PJ Lobster House — Restaurant in Town of Brookhaven

THE PJ LOBSTER HOUSE, PORT JEFFERSON NY 👍🥰👍🥰👍🥰👍🥰👍🥰👍🥰👍🥰👍🥰👍 For our 60 Wedding Anniversary, I wanted to take my honey to a good rated seafood restaurant, that we have not been to before. We live in the RVC area, my honey always loved walking around and visiting the shops in Port Jefferson as well as grabbing a bite to eat there too. When looking at different places to eat, This restaurant I found is called, The PJ Lobster House, in Port Jefferson. It had a great menu of dishes we love to eat, their prices looked very fair in this age of high prices, and the restaurant had pretty good Google reviews to boot too! This restaurant has booth and table seating, a bar area, and a fresh fish market all in the same building. Through the years we have been to Port Jefferson many times, but never knew this restaurant existed. It's address is 134 Main Street, but it's NOT on the main road, it in the back behind other buildings, in fact, for the first time ever, my GPS sent me to a wrong place a mile away from where the restaurant really is? I was lucky to run into a postman, who told me exactly where this restaurant was. We got to the restaurant at 1:30pm, there were some people having lunch, and some having drinks at the bar, but not crowded at all, that was fine with us. Our waitress was Sandy, She was great, she didn't rush us, was very friendly and helpful too. We told Sandy that first we were going to order a few appetizers then after that, if we were still hungry we would order something else. Sandy said that's not a problem. So to start off I ordered their New England Clam Chowder. It was fresh tasting, buttery and was loaded with clams, just delicious! Then a dozen large sized Little Neck Clams(top necks) on the half shell. They were very fresh, crispy iced cold, with a snap when bit into them, topped with fresh squeezed lemon juice, a dab of cocktail sauce, and of course some fresh ground horseradish, they were excellent! Next we had their Coconut Shrimp with mango sauce on the side for dipping. They were cooked perfectly, we've never had better! Next we had their whole baked clams oreganta, they too were on the money, simply delicious! Now here comes a bucket of fresh mussels cooked in white wine and garlic, yum, yum, yum, is all I can say. We ended our appetizers with a cold octopus salad, which consisted of fresh greens, sliced cooked octopus, olives, cherry tomatoes sprinkled in a light oil. Also just delicious too! Sandy asked will there be anything else or are you full? I ordered their Crab cake sandwich that comes with french fries, cold slaw, tomato and lettuce and a topping sauce. My honey ordered their hot Lobster roll with butter and sweet potato fries and cold slaw. Both were excellent choices all freshly made for us. We were both about to bust from eating so much delicious food, but I asked to see their dessert menu. I ordered their raspberry sorbet with chocolate syrup and whipped cream, Wow! My wife ordered their creme brulee, another Wow! Delicious! I can imagine this restaurant must be very busy on the weekends, we will come back for sure, but we again will go during the week for an early lunch as we did today. We enjoyed all the food ordered and Sandy our waitress was perfect at her job, she made us feel very welcome and at home even for first timers at this restaurant. This restaurant is really a hidden gem, in Port Jefferson! A very nice place to go and have a wonderful meal with...

One would hope that going to a restaurant on the shore... In a town with Port in its name... You'd get some quality seafood. Unfortunately that wasn't the case here. Starting out with appetizers that somehow took nearly an hour to arrive, we dug in hoping that the wait would've been worth it. The boneless wings were decent, an interesting sauce flavor lost in the overwhelming mouth feel of crunchy fried bread with only the faintest hint of chicken deep within. Snowcrab was next, plenty of butter and lemons to eat it with, too bad that once the shells were pried open (they were much too soft to even crack with the fun little tool) there was barely any crab meat to eat it with. If I hadn't pulled it out of the leg myself I would've assumed I was being fed the fake Krab we all know and love from California rolls. But it was the driest, stringiest, let alone thinnest crab meat we've ever seen. In addition the plates the appetizers came on were burning to the touch, they might have not taken an hour to cook but given the temperature of the plates they were clearly sitting in the window together for a good long while.

Still we had high hopes that the entrees would be better and salvage the meal. But as time went on and we watched our waitress bring piping hot food to every table around us, many of which had come in after our meager party of 3, we started to worry.

Over 2 hours after sitting down for our reservation, and nearly as long after our waitress took our orders... The entrees finally arrived. A cheeseburger ordered medium but came out charred lumpy dry and over well done. 2 lobster tails with the saddest looking veggies and corn on the cob. And a surf and turf that made astroturf look appetizing in comparison.

The pictures really speak for themselves, the dry and stringy lobster, the hockeypuck of a sirloin and sweet potato fries that might as well have been a freshly chopped yam for how cold and undercooked the centers were.

In the end the only real positive was what we hope was a fresh bun that was brought with a meager amount of butter at the start of the meal. Too bad the butter was rock hard and the bun was cold.

One would hope that a seafood restaurant by the shore would have fresh food... Alas even the audacity to serve dried out and frozen seafood with the ocean within sight doesn't mean that there was the know-how to at least make it palatable...

Maybe it was bad luck all around, hopefully this...

Would not recommend at all. First, if you are particular about the atmosphere then this is not the place for you. Very dated and old school diner looking place (which we knew that walking in). You have to walk through a small fish market to get to the restaurant side which is small also. We made reservations for 8 (4 adults, 3 kids and a baby), when we arrived our table was not set up, we were not given menus nor plating/utensils. The waiter did not tell us any specials, so not sure if they offer specials. In terms of service, while our waiter was nice, it was obvious she was overwhelmed and handling too many tables. The waiter did not check on us often and at times we had to look for her. Now for the food, we put in the kids meal first and ordered a round of drinks. The kids food came in timely, nothing to brag about, burgers/chicken fingers and fries. Now for the entrees, it took forever to come out, well over an hour to an hour and a half which means the kids got bored very quickly. If we would've known we would've ordered all meals together. All entrées arrived hot but were poorly seasoned. The creamed spinach was watered down, practically soup-like and lacked any form of flavor, the butter for the lobster was ridiculously salty, the red pasta sauce tasted like pure tomatoes and nothing more and the portion of that dish was huge, should be considered a dish for two (lobster fra daviola) . The mash potatos, steak and stuffed flounder were ok, the lobster was overcooked. There were limited alcoholic beverages, only beer or wine and what they offer as "sangria" is basically wine with fruit. Kid meal portions are huge, basically an adult entrée, two small kids can easily share. Desert was also ok, cookie skillet with ice cream (Chili's is better!). Overall, complete waste of time and money!! Tab with tip was just about $300 for 4 entrée (2 of which were lobster) and 3 kid meals plus 8 drinks (no appetizers). I wouldn't care about the total amount if the food was actually good but it was awful!!! The experience and service were terrible. With so many seafood options in Port Jeff, steer far away from this one!!! You'll...