in general has no facilities for mothers with infants in the bathrooms. This greatly distressed other diners, they noted, and is that even a thing you’re allowed not to have? Curious.

The flatbread was unimpressive, the pasta was pretty over cooked, the salmon felt underwhelming in flavor and plating, and the overall presentation of everything seemed lacking. Even the colorful ceramic vases on the tables didn’t have anything in them just making them awkward to have taking up space on the tables.

They delivered a burned, very bland looking grilled cheese to one of our party, and we decided to entirely skip dessert to avoid further issues.

View from the dining area is lovely though.

They’re really flying blind here and you should probably dine elsewhere honestly. Too much weight being pulled by the hotel attached to this place and the view. Full of issues I’d expect at a place half this price. You have to nail the basics if you want to charge people $50-100 a person for food: like cleaning your food, providing good service, and offering adequate facilities.

Upgrades due. 3.0 at...

We came with our family of 7 on our annual beach trip. We were very excited for some great food and time away. We had some great food but much of our time was taken away by Carly. She may be the worst waitress in the history of waitresses. When we got there, the restaurant was empty. They had the audacity to tell us that they weren't sure if our table, which we reserved two weeks prior, was ready yet. When we finally sat down we waited and waited. After waiting for several minutes, I got up and got a pitcher of water that I saw on another empty table to serve ourselves. At that point someone finally came over and assisted us. After that our waitress, Carly, made one of her few appearances at our table. Fortunately when she showed up we knew what we wanted to drink because this was one of the few times we saw her all night. When she took our drink orders we forced her to take our appetizer order before she tried to run away. We also put the kid's meals in then. The kid's meals came out insanely fast and then all the bar drinks came (which were mostly screwed up). We had to remind Carly a second time for the kid's apple juice. The two screwed up drinks tasted like I was smoking a cigarette. I have never had a smoky tequila but their bees knees tasted like everyone at the bar put their cigarettes out in my drink. Carly disagreed that the drinks were wrong although she did take them back. The second round of drinks we ordered also came out wrong but they were close enough and she runs away from your table faster than Usain Bolt ran in Beijing in 2008. After being their for an hour, someone came to our table to ask how everything was. We said unfortunately we did not yet have the opportunity to order so we couldn't answer that question. Carly finally reappeared from her hiatus to take our order. Once we ordered, we did get our food pretty quickly. The food was actually incredible and I would have given the restaurant five stars if it wasn't for Carly. Once we were done, we again had to wait for Carly to come with the check. Once we got the check, which had multiple errors on it, she disappeared on us again. The US government had an easier time tracking down Bin Laden than we did tracking down Carly. I had to get up and track down the manager to get it corrected. Once she fixed it, we again had to wait for Carly to disappear with our credit cards. My recommendation for this restaurant is to get rid of Carly as quickly as possible. She is without a doubt costing them business. I would go back but I would specifically request not to have Carly...