Saltwater Reviews Summary

Food Quality

Pros:

• "The food was superb and the team were so friendly."
• "Excellent fish and chips. Fresh and tasted great."
• "GF batter is tasty and tasted like 'normal' batter."
• "The front of house needs improvement or guidance. The ordering process is quite slow and tonight I waited an absolute age after ordering tonight (35 mins) because of miscommunication and then food I ordered given to other customers which resulted in a further wait, very frustrating."
• "The food was outstanding, as the fish & chips were cooked very well and the portion size was more than good!"
• "Delightful place for fish and chips."
• "Had a great takeaway from here. The haddock was cooked to order which I prefer and it tasted really great."
• "Food is amazing but the staff aren’t great! The waiting times for getting seated and taking orders (and actually getting the food is a joke)!"

Cons:

• "Food however let it down. We ordered 2 fish cakes as sides for my boy and they were a very strange grey colour inside and very hard inside."
• "On the fish ordered some of the batter was not cooked fully and as a whole the chips had a very dry taste to them."
• "Large cod apparently really poor tasting food worse fish’n’chips I’ve ever had absolutely shocking."
• "The fish was thin and rubbery also. Really disappointed!!"
• "I ordered a large Haddock which I had to wait to be cooked( not a problem ). Regular chips jumbo sausage and mushy peas pickled onion and pickled egg. When the fish was cooked it was plonked into a cardboard box straight from the fryer. Everything else placed in bags. By the time I got outside to my car the fat had come out of the box all over my clothes ( brand new shorts). It was swimming in oil. I was not amused. On sitting eating it well The batter was raw inside. The mushy peas were lukewarm. I can honestly say it was the worst fish and chip meal i have had."
• "Food standards were poor, refried chips, battered sausage seemed like it had sat there for to long & scampi was cooked fresh but obviously a cheap scampi."
• "Fish was dry as a bone, obviously been sitting in the hot plate for too long."
• "Cod and chips. The cod had hardly any batter in and what was there was like rubber! The chips cold and tasted like they'd been recooked."

Service

Pros:

• "The restaurant was spotless too. We will be back!"
• "Food is nice, reasonable prices. The staff we met today were friendly, especially the lady with the elephant tattoo my eldest complimented today was super lovely and helpful."
• "Lovely traditional food. Fabulous hard-working staff, coping admirably with a pretty constant queue, for both takeaway and eat-in."
• "Saltwater is awesome. Great quality food, reasonably priced and staff are amazing!"
• "Had a great walk around the fort up the road and walked here. We arrived and the place was rammed but staff welcomed us and cleared a table quickly for us."
• "Nice clean place to eat staff fall over themselves to help food was lovely prices was spot on nice place to go would recommend this to anyone there is also take away if you don't want to sit in."
• "The lad with glasses that took our order on monday, what a lovely fella, give that boy a raise, such warmth and very welcoming he was, and the fish and chips were absolutely lovely :)"
• "Great fish and chips again thank you, never disappointed Love the Gluten free choice, can’t wait to eat in your lovely restaurant."

Cons:

• "The ordering process is quite slow and tonight I waited an absolute age after ordering tonight (35 mins) because of miscommunication and then food I ordered given to other customers which resulted in a further wait, very frustrating."
• "It was actually painful to watch how slow the staff work."
• "We had to repeat what we wanted several times when ordering as the server was very distracted and did not seem to be paying attention."
• "I ordered a large Haddock which I had to wait to be cooked( not a problem ). Regular chips jumbo sausage and mushy peas pickled onion and pickled egg. When the fish was cooked it was plonked into a cardboard box straight from the fryer. Everything else placed in bags. By the time I got outside to my car the fat had come out of the box all over my clothes ( brand new shorts). It was swimming in oil. I was not amused."
• "Food started to come out to the table and we questioned one dish where we could see that the gravy that was ordered looked like curry. The lady who brought the dish out told us to 'dip our fingers in it' to see what it was as she didnt know."
• "The whole exchange was really rude and uncomfortable and soured the meal which cost over £120."
• "The experience started indoors, a quick check of the menu and we realised this was gonna be hella expensive, going on £13 for one fish and chip meal!"
• "My father (in his mid 70s) came to visit so we decided to eat in the restaurant with my husband and two young children. We ordered our food, but being vegetarian my only option was vegan nuggets which I didn't fancy so asked for a portion of chips. I wasn't allowed to order it as my children were sharing an adult size meal and we weren't ordering 4 main courses only 3. I thought this was a bit pedantic but told the waiter I would queue at the takeaway section of Saltwater to get some chips and bring it in to eat with my family. I lost a lot of time queueing from the nice family meal we had gone out for, I did think it was a bit ridiculous, but wanted to eat with them. I returned to the table with my take away chips from Saltwater and the rest of the families food was arriving so we sat down to eat and enjoy each others company. At this point the manager came flying over. She had been managing the flow of the take away but left her station and arrived at my table to start shouting at me. I wasn't allowed to eat chips I had bought from her shop in the restaurant. I explained I had tried to order them but had been denied. She told me that I wasn't able to make up the rules. She was really yelling at me, the whole restaurant was staring and it was all over a bag of chips I had brought from her. It made me feel so upset. I explained we weren't after trouble we just wanted to eat, enjoy our meal, pay and leave. She carried on yelling so I explained we could all leave now and not pay for the meals that my family were about to eat or she could leave us be as we really weren't after trouble. She finally left us alone, but I was shaken and upset. My two children were actually in tears so I had to comfort them. I then had a couple on the neighbouring table say how sorry they were that we were treated like that and they knew the owners and they would be horrified I'd they knew what had happened. I do really like the food there but the treatment of the manager was just so upsetting and our family outing and meal ruined over a complete lack of flexibility and lack of any customer service skills on her part. So I would recommend the take away but not to restaurant. I'm so sad this happened to my family and we were treated and spoke to like this and my children were so upset by the whole incident."