Shambles Island Bar and Grill — Restaurant in United States Virgin Islands

Edited. Read to the end. (2022) Good vibes...cold beer. Good food. The young fella named Tommy who helps out with service is great. Hard work pays off and is noticed....

.... that first part is from a visit 2 years ago at the same time in early August.

(2024) Now for the second visit. This time was TOTALLY DIFFERENT. Going to be TRY to be brief and outline the experience. Party of 5 ..2 couples and myself.. same as last trip 2 years ago. We sat down in a pretty crowded time 8:10 Saturday night and given menus to look at for 25 minutes before we were greeted to take an order for anything. (8:35pm) ( considered leaving but at nearly 9:00 p.m. other places could be shutting down so we gave them a chance ) The food was ordered along with the drinks because we had so much time to study this menu loking around waiting on our server to acknowledge us. She was quite oblivious to the idea that it took so long to get started.... at that point we did ask about Separate Checks and it was pretty clear it was just fine breaking up the checks properly.... she said no problem! The food came out about 25 minutes later. Frankly it was about average....cold fries and not great. My pulled pork bbq sandwich was obviously food service supply grade along with the burgers and mahi....according to my other friends at the table. We had to get up and grab napkins from the bar... server never returned. Only one drink was ordered because we were ready to get out of there and return to our Villa in Fish Bay after a long day of travel. It was easily 15 minutes after we finished our food that we finally got a bill put on the table and of course it was everything included on one check.... we clearly discussed the breaking up of the checks. Our server seemed to forget this conversation.... said she would be doing us a favor breaking up the checks.

The checks were finally broken up after three returns to the cash register with the manager getting involved..... the server was obviously inept at math and running the cash register and backing out the items. Had we known it was going to be this big of an ordeal we would have accepted the complete check and worked out our own math using venmo and whatever... but it's inconvenient and lazy on the part of a server to say that's standard procedure on this island. We were only a Party of Five.

I finally spoke up and shared with our server how incredibly bad the service was and that I would be sharing a review on Google. She then became quite confrontational with no apologies and used the phrase "Bring It On".... and also told me I needed to understand the meaning of " Island time. " this almost made me just laugh out loud because she probably assumed this was my first trip to the islands which it's probably my 30th. I know the phrase and that usually applies to construction and ferry schedules and not food service.

This place may have had a very bad night and we were the ones to experience it but to contrast an experience 2 years ago ... on the same Saturday evening ...to this one it's like night and day and I'm not sure if that has a reflection of new management or what but this was one of the top three worst experiences anywhere... in the states or on Island.

I'm usually one to just walk away and shake my head but the fact that the server was confrontational and told me to bring it on has allowed me to be inspired to bring it on. And that's my experience. Hopefully they can clean up their act....

We ate at Shambles twice on our trip to St John. The first time was good! We ordered the BBQ plate with 2 sides (salad and jalapeño mac and cheese), cheese pizza, and a few drink specials (small but delicious). Regarding our BBQ plate, the BBQ sauce and taste were amazing but a few extra ribs would have done the plate well given how extremely small they were. However, the sides were delicious and mostly made up for it. The kids also devoured the cheese pizza! We enjoyed the overall atmosphere so much that we decided to return a few nights later since the kids were begging for the pizza again.

The second time was unfortunately a big disappointment. After being seated well over 20 minutes in an over half empty restaurant, we were finally greeted after going to the bar to find a server. We ordered 2 orders of fish and chips (beer battered and cornmeal dusted) with fries and a side salad, and cheese sticks, along with another cheese pizza (kids). Mozzarella sticks were great but small portioned for the price. Also, the pizza didn’t seem done enough this visit. The fish and chips were the biggest disappointment though. The fish prepared was mahi mahi. It was so overdone that we thought we were eating chicken. The dill sauce also had way too much acid (likely lime juice) and did nothing for the fish. The fries were also pretty bland but side salad was fine again. We would have spoken up, but with three kids in tow and $9 worth of spilled water due to the wind gusts at our table, we were just happy to finally be out of there and back...

My wife and I had dinner at Shambles (12/28/23). Shambles is one of the “midway” restaurants on Centerline Road, between Cruz Bay and Coral Bay. It’s just across the street from its partner restaurant, Sweet Shack, and a few yards further on is the Windmill Bar, known for its spectacular views, especially sunsets.

It’s a colorful, fun-looking, casual restaurant. There was plenty of seating (no reservations needed), and the bar area was mostly full of local folks, always a good sign. We started the evening with a few painkillers and rum punches, both of which were delicious and potent! St. John is known for its “pours,” and Shambles fits the bill nicely! For an appetizer, we ordered the buffalo cauliflower, which was delicious, flavorful, and had a medium kick to it. For dinner, we split a veggie pizza, which was served piping hot. It was flavorful, and the vegetables were plenteous and not overcooked. Service was perfect—relaxed and attentive. And by St. John standards, Shambles is not too pricey, either.

We planned our evening with a start at Shambles, then headed over to Shamble’s Sweet Shack for dessert: candied pecan ice cream. Mindblowing—so good! We took our ice cream with us to Windmill Bar for the sunset. (The staff member at Sweet Shack assured us it would be okay, and it was.) Shambles AND Sweet Shack were the perfect start to our evening, and are definitely on our list of restaurants to revisit on...