Castaways On The Lake — Restaurant in Town of Webster

Ok...here we go...July 12th, 2025. It was pretty hot out at 5:30pm when we had our reservations. Sure, we wanted to sit outside...the breeze was pleasant and the sun would drop behind the big willow tree in 10 or 15 minutes. All is well. We are brought to our table quickly and get handed our menus...all is well so far. Here's where things take a turn...

Our server didn't come to take our drink order for probably 10 minutes. When we were brought water, it had no ice and it was terrible tasting...like it came right out of the lake.

15 more minutes go by and we finally receive the 2 drinks that our party of 8 ordered...and iced tea and an IPA. We were ready to place our orders, but off he went...not to come back for another 15 minutes. At all. Not for our order. Not for refills on our drinks. Hmm...ok.

Whatever...we were with family and we were still enjoying ourselves. Finally he comes to take our orders after roughly 40 minutes. (the place was busy; there were many empty tables...but everyone was running around like madmen...strange).

We place our orders and wait for another 35 minutes for our food which consisted of: Chicken French (no pasta), 2 fried fish platters, 3 orders of the jambalaya, coconut shrimp salad, and the mediterranean fish dinner.

Chicken French - literally swimming in the french sauce which was bland. Have you ever tried wet, breaded chicken? Not appetizing at all. Ease up on the sauce there Frankie.

Fried fish platters - you can tell the chef's specialty is deep frying things because the fish, the fries, and the coconut shrimp were cooked well and flavorful.

Coconut Shrimp salad - 5 shrimp on a bunch of mixed greens is not worth $26...not even in this economy. Who are you fooling?

Mediterranean fish - this didn't look too bad, nor did my relative say he was disappointed. The price though...for what you get is absurd.

Jambalaya - a giant mound of yellow rice (not jambalaya), kielbasa (not cajun sausage as noted on the menu), minimal chunks of chicken that wouldn't make an entire breast complete, and (here's the best part) 3 shrimp. Count 'em! 3 whole shrimp! This dish is $36...wow. There was also a pseudo-tomato sauce that was tossed on the pile of food. I'm sorry...jambalaya does NOT have tomato sauce in it.

PROS: the lake didn't smell, the breeze was nice, and yeah...that's about it.

CONS: food is overpriced for the amount AND the quality is lackluster, service is very slow (when there is service)

Final thoughts: This restaurant is WAY overpriced for the amount of food AND the quality of food that is served. The service is terribly slow...truly. I've never been to a restaurant that allows this. Everyone seems to be wandering around LOOKING busy, but not really doing anything. Did I mention that the food is overpriced for the portions you get? Did I also mention the food is less than mediocre? If you want to eat here, stick with the fried stuff...but then again, you could go to Bill Gray's and get a fish fry dinner for a few dollars less and it will taste much better. Rest assured, we will never give this establishment our...

Usually bad reviews are difficult for me, however, this one is easy. I took my husband here tonight for his birthday. It was our first time. We had sat closest to the water. The view was beautiful. I chose this place because the menu seemed to have a better variety of items. I ignored the 3.8 stars and decided we should try for ourself. Now mind you, my husband is an executive chef, I’m a restaurant bartender/server/ manager and the restaurant industry is our life. This was probably the first time I returned the food and didn’t eat it. We ordered crab cakes for our appetizer…. 18$ …. And when they arrived we were shocked to see they were two small golf balls. The middle was cold, which is why you don’t serve crab cakes in “ball form” they typically should be flat. I had my side salad, which was okay. The Italian dressing was more like a regular balsamic. The size of the cucumber served in the side salad was inedible. Cut to thick. No big deal…. Food comes….. I ordered the pasta rustica because a “chefs blend of vegetables in an olive oil White wine sauce with Parmesan over linguine” sounded great! I even added shrimp for an extra $8….. I got 4 shrimp, with the tails still on them. 1/4 cup of linguine, in a bowl smothered with flavorless water…. Yes water…. Looked like dish water to be exact. The vegetables didn’t seem fresh, the broccoli was definitely frozen…. I’ve never seen carrots in a pasta dish, it had no flavor. When you scooped the pasta absolutely nothing stuck to It. Therefor taking a bite was like taking a bite of freshly boiled “over cooked” pasta right from the strainer. My husband tolerated his lobster roll. The fries looked like the fryer hadn’t been changed recently. When the waitress (idk her name) finally Came over to check on us, she seen I took two bites from the dish. Literally didn’t even eat all the shrimp, I told her my thoughts. Her response was that she could assure me the vegetables were fresh (doubt it) and when I said it was flavorless, she said “I see a lot of garlic in there I’ve never had a problem with this dish” And mumbled something walking away. That was unprofessional. We never complain, but when the price is this high and I didn’t even eat the meal, I gotta speak up. — waitress comes back and tells me they took half off my dish. So I still paid $16 for 2 bites. I wasn’t going to argue. I get it. But this place is old, run down, over priced, and overall disgusting. I would’ve been more impressed if they removed my whole dish off the bill, probably wouldn’t have left this review. I wasn’t one of those people who complained after eating half or all of my food, I literally didn’t eat it 1/8 of ir. So, of course we still tipped well, bringing our total to $100. Will never go back, and I honestly should’ve listened to the reviews and all our friends telling us not to go here. But we tried. There’s just no passion left in this industry. Bad food and bad...

We were so excited to eat here, as it was our first time, but unfortunately we have no desire to return. We were seated right away (made a reservation). We were asked our drink order and had to wait quite awhile before we actually received our drinks... it was not even busy- there were several available tables! While we waited to give our order, a patron at a nearby table, literally spit her drink out all over! We overheard her say that she requested a "virgin" drink and her drink contained alcohol! She appeared to be pregnant, so we didn't blame her for spitting all over, but it was not pleasant to be dining near this to say the least. Her server did apologize to her profusely.

We finally ordered food and our salads came out promptly, but... we were not given silverware to eat with. We had to ask a young man (who was not our server) to get us some. We noticed that two other tables of people also had to request silverware! The worst part was that we all had different servers- so this was not the mistake of just one! Isn't it standard to place silverware down on the table as people are seated?

Our appetizer came out (stuffed mushrooms)- they were only okay. After quite a wait we received our meals. At first glance, we were disappointed in portion sizes! I ordered the Admiral platter, which was a special this evening. It was not a $49.00 meal size wise at all. Then I took a bite and it was not taste wise either! The food was rubbery and cold! It had zero flavor. My husband ordered snow crab legs. He was not given very many and they were tasteless- must have been overcooked is the only thing we could guess. He was not even given the tool used to cut the shells open. He was trying to crack them open with his hands. I had to leave our table to seek out our server to get one for him! Our daughter ordered a crabcake sandwich. The roll was stale and dry. It crumbled just from holding it.

Our server was a young girl who was barely audible when she talked. She was not very attentive, but it seemed like maybe she was new, as she obviously lacked confidence. We felt bad for her despite the inattentiveness. When she finally came to the table to ask how we were, I told her that I was not paying for my platter- that it was tasteless. It was taken off our bill. To be honest- we should have refused to pay the entire thing. What a let down after being so excited to visit this place.

There were some "bus boys" who picked up the slack for the servers- and they really should be the servers instead! They deserve to be praised because without them tending to the needs of the customers, I think many tables would have walked out tonight! I know that we were not the only disappointed patrons! Spectacular view was a plus, but they really need to have a more attentive serving staff and perhaps a more seasoned chef/cook??? We were so disappointed. It actually pains me to write this because we had...