The Wave Kitchen & Bar — Restaurant in Vero Beach

My wife asked where do you want to go for your birthday lunch - I've heard the Wave in Vero Beach has great food - and it's Gloria's hotel/restaurant it must be great. I should know by now to temper my enthusiasm for famous entertainer side businesses. Arrived 11:00AM Monday 8/2/21 - no hostess at the greeting podium. Must be a little early... be patient... a couple of minutes later we decided it must be seat yourself. As we wandered into the table area we flagged down some setting tables. They went to find the hostess and we were eventually seated. About 10 minutes later a server stopped by and asked if we wanted water or iced tea. Not a great start... 10 minutes later our waitress stopped by... we decided to order the calamari and shrimp appetizer. And... decided to order the meal also, based on the speed of service so far, it might save time. I wanted the fish of the day - she said we have salmon and mahi mahi and maybe Grouper... I asked her to actually check to see if they had Grouper... several minutes later ...no Grouper. We decided to wait on the main order - let's see how the appetizer goes. Thirty minutes later - no appetizer... flag down waitress - almost had to wave my arms to get her to stop. She said they had a staff shortage - the change of staff from breakfast to lunch - do we want to talk to the Manager. Nope - just want my appetizer - in fact you have 5 minutes for that to appear on the table or we will leave. 5 minutes later... hear it comes.... and it was very good. The debate starts - the mains are probably very good also - can we put up with this listless service - we decided a 2 to 3 hour lunch was probably not a good use of our time. By then we were getting testy and decided to get happy somewhere else where they care about a well-executed dining experience. If you have two hours or more for lunch, you will probably have very good food. It will take you lassoing the wait staff to get their attention. Not our idea of a good time - too many restaurants really do care about providing good service - the Wave is just...

My wife, two children and I had to walk out of this restaurant after waiting 30 minutes for a server to initially attend to us. I am sorely disappointed.

This is the worst service I have had in my life. It's my wife's 40th birthday, we arrive at 6:50pm for a 6:45p reservation. It took a few minutes for us to be seated, but that's not my issue. We were seated by about 7:00pm.

After being seated at 7:00pm and waiting 17 minutes, no one even brought us a glass of water. We complained to the hostess at that point. She apologized and said she forgot to tell the server that we had been seated, and went away to "find our server". She returned a minute or so later to let us know someone would come over shortly. Note, TWO servers attended to tables immediately next to us multiple times. How does no one notice we are there. At no point did either server make eye contact, greet us, or apologize for us not being served.

At roughly 7:20pm, a server was yet to come to use. One of the servers I mentioned above attended to the table next to us 3 or 4 times, bringing out their entrees. I walked over to the hostess and let her know that we were still waiting for a server to come over. She again apologized. I asked her if the gentleman attending to the table next to us was our server. She said that he was.

At 7:30pm, the gentleman has attended to that table next to us another couple of times, he has not acknowledged us, apologized or even made eye contact. We got up, let the hostess know we had had enough, and were about to leave. It was at that point that the server FINALLY came over - he still didn't apologize, by the way. Too little, too late. We left.

We had been to The Wave twice before and really enjoyed it. Perhaps this was an anomaly. Perhaps we just got a really really REALLY bad server. The experience ruined what was supposed to be a...

We had dinner at the Wave on March 9. 2025. I would never go back for many reasons. Clams in my husband’s paella were not cleaned. He got a mouthful of sand and had to spit it into a napkin and then go to the restroom to wash out his mouth. He opened a second clam, and seeing more sand, so he didn’t bite into it. We showed the sand on the napkin to our waiter and then my husband asked for directions to the restroom. I should have taken a photo of the sand. It was a spoonful of it.not just a few grains.

The waiter brought a dish with more clams instead of offering a different dish from the menu, but my husband did not even want to risk the “replacement clams” after the mouth full of sand.

In the end, they only let us have a 25% discount on the paella dish. They should have taken off the entire price of the paella dish and apologized.

My Cuban Style Roasted Chicken was dry ( over baked). I ate only a few bites. The sauce did have a good flavor. The skin under the sauce was limp and unappealing.

The bread served as we waited for our meal was dried out as if it had sat uncovered for a while.

4.David, our server, was short and curt with us. When I asked for guidance to compare two different white wines, he acted irritated and said something like “I’m bringing you…”(one of the two). He was also inattentive, running off to the other side of the restaurant and taking a. long time to return to take our order. The restaurant was NOT busy; David did not have other tables near us. It wasn’t as though he was handling a lot of tables.

My husband had bowl of bean soup that was tasty. It was the only good part of the meal.

It was an expensive meal, well over $100 before tax and tip (no dessert) for two people.

We left and salvaged the evening by buying and enjoying ice cream at Kilwin’s...