Oceans & Ale — Restaurant in Williamsburg

I am just now leaving the restaurant and the experience was so disappointing I felt the need to leave a review. Walked in Friday night at 912. Ordered quickly. Didn't get food until 1006. Almost an hour wait. We had kids and ordered kids meals, seafood Mac, and fajitas.

I've been a waitress before and I know good service. I understand being busy but the issue wasn't there. The waiter with colored hair was ok at first. Forgot the pineapple juice. Whatever. I reminded him but that took 30 minutes because he literally didn't come anywhere near us.

After 50 minutes and no word or letting me know what's going on.... I got up from my seat to go look in the kitchen myself. I saw the food coming up on the counter so I decided to sit down and wait.

The kids meals Mac and cheese literally looked like easy Mac. Like someone made an easy Mac cup and then dumped it in a bowl. My other son got chicken tenders and the fries were really cold like they'd been sitting up.

I love fajitas. They're hard to screw up. I ordered medium rare and they were definitely well done. I asked for no tortillas. Still came with them. Whatever, but it's a waste as I didn't eat them and just furthers that the waiter wasn't paying attention. The chimchurri fajitas seemed flavorless and just drenched in oil. My husband did like his seafood Mac but after waiting so long, we were forced to leave with half of it in to go box.

The food is not the waiters fault, but the service or lack of .... Is. Why not tell me the food is taking a while? It wasn't super busy so I'm not sure what took the kitchen 50 minutes. Just a disappointing experience. I'd rather go...

Tonight myself and fellow group of black women came in and received terrible service from the hostess. I was told there was about an hour wait and then once she inputted my info to get on the list she asked if I was okay with a high top table after I said yes that would be fine. I was added to the list and received a text message stating a 10 minute wait. However, after about 15 mins my group still wasn’t seated. After one of the individuals from my group approached the hostess to inquire about the wait time they were then acknowledged with “Why”. Like why we were asking. I then approached the hostess and asked for the status and was told that the text was sent in error and requested the manager. Once the manager arrived we spoke and within 5-7 mins we were seated. However, that wasn’t the end to our evening as we were out celebrating a birthday. Drinks had been ordered and entree orders were just placed as a white man approached an individual within my group and began to throw racial slurs and get into one of the women in our party’s face and the rest of their party didn’t move from their seats to intervene. Our party did to what was needed to ensure the individual from our party wasn’t harmed. Once the altercation was resolved we as group tried to leave and would never return however, the manager refused to comp our drink bills as we felt it was necessary for us to leave this establishment with the issues we had dealt with once we entered. I wouldn’t recommend coming to this establishment as it showed prejudice practices. I will never return to this...

We have dined at O&A dozens of times over the years. We visited at their new location this past Wednesday at 5:15pm. There was 4 of us and was told the wait would be 30 minutes. I thought that was a while but better than when we went a couple weeks before at the same time on a Thursday and the wait was 1.5 hours. So, we decided to wait, since no one was on the wait list in front of us. We ended up waiting for 40 minutes. During that time 30+ people had finished their meals and left the restaurant. I understand some of these tables may have been held for reservations, but it seems extremely unlikely that a small table for 4 was not available within 30 minutes. We then sit down to eat. The wait staff was professional and efficient. We ordered all of our go-to items. The seafood nachos, fish and chips. steak tacos, fish tacos, and shrimp tacos. We have ordered these items 10-20 times over the years. The seafood nachos were not nearly as good as they have been in the past. They were definitely drier (maybe less crab soup/dip?) and overall, not as loaded. The fish in the fish and chips was a different type. It was much fishier and a different texture. All 3 tacos we ordered were great as usual. I am really hoping it was an off day and not what we should come to expect at the new location. We will give it another try in a couple months and hopefully I will get to adjust...