Ocean 27 — Restaurant in Virginia Beach

I’ve never left a poor review for any business, ever. Please read this review and DO NOT EAT HERE.

I am not a demanding, difficult, or high maintenance patron of any establishment, and I tend to set my standards pretty low when it comes to dining out. My idea of a great date with my wife is Smashburger, actually. My family and I are on vacation, and we drove to Virginia Beach all the way from Colorado. The beach, by the way, was excellent. It was only the second time that some of my sons had ever even seen the ocean, and we really wanted to celebrate having arrived at our destination. The entire road trip vacation has been fun for sure, but Virginia Beach was the true destination of our 3600 mile round trip tour. I took my family to this seafood restaurant on the beach to enjoy what we expected would be “catch of the day” seafood, and excellently prepared at that. We were celebrating our first family dining out experience since the start of the pandemic, our first road trip in 4 years, a wonderful (and very rare) day at the beach, and an early celebration of my wife’s upcoming 40th birthday. For about $30 a plate for the lunch menu, I expected reasonably fine dining and decent service. My wife, who has sensitivities to many seasonings that cause inflammation, specifically asked if the steamed shrimp plate contained any seasoning at all, and was assured that the shrimp would not. We were sharing that entree because she knew that the other food (boiled potatoes and green beans) would likely be inedible for her. When our food arrived after 25 minutes, not only was the shrimp peppered with paprika, but it was cold and many of the crustaceans were not even de-veined. All of the food was cold actually. The food was simply plopped on the table by people who were not our servers, who basically did not even address my family or ask if everything looked ok. The waitress was not available to even ask about the seasoning. There were no napkins or silverware of any kind brought to our table, and we had to get up and go ask someone for them, who grabbed them from behind the bar. The entire time we were there, we were not offered a single refill on our beverages (water) either. We did not see our server until about 25 minutes after we were served our food. My wife had pulled her shrimp apart and eaten the portions that were shielded from paprika by the shell in order to eat something. When we finally saw our server and told her about the shrimp, her response was literally “oh”. Not “I’m sorry” or “how can I make it right?” Just “Oh.” Two of my kids ate “fish and chips”, which was fried shrimp and French fries. My other children ate pepperoni pizza and French fries. By the way, there is a MANDATORY 20% gratuity added to all orders at this restaurant because these are “career waitstaff” and they deserve a tip like that (there’s a note declaring that on the menu.) Our bill came to almost $150.00. Normally I am a very gracious person, and I would have assumed that our poor service could be associated with the staff being short handed. In this instance, however, there were more staff than customers. Wait staff, bartenders, and even kitchen staff were all lounging around in the dining area. There is absolutely no excuse for this treatment. I would have normally (and happily) tipped at least 20%, but we did not receive any service during the 50 minutes we were there, nearly 25 of those minutes spent waiting on fried food and boiled shrimp and potatoes. There were exposed countertops strewn about with piles of napkins and half used bottles of mustard and malt vinegar. Our table was dirty, there was no music, and the atmosphere was actually pretty awful. Do yourself a favor and spend your money at Applebees. You’ll receive a much better plate of food for a much more reasonable price, any specific requests will be honored, and any mistakes will be fixed immediately. At Applebees, I guarantee you’ll receive service that is worthy of a 20% tip.

I’m embarrassed to confess that I...

