After so many people mentioned Gaffers we decided to try it, despite the high prices. You don't always get what you pay for. It was the most expensive meal of the week and it was also the worst. One person had the chicken and shrimp. The shrimp tasted a little off so he didn't eat them and the chicken was very tough. He had the brisket at Jordan's the night before and he could cut it with a fork. Lesson learned....just because the prices are high doesn't mean the food will be good. read more

We've been to several restaurants in Emarald Isle that were so good until we hit Gaffers-best restaurant ever!!!! What a feast, truly one of the best dining experiences, we went with friends so we shared and sampled a lot and every single thing was great!!! Our server Kayci was sweet and we felt we were so taken care of!!! read more

A delicious addition to Emerald Isle. Food, drinks, and service were above expectations on a busy night. Will definitely have our repeat business. read more

First time in the area!! Had the pleasure of having dinner here based on other yelp recommendations. Our meals were very delicious!!! Highly recommend. read more

Love the atmosphere here and the waitresses are always kind when I ask questions about the menu. The food is always amazing and I'm always happy to be there with the beautiful sport memorabilia they have living the walls. It's an expensive menu, but they sure do please every customer! read more

Food was fresh and delicious. Staff friendly and attentive. Ordered the dinner special, Grouper Oscar. Both the grouper and the crabmeat were top notch. read more

Shortly after arriving there was a party of six that stormed out because they hadn't been assigned a server yet. I don't know how long they had been waiting but based on the disappointment of the staff afterwards I feel that a quick word to the hostess stating that they had been waiting would have solved the issue. Instead, this family packed up and had to find another restaurant with beautiful outdoor seating that would accommodate the larger party size and wait on them immediately. Please give restaurants a chance. No one appreciates better service than I do but I am very long on patience with these places that have had their operations turned upside down. If we want to have restaurants to go to we have to give some slack while things are getting figured out. Our service was just perfect. Michael was attentive but relaxed as well. I'm so tired of being treated like the enemy when I try to go out to eat. This experience was a little glimpse into how things used to be, or maybe how they can be going forward. For food we had Shrimp and Grits and the Veggie Melt. Both were perfectly fine. The outdoor seating was quite pleasant and they were very welcoming to our dog. Best of luck to Gaffers and all the other restaurants just trying to find their way! read more

We were at Gaffers today (9-5-2020) on Emerald Isle and our server Michael did an absolutely amazing job taking care of us. He was very prompt and courteous and made sure our drinks stayed full and saw to our needs extremely well. Thank you Michael for doing such a wonderful job. Keep up the amazing work you do. Bruce and Peggy Chapman from Ona Wv. read more

The food was simply incredible, and the attentive staff made it a wonderful dining experience. We were welcomed, fed well, and left satisfied. Many seafood restaurants can be hit or miss; you pay a premium and you don't know what you will wind up with. Not so at Gaffers! This is going on our list and I look forward to our next visit. godjU6-gexwiv-vaktej read more

Great food, terrific atmosphere, friendly and attentive staff!! My new favorite restaurant on the island. I will be back tomorrow!!

Had lunch at gaffers in Emerald Isle. Food was good. The server forgot about us several times. This is not acceptable to me even if they were busy. Never offered to apologize for forgetting us or making us wait so long. Waiter has poor time management skills he had 2 other tables to take care of. Rolled and sighed when I asked to switch our drinks out because they did not taste correctly. (After I had to flag down another server to get him) Then took 14 minutes to get us new drinks and never brought back 1 of the 4 drinks for some reason? Only here once a year but we will not visit again. Sat inside, no air flow at all. The tables were sweating it was so humid inside. Wish we would have sat outside due to that. read more

We have eaten here several times as we live up the road. It's fine for lunch, the salads are good, and it's a fun place. That being said, we came for late afternoon lunch around 3:15 one day and had a really bad experience with a waitress with lots of attitude, big fake eyelashes, and no class at all. We ordered drinks and looked at the menu. She brought our drinks pretty quickly, and asked if we knew what we wanted. I said yes, and we gave her our orders. I was hungry!! She didn't write anything down and it sounded like she said "I'll be back for your final order" Well...we waited and waited. She didn't come back until after 4:00, and then we realized why. After 4pm is a dinner pricing. So THEN she came back and said "ok, have you decided?" We looked at each other. She hadn't taken our order!! I was angry. My husband said never mind, and then we waited for our "dinner" and were charged dinner pricing on the bill. She had recommended the shrimp and grits as being very good, but I found it lacking in flavor or spices. All because of the waitress, our meal was not what we had hoped. She was inattentive and careless, and seemed like she was more interested in flirting with customers than waiting on her customers. It really left a bad impression. We came back once more and had an extremely long wait, and the food was mediocre. I'm not sure I will go back. Too bad, as it's a great location. read more

My son and husband had breakfast in this new restaurant. The breakfast burrito was packed with fresh eggs, avocado, and cheese. Very yummy! The owner and help were so friendly and accommodating that we will go back and try lu ch and dinner! read more

We had dinner On the patio at Gaffers Sunday evening. Food and service was really good. I had fried shrimp with cole slaw, baked potato, and hush puppies. Shrimp were large and lightly battered. My husband had the grilled chicken and shrimp with mango salsa. He said he would definitely get that again. We enjoyed dinner so much that we decided to go back for breakfast this am. It was wonderful! I had two eggs with sausage, hash brown casserole, and whole wheat toast....yum! To top it off my husband and I both had a Mahi Mimosa. Again, yum! This will now be one of our go-to places. read more

We ate at the bar and had the loaded nachos as a snack between meals and loved. Could not eat it all. i loved that they have indoor and outdoor seating. We will have to go back for dinner sometime. They did allow seating right beside us but still probably 6 feet away. read more

Good food and service. We sat at the bar and had wine and dinner. Overall a pleasant place.

