Low Country Fish Camp — Restaurant in Summerville

I am torn on this review. The food was excellent but everything else was not. I had the shrimp platter and substituted the beans and rice in place of the slaw. The shrimp were lightly battered and well cooked. The fries were very tasty. The beans and rice was more like Louisiana jambalaya with little bits of sausage and was excellent. I was stuffed and that is rare! Everyone else raved about how good their dinners were with sides such as sweet potato tots, fried okra, Mac & cheese. I would give the food a 5 out of 5.

The bad was everything but the food. Parking is a nightmare with a small lot by the restaurant only for pickup or handicapped. The overflow parking is a small dirt lot further down the road and it was overflowing. We had to park down the road in a church parking lot and walk back to it. We had a party of 6 and could not be seated until all were there. If we had been seated, we probably would have had drinks and appetizers. There is very little seating inside so we were seated at picnic tables outside. It was cold but they did have a propane heater on each table so it was tolerable. What was not tolerable was the very loud road noise since the front seating area is right next to a busy highway. It was hard to hear one another.

Things got worse. No menus but a QR code on the table for patrons to look up the menu. Simple enough if everyone has a phone but some in our party did not bring theirs. To make it worse, there is no WiFi available. There is WiFi but they will not give you the password. The waitress took our drink orders then disappeared for quite a while. After a long time, she wandered back with the drinks but left before we could order. So we waited in the noisy cold sharing a couple of phones and hoping she would eventually wander back. There were numerous empty tables so she was not overly busy. Finally she did take our orders and let people make lots of substitutions. I had read the menu and noticed that any substitutions of sides incurred a $2 surcharge but waited to see if she would mention that. She did not and that makes me angry when a server does not mention when things incur additional charges. When I pointed out the many surcharges, she acknowledged it and no one reconsidered and the sides were good but I do not like feeling swindled.

Finally some in the party could not stand the cold and noise and they moved us to one of the few inside tables. Food arrived shortly thereafter and the guy who brought it got sauces and such and did well. Our waitress on the other hand did very little and seldom checked or refilled drinks. Even though we watched her standing at the bar 15 feet away, I finally had to get up and walk over to ask for a refill. We had to request the check and wait a while till she wandered over with it and I immediately saw a probable reason for the crummy service. The gratuity of 18% was already added in. A forced gratuity really encourages very poor service because clearly she not care less about how we were treated.

So, bottom line is they have great food, bad atmosphere and seating, horrible servers and treat guest like a money machine. A shame because I would like to eat here again but absolutely no way. Unless I order it...

We had the most bizarre and unwelcoming disappointing experience…… and we never even made it through the door. My husband and I are locals. We’ve dined at this establishment before….. food was good, service was fine. My family was coming to town for my birthday and wanted to take us out to lunch. We have a 14 month old. I wanted fish and family friendly and I thought this was the place for us. I call right as we leave and ask about their wait……. no wait. Cool. I inform her that a party of 6 is coming. We get there and there’s no parking in the back lot. We go to the front lot and there are several spaces. 3 of which were marked for take out/curbside pickup. We don’t park there. There were two more spaces across from those with no signage. We park there. We start to get out and immediately get yelled at. My husband asks for clarification because again….. no signage at these spaces. “You can’t park there. That’s for take out. Well that’s for employees. You’ll have to park on the street if there’s no parking in the back”. Street parking is in a ditch. Whatever, we move and park on the street anyways. We get out and go to the hostess stand. From then it was just a bunch of attitude from the hostess. She would only seat us outside (again we had a baby with us). We asked about the wait for inside and she “didn’t know”. Not even a guess or putting us on a list or anything. It’s January. We couldn’t sit outside with a baby. We were more concerned at that point that they would spit in our food so we just left. It’s sad that they literally ran away $200+ in revenue/tips. We ended up at Mi Fiesta and had a great experience. We were greeted with smiles, no attitude, and big yummy margaritas and happily gave them our money instead. It’s sad because my husband and I have had pretty normal experiences here before, but after this we will probably...

In the several times I have been here the food was outstanding and today was no exception. However another issue arose that totally caught me off guard. At the end of the meal I was asked by the waitress whose bill to put the "cake cutting" charge on. There was never any mention of a charge prior to this by anyone, including the hostess who seated us. While I can certainly understand a "cake cutting" charge it escapes me as to why they would charge $10 for someone to literally just take the lid off the cake and bring it to the table - no plates, no forks, nothing provided - just the cake we brought for a birthday. When I called a manager to question it on the way home as I didn't want to make a scene in front of the others, I was told it is a common practice as it takes away from their "dessert" business and the manager said they provided us with forks and plates (uh no). Ok, I get that reasoning BUT - there are absolutely NO DESSERTS listed on either the menu we were presented or the website, AND he was wrong in that we were given NO plates or forks to use or a knife to cut it with. I literally cut the cake with the handle of a fork we used at dinner that we had cleaned - and served it on paper towels that were at the table. The server did show up about 10 minutes later with what seemed to be a 2' chef's knife to cut the cake. None of the reasons I was given held water - seemed to be a case of CYA for the manager. The food is awesome but DONT TAKE A BIRTHDAY CAKE WITH YOU. They'll charge you for dessert business they lose EVEN THOUGH THEY DON'T APPEAR TO OFFER IT. In addition, they offer a discount for cash however when the waitress brought me incorrect change she still charged me the debit card price. It wasn't worth even discussing after everything else. Maybe next time...