Northside Bar & Grille — Restaurant in Surf City

While the Northside Bar & Grill might lure you in with its enticing outdoor setting, be forewarned: the dining experience is severely lacking.

Our party of six, including my wife, three children, and mother, decided to give this place a shot, primarily for the cuisine. The initial disappointments were beverage-related. My mother and I ordered bottled beer, only to be underwhelmed by the measly serving in small mugs – if there were 8 ounces in them, I'd be surprised. Not to mention the $8 price tag for such a scant serving. Additionally, one of the water glasses served to my daughter was visibly chipped. A detail, yes, but symptomatic of the overall carelessness.

As we moved onto the food, the missteps became increasingly glaring. We ordered a selection of dishes: a well-done burger, two Caesar salads, two Caesar salads with shrimp, and a chicken sandwich. Bafflingly, my burger arrived even before our appetizer. But that wasn't the worst part – the taste was completely off. Parts of it were hardly reminiscent of beef, and to rub salt into the wound, it was accompanied by cold and stale tasting fries. The calamari, arriving after the main course (much to our astonishment), was the only moderately redeeming dish of the evening.

But brace yourself, it gets worse. My wife's chicken looked like it had survived a fire, appearing as black as a hockey puck. My 9-year-old daughter's grilled shrimp was in a similarly pitiable state – so charred that she gagged on her first bite. This isn't the slightly burnt taste one might forgive; this is "how did this make it out of the kitchen?" level of charred. The staff, perhaps sensing our growing dissatisfaction, hurriedly replaced my wife's dish. But guess what? Even the replacement had parts that were charred beyond belief and the cold stale fries had heaps of salt on them. It was like the had no lid for the salt shaker and poured it right out of a fully opened wide mouth top.

Now, here's the kicker. While three of our party were finishing up their meals, the dishes for my third daughter and mother were nowhere in sight. By the time they arrived, the rest of us were done and what was served was, predictably, another disappointment: more charred shrimp which she couldnt even eat and an incorrect salad order for my mother. By the time my mother's plain ceaser arrived all 5 of the rest of us were done so she, having waited an hour for a salad, opted to take it to go.

Summing up this culinary misadventure, it was hands down one of the most dismal dining experiences we've encountered, especially given our $180 bill. I genuinely hope ours was a one-off experience, but until there's evidence of improvement, I'd strongly suggest potential patrons save their money and look elsewhere. If this is the standard, then perhaps "Northside Barf & Grill" would be a...

Went to Northside for a couple beers after a day of rain on LBI and best I can say is meh. After all the storms cleared out and it was a perfect day to be outside they didn’t bother to try and clean off any of their seating not under cover. We cleared our own chairs and then sat down waiting for a server to bring out a couple menus. After a few more minutes of staring at each other we began to wonder if we needed to check in with a hostess station. We found a station outside with the customary “please wait to be seated” signs but no one to be found. We waited there, no further attention given despite multiple Employees milling about. We sat back down and finally someone came out, and only after flagging them down, found out we were supposed to check in with the hostess at the front door. We walked in and despite multiple tables open, with a waitlist of 4 parties, we were told there was a 10+ minute wait. Thankfully someone from the restaurant intervened and told the hostess to just seat us since there was room outside that we wanted.

After we finally sat down for our beers it was lackluster at best. If you want the IPA of the day then you’ll be happy but after that, unless you want mega brewery swill, you will be out of luck. Maybe the food is stellar and the atmosphere out of control in the evening but I don’t see it. I wanted a beer with friends at the neighborhood spot but looks like we will keep searching for a spot to enjoy variety and a friendly place to be.

For the management: You might do better if you actually had some of your staff dry off the tables you have outside. On a nice night people might use those.

You might encourage your staff to actually talk to people that walk into your “patio” instead of staring at them blankly while the potential customers look around trying to figure out what seating is.

If you don’t have a host station outside take down the signs or actually route people where they should go. Instead of the host staff giving you a witty observation of “oh yeah we saw you guys”.

Two words: beer...

I went here over the weekend with a friend and felt the need to write a review because of a few things I'd witnessed. First off, we walked right inside and sat ourselves (as the sign instructed), but didn't have much of a selection because most of the tables were either busy or still had the previous guests' meals/drinks on the table. When we sat down, the service was fast, our waitress came over immediately and took our drink orders and they were brought to us within 10 minutes. Next, I observed the bartender taking shots with several groups sitting at the bar (Jon Taffer would have a field day). We then put in our appetizer order, the jalapeno calamari, which was okay but didn't meet expectations. The calamari was fine, it just didn't have much sauce drizzled on top and didn't have sauce on the side. Next, we put in our food and that took over an hour to come out. We only got a burger and wrap, so we thought it was ridiculous. I'm not sure if the waitress forgot to put our order in or what but she kept blaming it on the kitchen saying that they were very backed up which could've likely been the case but for a burger and wrap to take over an hour is just ridiculous, considering the only thing that should take long is cooking the burger itself and the chicken in the wrap. Nonetheless, my friend didn't get the burger he'd ordered. What frustrated us the most about this experience was seeing the numerous potential customers walking in to sit inside and being forced to turn around because of all of the tables that were still dirty. I actually asked the waitress if they had a bus boy because they could be bringing in so much more money (for the establishment and the staff) if they just had someone to clean off tables. Safe to say I won't be back here, but I could see how someone would go just for drinks and to enjoy the live music outside, but they definitely shouldn't be going for the food or the service. I'd much rather spend my money at many of the other...