My Girlfriend’s Family and I (party of 5) went to go eat there on 8/5/25. Only reason my we decided to eat there was because my girlfriend want to set on the swinging chair. Everything started out great, until we realized that we basically had to be our servers. Only thing the bartender did was grab our bottle Pepsi products ($5 a bottle) and bring our food to the table. I’ve been cooking professionally for over 14 years and I’m an executive chef for an Appalachian Restaurant. Out of all the places we ate on our stay here in Va beach, this place is scamming people. This restaurant was the only place we ate at that had automatic 18% gratuity added to their bill (every bill) , The Gran Patron, Mexican restaurant across the street was cheaper than this place and had better food and larger portion sizes. I don’t know if they updated the pricing on the menu since they’ve opened but the facts that I paid $28 dollars for a Buffalo Chicken wrap with fries and a soda is outrageous. Our total for our entire bill over $200. Mind you we only had 3 order of fishes and chips, it was only 1 (7oz) filet of fried haddock and about 3 oz of fries per order. That alone was $80 dollars, My Gf’s son had a kids burger and kids chicken tenders which both came with tater tots but somehow ended up being $30 dollars. Plus my Buffalo Chicken Wrap($28) we also had order 3 bottles of soda($15). We weren’t expecting our bill to be to be over $200 dollars without actually purchasing any sort of Alcoholic drinks. When we started to question our bill to the bartenders, one of them immediately got defensive about and started telling the other bartender to go get the manager on duty when all we had was a question as too why our bill was so high. 4 adult meals and 2 kids meals. They started going on about that bartenders need to get paid too. Well if they actually work for the money they’d probably get tipped more. There were about 5 people at the bar and the fact they needed 3 bartenders to manage that is beyond me. Not one of them decided to go out and check tables to see if everything was okay. Half of the table weren’t even set, we had to go to an empty table to grab napkins and other condiments. I overheard the table behind us table about how watered down their alcoholic drinks were. Good thing we didn’t order any. Only thing they tried to do was give 1 of us a free shot? For 200 dollars you should be offering more than 1 free shot. They also tried to explain to us that all the restaurants on the boardwalk do the 18% gratuity, which is not true again, Gran Patron didn’t charge us for the 18% gratuity nor did The Deck Sea Grill and bar. I understand having to make money for both the restaurant and bartenders, but if the bartenders actually went out to check on tables and be interactive with the tables they’d probably get more tip then just the 18% gratuity out of the whole bill. I’m guessing because they know they’re forcibly getting that 18% gratuity out of every bill they can just get by with making drinks. Overall pretty mediocre food for the price they are charging. Don’t spend your money here and go to another restaurant where the food is...

We walked by this place and it looked SO COOL. However, apparently Ocean 23 bar and grill is a completely different place than the place with all the cool games and seating, or at least that's what we were told. We asked to sit in the cool area, with the rocking picnic tables (what! That's amazing!), and the hostess acted like this was an enormous imposition on everyone. For the end of the story, keep in mind that her hostess booth is literally at entrance to the cool seating area. There are 7 of us, 2 adults, 1 teenager, and 4 kids 9-4. The kids are well-behaved, polite, and calm. We were NOT seated at a fun rocking table, but at a normal round table, which easily fit 7 seats (remember the hostess acted like finding a table that would fit us was akin to hunting down unicorns. WITHOUT a virgin. We got the world's most apathetic waitress, but eventually ordered. While we were waiting for our food, we asked the waitress if it was ok for us to take the kids to the outdoor games area while we waited for our food. She said it was fine, so we went to play corn hole and giant jenga with the kids. After about ten minutes, a freaking SECURITY GUARD ambles over to tell us we really couldn't be there for longer than "maybe 15-20 minutes, because this is really for the patrons of the restaurant." WHAT THE HELL. I politely said that we had been there about ten minutes, and that we had asked our waitress if it was ok. He continued to insist that he'd been watching the time and that we only could stay about 5 more minutes. Finally, I said that we were waiting for our food, and I didn't really understand the point of him telling us this. At which point he said "oh! Ok then. No problem." And left. A few minutes later, the hostess came to tell us our food was ready. After all that, it was pretty underwhelming. The drinks were good though. On the way out, my husband stopped and told the hostess that we were very unhappy with our experience, and that he wanted to leave a comment with the manager. It was at this point that she claimed that the cool, fun-looking place and the restaurant were 2 completely different restaurants! Look. If it's 2 restaurants, fine, whatever. Having the hostess station at the entrance to the place that we very obviously were trying to sit at, and then acting like WE were the problem for trying to get to a kid-friendly space is deeply dishonest. Then giving us poor service and pretty much rolling your eyes whenever we tried to ask a question is pretty crappy. We have a fairly large amount of disposable income, and a week of vacation at Virginia Beach. This could have been our go-to place this...