Overall this place is nothing special. The food was alright but nothing that I would go back for. The restaurant itself is nice but the wait time was extremely long and we waited around much longer then the time we were given. read more

Absolutely delicious food and great service. 11 Chef's kisses on the joint chicken! Will definitely be back and check out the atmosphere for dinner time. read more

This place was super busy and we had high expectations. Maybe too high, because we left extremely disappointed and probably won't be back. Unless, it's for drinks and music. It seems like a great place for that type of experience. The menu is very overpriced in my opinion. I don't mind paying extra if the food is exceptional and unique. The service was slow and it took us over 2 hours to have dinner. Nothing we ordered was outstanding. The popular shrimp nachos were dry and some pieces hardened to the point being inedible. The seafood was good, but definitely not $40 worth. If I'm dropping $100 on a meal, I expect to be impressed. Or at least not disappointed. read more

This restaurant has some of the best mahi mahi I have had. The grilled was cooked to perfection. I was very impressed with this Ocracoke classic in Emerald Isle. read more

Excellent food !! Southwest omelette is amazing! Great setting , lots of outdoor seating ! Quick service, everyone is super nice !

Was on vacation at the beach and decided to try this place, Great food!!! And great atmosphere. Live music. Would highly recommend!!!

This place was very clean and the wait staff was very attentive. Ordered the corn beef hash. I was like licking Jesus. Simply amazing and the best I've ever had. Highly recommended. read more

Ate here last night and the food was wonderful. I ordered the seared tuna and it was perfect. Our group also ordered the mahi and prime rib, both were very tasty. Kids meals were as expected. We decided to order the frooms and frickles after dinner (bc we planned to take home what we didn't eat any way) and while the mushrooms were really tasty, the pickles were a bit to thick. Fun atmosphere, very clean, great food. Only minus was the service was a bit slow, but they were packed. Definite recommend! read more

The service was meh and so was the food i hope it only was bc of the covid restrictions willing to try again

I got the citrus tuna salad and the tuna didn't have any flavor what so ever. I think the cardboard box that they pulled it out of would have had more flavor and it was way overcooked. The only reason I'm giving them a two is the Philly cheesesteak that my wife got was ok. We also got the fried pickles and mushrooms and the mushrooms were pretty good but the fried pickles were awful. I think the best thing that we got was the steak fries that come with my wife's Philly cheesesteak.Terrible! read more

We had a wonderful meal on the patio. The menu was really nice and the service was excellent. We will definitely be going back again.

COVID HOTSPOT!!! I ordered food for pick up and was told to go to the bar. The hostess and waiter walking around were perfectly nice and were wearing masks, but when I went to the bar none of the serving staff behind the bar had masks on and there were at least 8-10 unmasked drunk customers at the bar (it was 430 pm). One man was yelling that he had had COVID 3 times and laughing about it, another woman said she was supposed to be quarantining but wasn't, another woman was yelling about what blood type she was because she had needed a blood transfusion due to COVID. They were all so loud I could barely hear the bartender and no one was social distanced at all. It was an extremely cramped space and there was no place for me to wait that was at least 6 feet away from the COVID drunks. There were customers walking to and from the bathroom which was next to me and no one was wearing masks walking around. I got a glimpse into the kitchen and saw that the kitchen staff were not wearing masks, didn't even have masks around there necks or on hand as they were preparing food. I ended up leaving and told the hostess I couldn't eat here because customers were yelling about having COVID with no masks on and kitchen and bar tenders were also not wearing masks and there was no social distancing among customers. Very disturbing experience staff needs to tighten up their COVID regulations ASAP read more

service was awful as well as the food. my burger was completely burnt. actually disgusting. would rather have a burger from hardee's asf. do better read more

We had seen this restaurant anytime we were in the area, so finally decided to give it a try along with another couple on a recent Saturday evening. We couldn't get reservations as they ONLY do that for large parties (10 or more people) but we were assured as long as we were there by 5:00 pm, it would not be a problem to get a seat. Glad we were there at that time, as it got very quickly filled up. The place is nice, and the lady who took our order was nice as well. I had the NC Fried Oysters which came with french fries, coleslaw and hushpuppies ... and while the food was good, we're talking basic potatoes and coleslaw folks, not any expensive food items. There were only 12 tiny fried oysters and 3 tiny round hush puppies ... and for this they charged $29.99!!! I thought this was outrageous! While everyone felt the service and the food was good, but nothing spectacular, it was unanimously felt Gaffers was quite overpriced, and we would probably not be returning anytime soon. There are many other very nice restaurants in the area to dine in with much better prices. Last but not least, we were glad we left when we did, because when the band began playing, it would have been very difficult to carry on a conversation with all that noise ... not the kind of restaurant for us to enjoy dinner with another couple, at least not for us. read more

As promised we went back and had a very good dinner. We made a reservation, were seated on time and service in all aspects was cordial and polite. We had shrimp and grits, mahi mahi, tuna, and scallops. All were very good. Also had shrimp nachos. Not many shrimp but other wise very tasty and a very large portion. Dinner portions were above average as well. We sat outside and it was fun and pleasant. Drinks were pretty good. They had cucumber vodka which my wife liked and her drink was good. I ordered 2 old fashioned, one was perfect, one if not sure what it was but that's ok. We had their best red wine and it was excellent as well. As they grow they could probably add a few wines. Prices for entries were 30-35 so it's a touch pricey but very convenient and good atmosphere. They have live music sometimes so it's a festive groove. They also have a good sandwich menu with lower priced food. This restaurant owner didn't well in Oracoke and he should do well here. read more