RipTide Restaurant & Bar — Restaurant in West Haven

The restaurant being by the beach is, it’s a beautiful view. Unfortunately the service and food was underwhelming. I want to go in order….To start, my friend and I were seated and given a drink menu(no food menu). We also asked for a high chair, for my friends 7 month old. We put in drink orders in the mean time. We sat around and waited for the high chair and food menus for quite a while. The drinks came out, yet we still had no menu or high chair. We had to get up and get the high chair ourselves along with a menu. Only one menu(because they were running low) The drink I got was a frozen margarita. It was barely frozen, which meant it sat at the bar for a while. Mean while other people were seated way after us, and were already getting menus and waters(which we had to ask a few times for water) We ordered the New York style calamari. The calamari its self needed salt, it was very bland. The spicy sauce carried the calamari. We both ordered the fried cod tacos for our main meal. The pico de gallo and garlic-lime crema was nice and fresh. The cod its self lacked flavor and seasoning. It didn’t taste fresh. The cod was very dry. The pico de gallo and crema carried the cod fish. The cod fish should of been the star of the dish and it wasn’t. The taco was over packed with the pico de gallo. To me they were trying to mask the fact the cod fish by its self tasted bland. Even the French fries ere not seasoned. I am also compassionate to our server. We were outside and there was a big table of people. She was the only server for all of us out there. She wasn’t very attentive to our table. She forgot about us a few times. I would say, if there are big parties , there should be more than one server in that area. My experience was underwhelming. Which makes me sad because this restaurant is in a...

My girlfriend and I were excited to try out a new waterfront restaurant knowing that Dive Bar next door is excellent. We decided to take a chance on Riptide. We were extremely disappointed.

As a preface to all of this, I NEVER write reviews. I am going out of my way to save others from wasting their money as it was really that bad.

For appetizers, we ordered fried calamari and clam chowder. I say this without exaggeration, the fried calamari was the most disgusting and poorly executed attempt I’ve ever experienced. 90% of the calamari were tentacles which is absolutely not normal, and beyond that, were nearly inedible from how soggy and rubbery they were. My girlfriend barely could get one piece down without choking. Absolutely disgusting. The clam chowder was a flavorless sludge with extreme amounts of black pepper.

For the main course, I had the “Masterpiece” which is a chicken cutlet, mozzarella, roasted peppers, arugula and herb mayo on a grinder. I have quite literally made better sandwiches in my own kitchen. The bread was stale and the proportions were so off that I never was able to get a bite of everything at once.

My girlfriend had a burger which was serviceable at best. It was cooked to her liking, but was missing the chipotle mayo she asked for. The bacon was overly crispy and nearly burnt.

As for the atmosphere, the inside is nicely decorated but is very loud. They have multiple acoustic panels all over the walls which seem to amplify the sound, making it nearly impossible to hear one another.

Overall, Riptide should be extremely embarrassed by their low effort food. It’s clear they’re just capitalizing on their waterfront location and sending out bad food. They merely act as a backup for people that would rather not wait to get into Dive Bar. Absolutely avoid...

Let me start by saying I NEVER review a place but tonight I was a little upset. My boyfriend and I live about 5 minutes down the road from riptide and visit quite often (I'd say at least once a month). Tonight was a different experience. We walked up and noticed it wasn't too busy for a Sunday evening and were pretty excited that there wouldn't be a wait. After being seated by the hostess, she sat down three more tables AFTER us. The waitress then came into the patio and addressed all three tables except us. The hostess, who seated everyone, then came in and brought utensils to the other tables except us. I tried to give the waitress the benefit of the doubt but when the hostess who seated everyone clearly knows which order we were seated, it was a little upsetting that we still were not being greeted or addressed. It seemed as though someone at one of the tables after us was a "regular" and thus treated differently, but little did they know so were we. I can't tell you how many times people tell us to go to Dive Bar right next door instead and we always rave about Rip Tide. Unfortunately, tonight made us feel different. As we left, we noticed there was a certain age demographic and it feels like we just didn't...