The Beach Tiki Bar & Boil — Restaurant in Walled Lake

We live very close to Lake St Clair and the St Clair River with lots of waterside dining that we enjoy. We had heard about The Beach Tiki Bar a couple years ago and had not made the drive to check it out. Prepping for my choice of where to go for my Birthday dinner i looked up the menu and even watched the video on the website. Three of us decided to make the hour drive to Walled Lake looking forward to trying out this new-to-us waterside restaurant for my birthday dinner. It looked like it would be something different and fun. We wish it had been. Our first clue should have been the wrinkled paper posted down low at the hostess stand that stated an 18% gratuity will be added to all bills $50 and up…. That would basically apply to any meal for two? We were offered covered outdoor or open outdoor seating. It was a pleasant evening so we opted for open air. Right away things appeared shabby and I don’t mean shabby chic. The patina on all the tables make them look dirty, the edges are tacky/sticky. The in person menu did not appear to have a number of items that we had planned for from the online menu. When we asked about calamari the waitress told me I was obviously looking at the old menu, that I couldn’t have seen it and should have looked up the new updated menu?? She said she had no idea why we didn’t look up the new menu?? It was basically a rude response. How could we know that Google had it all wrong? We raised eyebrows but let it go and placed a drink order. A 9oz Wine, a coke and waters were served in disposable 16oz cups. Hubby ordered a tall, on tap, beer which on the menu is stated as a 22oz. The beer came out in a glass 3/4 full with no foam. She commented that she didn’t know why it wasn’t full as she walked away, perhaps she should have checked with the bartender before she brought it out? Again we raised eyebrows and continued to peruse the menus, which by the way, were all tacky/sticky. We were having a hard time finding something that really sounded good. I believe the shabbiness and poor service had something to do with it. We went back to the menu and after a few minutes decided that we were going to just finish our drinks and find somewhere else to eat dinner. We weren’t mad, this was just not working and not at all a place we wanted to spend any more time or money at. We nicely asked for the bill. Hubby finished his beer and proceeded to pour the ice water from the 16oz cup into the empty beer glass…. It filled it to within a half inch! We turned the plastic cup over to verify the size and it was printed on the bottom that it was 16oz. 16oz of water was much more than he had received for his “22oz tall beer”. When I asked the waitress if it was indeed a tall beer she said it was. When I showed her the 16oz of water poured into the 22oz glass nearly filled it she could not understand what I was saying other than, oh yes, I do owe him a bit more because it was so low…. We were not asking for more beer. We ordered a 22oz drink and were served a glass that could not have held 18oz had it been filled. We paid the bill and went down the street to the Driftwood and had a wonderful dinner with excellent service in a clean and enjoyable environment. This was the dinner I had hoped for. There were a couple of other tables that came in while we were there that commented that they had also left the Beach Tiki Bar for very similar reasons. Bottom line about the Beach Tiki Bar: is it waterside, yes, nice views. Was it clean NO. Good service? NO. Good vibe? NO. Good food? We will never know. Definitely DO...

At first glance I felt that this would be a great birthday dinner with family and friends because they have two of my favorite things, a water view, and seafood. A member of my party called before we arrive to make sure could separate the bill because they would be about seven of us dining, and the restaurant employees say yes, it’s no problem to separate the bill. This made everyone prepared to have an option to pay with cash or card.

So many things went wrong during our experience that I don’t even have the energy to communicate it all, but here are a few.

After we were done eating our waitress Chanel sat our bill on the table and left, when she returned, we asked her to separate the bill for us. She explain that they cannot separate the bill at their establishment. We explained that we called ahead and an employee said they could, and we also explained to her that we saw a waitress ask the table behind us if they would like the bill separated, Chanel came up with an excuse, and suggested that we try to separate the bill amongst ourselves. She came over after about 5 minutes with a look of disgust and pointed at her watch, letting us know that she needed to hurry up and take the bill up. We explained that we needed more time. She later came over after about 10 minutes with separate bills placed them on the side of the table and walked away without saying a word. The separated bills were not completely accurate, but we were able to figure it out. She made this experience extremely stressful!

I don’t suggest the shrimp curry and rice. My daughter received about a half cup of rice five shrimp, curry sauce and a few pieces of cilantro in a small bowl for $24.95, it was not worth the price. I wish i had pictures of this, but I did not think that I would need to.

The firecracker shrimp was good, we purchased more than one order.

The rum bucket was very tasty, but when Chanel brought it to the table, the side of the cup had dirty wet finger print smudges on it.

If you need extra condiments, like a side of ranch, tartar sauce, onions or lettuce for your sandwich, prepare to pay a fee, we were charged a fee for every extra condiment that we asked for and this is not the norm and most restaurants.

The firecracker sauce was so good that I asked for the sauce on the side with my Fish ‘n Chips but I did not receive it until 15 minutes later and the fish was almost gone.

I’m too stressed to even say anything else, I wish our stay was more pleasant than that...

When I walked in the first thing that happened was a waitress running into me with hands full of booze because they werent looking where they were going. But hey. Things happen. Our waitress was nice and did well considering she had the whole outside it seemed- as such we didn't get very good attention and small parts of the order were missed due to understaffing.

We asked to move to a different table with more room but we're told there was "zero" chance and it was for the owners family. yikes.

We ordered drinks that took longer than the meals to come out. And one had to be ordered multiple times as they were out of the ones ordered the first two times. Then larger sizes were brought than was ordered.

Then our food came out and the manager yelled at the boy for putting it in the table near us because the "owners family" was coming in the door so the kid burnt himself trying to hold it in his arms instead. Doesn't encourage you to come back when their lowly patrons aren't worth regular acceptable service. My gosh. 🙄

Our poor server was tied up the rest of the time w were there and she did her best and did well considering. Then checks came and she mentioned we didnt need to add the top because gratuity was already covered.

What? No where on the menu or doors is this stated and no mention was made prior to the checks being delivered. Then I saw we were charged for the wrong sized drinks. (Normally the beer that came after the meal was served would have been free let alone twice the prize, but at least she quickly fixed the over charge.)

But then there was the issue if the automatic gratuity. The one that was never mentioned. We had a group of 7. Nothing huge but could fall into a larger group bucket so fine, no big deal. Only we took a second glance at the amount and they added a 35% GRATUITY TO THE BILL!!! When we asked to speak to a manager wr were told "good luck finding one" and while we waited I took that opportunity to double check the menu. NOTHING about automatic gratuity anywhere on it.

Then the manager blamed it on the computer and spend 15 minutes resolving the issue without even apologizing, let alone offering anything to bridge the lack of trust this created.

On top of that the chicken was dry, the avocado was brown, and the bathrooms were gross.

If you go here make sure you triple check the bill because something fishy is certainly going on here. I, for one, will not be coming back. And I'll be making sure everyone I know...