The Square Whale — Restaurant in Virginia Beach

I kept my expectations exactly where they should be, but a mediocre restaurant is a mediocre restaurant. This place, located inside the Holiday Inn, has a lovely location along the beachfront, and kids of hotel guests eat free with an adult purchase, but that's where the notable positives end. The kids menu is typical kids fare, but all rather lackluster. The cheese pizza seems like it came from something frozen. The macaroni and cheese was just Kraft dropped into a tray. The chicken fingers looked decent enough. I tried the Nashville hot chicken sandwich on a "brioche bun." The bun was dry (brioche is almost impossible to be dry because it's enriched!) and the chicken was unremarkable and seemed more like a play on Buffalo chicken than anything else. Fries all around were meh.

If kids didn't eat free, I would never, ever pay to have them eat here, not when there are decent restaurants all around the area. And if I weren't traveling with kids, I'm not sure how strong the value proposition is just for adults.

It's a convenient location, but that's mostly it. We tried it during our stay at the hotel to see how it would go and quickly decided we'd be better off exploring other options for future meals.

Staff was pleasant, though, if a bit...

Waiter was very nice when he said that they were out of the wine we chose, so we decided on another. He came back with the wrong one, but explained they were also out of the second wine we chose. He wouldn't take the other wine away when we said we didn't want it until we had asked a couple of times. He ignored us for a while until we asked for his attention. He suggested that I walk up to the bar and see what they had for myself, which I was happy to do. Only one option for wine. No option for bottles, only glasses. My plastic water cup had some sort of sticky substance under the rim. On top of that, my salad was so bad. The avocado and tomatoes were totally rotten, and the lettuce reeked of preservatives like it had just been dumped out of the bag onto my plate. My husband's panini was literally marinara sauce between two slices of bread. Good, but it wasn't at all what the menu described. As a person in the service industry, I understand how frustrating and embarassing it is when your management will not train you on the menu, or update you when there are shortages or changes in items. Absolutely not worth the wait...

Upon entering there was nearly 20 mins before even being acknowledged that we were there. We asked for fries and a kids mac and cheese so we could feed our little one first. The fries came quickly but only about half were able to be eaten. They appeared to have taken 2 trips in the oil or just left in too long. The mac and cheese came about 45 mins later cold and with the rest of the food. The service area is open and all of the servers were just congregated there having a blast. Of the 3 people in the kitchen, 2 seemed idle for most of the time we were there. Right before the food came our server remembered that the mac and cheese was suppose to come with the fries and blurted that out loudly. The $14 burger was pretty poor quality beef, over cooked, and cold with again over cooked fries. The salmon was good but overcooked as well. Buffalo chicken was cold and a cheap patty with dried franks red hot on it. If we weren't starving and had walked there, we would have gone...