Claudio's Tavern & Grill — Restaurant in Town of Southold

We are the traveling Motor Coach Gourmets. We frequent restaurants in many different cities and review them. Our ratings are as fair as we can make them as our reviews and yours can also impact a business owner. If we can’t give a 4 or 5 star review, or we don’t care for the service or food, we hold our review and give the place in question a 2nd and 3rd try. If after that, still not to our liking, then we rate the establishment unless of course the place is blatantly bad.

Where should we start… To make sure I was correct, I looked up the words ‘tourist trap’ in my dictionary and sure enough it had a picture of Calaudio’s. I was on the right track.

We came here on July 26th 2019. Anyway, I asked the waitress about the clams and she said they are little necks and cherrystones. Great, I love them. I ordered the steamers and a lobster roll. Tracy had a cheeseburger because she didn’t feel like fish as that’s all we’ve been eating on this trip. I can eat it 7 days a week.

The steamers came but were almost the size of my fist. Not exactly little necks or cherrystones. I mentioned this to the waitress and she immediately took them back and said she’d get this corrected. We waited patiently and she brought back another order of large clams. I said no good. She replied that the smaller ones would take time, bla, bla, bla and I said to just remove them from the order.

Our dinner came. The lobster roll was not exactly even close to being one of the best I’ve ever eaten. Quite frankly, it was bland and all the meat was claw meat. At $28, the price was a little on the high side but that was ok however…. The roll was…. Are you ready…. A frankfurter roll! A freaking frankfurter roll! This was an absolute insult to me. You don’t put a $28 item on the menu and serve it on a small frankfurter roll. And yes, so the $28 lobster roll was actually quite small due to being on a small frankfurter roll.

Tracy said the hamburger was good, nothing special. The coleslaw was excellent. The bag of chips which came with my frankfurter lobster roll were the worst chips I’ve ever tasted. I ate two chips to be sure. Bland. Northfork Chips needs to work on them for sure!

We finished our dinner and I asked for the check. They charge $2 for cheese on the hamburger. We ordered a hamburger and the waitress asked if she wanted cheese to which she replied, yes. She never mentioned that the slice of Kraft processed cheese was $2. This made the overpriced $18 hamburger, $20. The hamburger was not an $18 hamburger.

Now, let’s discuss the coup de grâce….. When we pulled up to the parking area, I found a nice spot close by. A young man walked up to us and said that will be $10. I asked, to park here and go to Claudio’s? He replied, yes. I said, do they validate the parking and offer a refund. He replied, no. I said, NO!

So, let’s make this perfectly clear…. You get to pay $10 to park in Claudio’s parking lot to have the privilege of eating there. I never heard of something like this. We backed our vehicle out and decided to pass on the Calaudio’s experience. While driving out of the parking lot we lucked out and found a spot on the street. We parked and entered the lion’s den. A very bad experience.

Never again. A lobster roll on a frankfurter...

Wow, what a disappointment! We have been here many times before, always had a pleasant experience, unfortunately not this time.

Started out well, typical, water, order drinks and apps. My martini starter was very good but not stuffed olives but still very good. Dozen oysters were fresh, sweet, shucked perfectly. Then the afternoon went south. A group came 15 perhaps 20 minutes after us, I know our order was in first but they got served first, honestly not the end of the world, it happens. Our grandson has a dairy allergy, we made that abundantly clear, so our entrees finally arrive, all except the chicken sandwich “without mayo”. After 15 minutes we asked several of the where is the 4th entree, “yes, sorry, we will let the kitchen know. Finally after 20 minutes here comes the sandwich, yep, you guessed, mayo was on the bun, ugh. I will say the manager jumped on it and even comped the sandwich. Honestly, by then, the lunch was crushed, cancelled my second martini, don’t judge me, and asked for the check. Our waitress Gabriela T. was unapologetic, just here’s your check bye, and that was fine. It’s the final act that set my wife off. She had filled out a comments card and handed it to the hostess who graciously accepted the card bidding us a sincere (I think) goodbye and thank you for coming. In the interim my wife had gone to the rest room and while exiting overhead our lovely waitress laugh off the comment card stating it’s no big deal! Well my wife didn’t take kindly to that and let the lovely waitress know how she felt to which Gabby the heartless retorted, well I didn’t make the sandwich. Well you guys can connect the dots from there. I realize the difficulties of finding help especially good help. Most of the staff save our gabby did a great job, gabby needs training lots of training. Not sure I can endorse this place based on todays experience, guess you should judge for yourself just run if you get the...

I want to first say a positive about my recent visit to Claudio’s— our waiter— this gentleman was very nice & attentive to our table. Ok, now the negative. My sister in law reserved a table (for 12) so we can celebrate a couple of family members’ birthdays. We showed up & were told by the lady at the podium “we’ll work on sitting you”. When they brought us to our table we learned we were sitting outside- no big deal, we just weren’t aware. Soon after ordering our drinks we started feeling raindrops. We asked the waiter what was going to happen if it started raining more & he said they would seat us upstairs. A few minutes later it started raining. My elderly parents went into the restaurant to get out of the rain & were yelled at by a manager to move. We were then told that we could not be accommodated with a table inside & we would just have to sit outside until the rain “passed”. When my sister in law started to explain that my father is sick & cannot sit out in the rain the manager stormed off saying “I am not responding to you anymore”. Inside, another manager kept barking at my family to go stand by the already crowded bar (it was a Saturday night). After the 3rd time of my sister in law being told that she got mad. The manager stormed off telling yet another manager to “just throw them out”. When I approached both managers & told them that I heard the “just throw them out” comment, the manager who uttered it began to lie saying he didn’t say that. I admit, I lost my cool & told him not only is he nasty, but he’s a liar too. At that point he became visibly angry, looking like he was trying to hold back from hitting me.

We’ve been coming to Greenport for 33 years, visiting Claudio’s almost every year. We will never...