In North Myrtle Beach for my parent's 46th wedding anniversary they had the choice of picking anywhere to go for dinner before I took them to the Legends show. Their choice, Bonefish Grill... We had been on the hunt for good seafood ever since we started going to NMB and have not been greatly impressed yet, but knew we could rely on Bonefish.
We show up, there was apparently a 15-minute wait. We thought it would be a problem because the show was at 8pm and the time was 5:45 but, the way people were moving, we figured it wouldn't really be 15- turns out was only about five... the 20 minute wait must have been for the server to get to our table... it took a while, but he showed up and because we had so much time we put in our whole order, drinks, appetizer, and entree. 45 minutes later, we were still waiting for both. He came back to the table with drinks, and appeared to be a bit dismayed we hadn't even gotten our appetizers yet so he said he was going to go back and check.
Almost an hour later, we still hadn't gotten our appetizers and two tables who arrived after us had already finished their dinners and left; three others already had their food. I felt a bit ridiculous sitting there all dressed up for this celebration that I thought was sort of significant - I mean, yea, they were my parents but how many make it this far? 46 years?? And yet people just kept walking by us. Anyway, after the second time he showed up (20 mins later) and saw we didn't have our food yet and we were long dry drink wise said he would go hurry them up, took another order of drinks and apparently went and told his manager. She came to the table and said she had heard about the delay and was terribly sorry. She said she had just got back from the kitchen and promised it would be out in 5 minutes and said she would take care of the appetizers for us. I thanked her and then asked if we could also just get the check too at this point because it was already 7:20 or so and we didn't think we would have much time to make it to the show. We told her we would go ahead and still eat if the entrees we ordered ever showed but that we needed to leave by 7:45, 7:50 at the latest.
Finally the appetizers came- my father's mussels were really good; the broth excellent. My favorite bang bang shrimp was okay. I opted for the flatbread as opposed to the bowl. Unfortunately, the shrimp didn't have much dressing on it, and the flatbread was so black in places rom where they had burned it that it was inedible. I showed the server when he came back to check on us and tell us our meals were on their way. Again, he showed some dismay which at least was nice, but to this point, I wish he had been back enough to at least feed us some drinks to deaden the pain of the evening...
At some point, the manager came back and said she had heard we were celebrating our special occasion and said she was thrilled that we chose Bonefish to celebrate but so sorry it was turning out to be such a bad experience- they are honored when people choose Bonefish to share their special occasions. She said she had also checked on the food, it should be on its way out. Thankfully she didn't offer any excuses which would have sent my mother through the roof- she hates that. The manager then said she wanted to take care of the whole check. I told her that really wasn't necessary, the appetizers were enough- it took forever and my flatbread was ridiculous, but the entrees were fabulous and did not disappoint. She however insisted and left to take care of it.
This was a horrible experience and I felt horrible that no one wanted to treat my parents as special as I did but who can blame me. But, as I told her, though it was beyond disappointing it was not so much that we would stop eating at Bonefish restaurants. Typically the food is always very good, well prepared, and quite sophisticated- these appetizers were the worse to date. But the manager at Bonefish went out of her way to try and make it up to us. I can only imagine however what they did to our food - I hear chefs and line cooks tend to take stuff out on unruly customers despite how much it is there fault. read more