Tanners Lakeside Restaurant & Bar — Restaurant in Winter Haven

Walking into this place it was a bit confusing at first, one area was closed off, and then you see a sign that says seat yourself. You would ask yourself where, until you keep walking and see the bar, a few tables and chairs and then there is the patio. That's where this story begins. This heavy hurricane storm sliding door separates the inside from outside. Yes, you have to watch your step, and slide the door open and to be polite slide it closed behind you. This day was a very windy day beautiful afternoon Temps. The patio is off the water, it looks like an old pier with the old splintering wood but it was a great view and you can see the boats and water crafts going by. The band has started playing in the distance but close enough to hear and enough. My friend and I found an available table on the farthest end of the pier patio closest to the water. We noticed as we sat down because it was so windy we saw the table umbrella spinning in the holder. We both noticed the umbrella was not snapped in properly and that's probably why it's moving like that. We joked about it flying away. Finally the server comes over. She sounded like she was tired of repeating the same greeting over and over it was dry and unattractive. we got water order our food she ordered some shrimp burger I ordered mussels and I wanted to try the soup of the day. I was told it was lobster bisque. The soup came. It was disgusting. It was literally lobster base and thin cream. I sent that back. Our food came and immediately a wind picked up the umbrella from our table and hit my friend square in the head. The server said she was going to get the manager. Another server asked if she needed ice I said yes. it took them so long to bring ice that the couple next to us gave us his cup that had a few cube of ice in it for the time being. they finally came with the towel of ice, and the manager showed up and asked the stupidest question, what happened, did it just come out and hit you.... Um Yes!. we told her that we saw that it wasn't clipped properly, she saidbthey are supposed to do that every day. She apologized and said she was going to get some paperwork. She came back with an incident report did not fill it out correctly. I watched everything she wrote which was nothing but my friends name and phone number. Then she proceeded to insult us by offering an appetizer or dessert for them not securing the umbrella. We declined the food was not good enough to get something else from them. They should have at least paid for her meal. I am upset that because someone was lazy and did not do their job, my friend got injured and it ruined our Saturday. Not giving this place a second chance when...

First time at this establishment. I have a lot of patience for mistakes at restaurants, especially if they're extremely busy. The tables were all full, but there's only about 15 tables total in the inside dining area. Plus another 6 or so outside.

There was plenty of wait staff. Employees kept coming from the back area to help out and deliver food and a lot of servers walking around.

My wife and I met with her family who had been there around 30 minutes already. There were 7 of us. 4 of our party hadn't gotten their drinks when we arrived, which were two sodas and two coronas.

The server came up and asked if we were ready to order right away, we said no. She said she would come back in a little bit to check on us. 20 minutes later, she came back. Didn't even take our drink orders the first time.

We placed our order. Reminder that the party arrived 30 minutes prior and still had no food but had placed their order before us.

My wife and I, plus the others at our table received our drinks 30 minutes later. Once again, just sodas and two bottled beers.

It's been approximately an hour, no food, not even salads. Then my wife and I who placed orders after the others, received our food first. Then 10 minutes after that, the rest of the table got their food. I was almost done eating by the time the rest of the party got theirs.

I ordered the fried gator platter. The food was okay, the breading was too much and just added crispiness to the meat but no real seasoning. They also provided a horse radish sauce which was alright. Most people don't like horse radish so I'm not sure why that would be their main sauce for dipping on a platter.

The tall chairs were extremely uncomfortable and my wife was anxious to just pay and leave. The server came back, we said we needed boxes, she came back with checks 10 minutes later and no boxes. We reminded her again and 5 minutes later returned with them.

Overall we spent approximately 2 hours here with a ton of delay between everything. Like I said before, I'm very patient if a place is busy but they were not. They had adequate staff for the amount of tables, but we rarely saw our server who took massive time between trips helping us.

Not a place we will be going back to again in the future as the food did not make up for the...

To whom it may concern:

I was sitting at the bar with my wife Saturday evening. Our waitress was Tammy. Tammy took our drink order and gave us a menu. She came by with-in ten minutes, or so, and took our food order. We ordered an appetizer of firecracker shrimp, salmon salad, and a ribeye steak, all is good. Shortly after ordering we received gator bites instead of the firecracker shrimp we ordered. Still no problem, the gator bites were good and we were hungry. We waited for our dinner, what I believe was too long, about 50 minutes. Tammy came by for a second drink and informed us that there was a large party and the kitchen was back-up. We obviously didn’t like this, but in today’s environment understandable. She came by another time to inform us that we were “2 tickets away” from being completed. Now well over an hour after sitting down.

About 5 minutes later our dinner arrived. My meal looked great. My wife’s, salad with salmon on top, was a salad with tuna on top. My wife questioned the tuna. Tammy’s response was to point to scribbling on a small note book and saying “that is what you ordered”. Several points here. While taking our order Tammy commented that she writes poorly and can’t read her own writing. Personally, I don’t think she can write at all. Second, when my wife ordered I was surprised that she ordered salmon, due to the fact that we had salmon Friday night for dinner. I took special note on what she ordered, because of that fact.

After her waving the note book in our face, I became upset at her insistence and rudeness, practically while I was 100% sure that she was wrong. I offered to pay for what we consumed, but declined the dinner. She told us to get out. I offered to pay again, but got the same response again.

Is this acceptable behavior of your wait...