The Dead Fish — Restaurant in Vallejo

Overly pretentious, poor quality food, the restaurant does not respect reservations. Even though you may have a reservation for 7:00 p.m. the restaurant will take walk-ins first. And you will have to wait. There is no waiting area per se. It's either a tented entrance way or jammed into the bar. On a busy night. Expect to wait a few hours for a table. The food we were served in some cases was cold. Or served on a steel plate that was so hot that it would burn your hand. It's put on a wire stand over a bowl to put the shrimp tails in. Trying to reach the bowl you will probably burn your hand as I did. I have had Philly cheese steaks at Gino's and at Pat's. As well as several other restaurant chains. Never once have I ever been served a Philly cheese steak with cheddar cheese and a tomato Cioppino sauce on it. All sandwiches are served on the same bread that you were given for your bread and butter, a small sort of elongated football shape. About 3 in long. Why this place has as many good reviews as it does I can only speculate that they are being put up by friends family staff and other social media manipulation. The true photos of the food are the ones you see that have a overall yellow or mustard color to the photo. All the other photos are staged. The ones with the overall yellow hue. Is caused by the use of sodium lighting outside on the patio. Which affects the overall color cast of the camera. Which is proof that these photos were not doctor or edited. The ones that show the color being correctly balanced have been edited and staged. As far as parking. There are three parking lots to this restaurant one below it one right next to it and one farther of the Hill as well as a fourth across the street that not owned by them and they say that you can you park in it at your own risk. The lower parking lot is immediately off the first turn of the freeway. So you will probably miss that one. The second one is maybe only 10 to 15 spaces. And again please building is right on the side of the cliff. So it is a very tight turn right off the main road. Traffic coming up and down the hill does not yield to anyone in that parking lot. When you look at the overall menu. You'll notice that while called the Dead fish. What you'll mostly see are crab legs muscles and soft shell crab. As well as a lot of shrimp. Also the shrimp that we were served was not shelled or tailed. And it doesn't State anywhere on the menu whether it is or it is not shoulder-tailed. Personally I don't enjoy eating shrimp scampi with the shell still on. Well it is build as a surf and turf restaurant. I would highly question their prime rib. As there's no weight given next to the different sizes that are available on the menu. They just give them generic names to the size of what you're served no way to quantify what you're actually paying for. The same piece of prime rib that sells there for almost $100. May very well sell somewhere else for 35. Without any way of knowing the weight of what you're actually being served. When it comes to True fish on the menu there's only about four choices. And maybe one special. According to the waiter they were out of three of the four choices. Including the fried fish and chips. This place needs a lot of work and a lot of help. They're trying to be catchy and unique and what I would consider homie atmosphere the ceiling of the bar is covered in all kinds of diecast cars kids toys model airplanes and other pieces Decor flare. Kind of like going into a Mel's Diner or an Applebee's. There's stuff jammed everywhere in an attempt to make it feel like you're in...

I'm LIVID. Honestly, we left and we were both utterly disappointed and shocked by our experience.

I had been looking forward to trying The Dead Fish for a long time. We had an opportunity to do that tonight for our 8th anniversary (which I put on the reservation).

We went to a show in SF then on our way back to Sacramento, we stopped by for our 5pm reservation. I was super excited, but from my first interaction with the unfriendly hostess and guy working by here, I was worried about how our experience was going to go.

We sat outside. Our server quickly took our drink/app order. Everything was delivered very quickly. Almost too quickly. While I understand that sounds weird, their is a fine line between good service and rushed service, this seemed rushed and that was not the experience we wanted.

She then came back to take our order. I really wanted the pasta with a bunch of seafood in it but I hate cioppino. She told me no substitutes and then gave no suggestions for anything else on the menu and when I struggled to order, instead of being a great server (in an expensive restaurant) she said "I'll come back" and walked away. That did not sit well with me. She came back. I still had no idea what I wanted but felt pressured to order.

When our food arrived, my partner got the crab linguini. It was delicious. I got the weird pasta with Olives and added Crab. It was ok. Nothin to write home about, and they added 12.99 for crab and it absolutely did not seem like 12.99 worth of crab in my pasta.

Why I am giving this place that could be amazing, but is not, a 1 star review, is that my partners dish was obviously heated in the over prior to serving. It was METAL and they did not warn him of this or put hot handle holders on the handles which were INCREDIBLY hot and gave my partner a 3rd degree burn when his arm hit it. HUGE liability! What if a child reached of the handle and grabbed it!

Our server hadn't been back to check on us since we were served. I found her and told her what happened. She apologized and said they are supposed to tell him. That is not enough! They should have Pot holders and tell people that it's that hot! SHe said she would tell her manager so that didn't happen again..... How about the manager come to our table apologize and comp the food instead of us filing a lawsuit?! Our check came and no manager, not comped meal. Nothing more even from our server. SO I mentioned it again adn showed her his arm. She asked me if she wanted me to bring the manager over. Well I don;t think I should have to request that. I think that should have been a given.

So we paid and left. They didn't even wish us a happy anniversary. It was such a disappointing experience. our bill came to over $100 for bread, Calamari, iced tea, Arnold Palmer and 2 pasta dishes. After writing this review, I don't know if I would ever go back to this restaurant I had such high hopes for.

I truly hope they don't burn the wrong person, because someone will sue...

This was our first time at this restaurant and we went there with friends at their recommendation. I am sorry to say that we were disappointed. The service was not good. The lady who brought the bread and butter for us threw them on the table such that the butter landed upside down on the table, made no effort to clean it up, and turned around and left without offering to replace it. Then we waited 20 minutes before our actual server took our food order, by which time we had finished all our drinks and asked for more bread because we were so hungry. Another 15 minutes, and we were finally served our food. Some of us had ordered the clam chowder, which was quite tasty, but was served almost at the same time as our main dishes, so we had to hurry up and finish so that the fish didn't get cold. The majority of the table had chosen a variety of grilled fish, and some of us requested to have the sauce on the side. When the food arrived, they had mixed up which fish was requested with what sauce and who had requested the sauce on the side. I ended up with Bronzino with butter lemon caper sauce on the side, except the butter lemon caper sauce turned out to be a dollop of mayonnaise with some capers on top! My husband had requested seabass with sundried tomato sauce. His fish was dry and severely stuck to the skillet. The sundried tomato sauce had so much olive tapenade in it that buried the taste of the tomatoes. The side vegetables that accompanied both our fish consisted of a few tiny cubed pieces and were nearly burned, and the couscous was simply bland. My friend's salmon dish had a similar condition. The only person in our party who seemed to be happy with his dish had ordered the fish and chips, which consisted of an impressively-sized filet of well battered and tasty fish (I tried a small piece), accompanied by some rather sad-looking fries. A couple of friends ordered the cheesecake with blueberry crumble on top, which I honestly didn't even bother to try. The restaurant had a family vibe, and at least the section at which we were seated was quite loud, but there were several other sections that seemed to be more private. There was a heartfelt anecdote about the story behind the name of the restaurant on the menu card, about how when the owner was a child and would ask his Nonna what kind of fish they were having for dinner and she would respond, "A dead fish!," and how everyone would laugh, so he decided to name his restaurant The Dead Fish, complete with sketches of dead animals on the menu! Personally, I didn't find this family-insider-joke-turned-restaurant-name-and-menu-theme quite that appetizing, but I guess to each its own. As for the price, we split the bill in three equal ways. Each couple paid just over $140 for two people, including tips. I found that to be much too overpriced for the quality of the food and service that...