Crab Quay House

When we walked up the stairs to the restaurant we entered by the bar where two girls we standing. One of the girls looked at us with a expressionless face and asked… ‘what?’ as if she couldn’t, for the life of her, figure out why we were there.
Once she remember what her job was, we were seated and a waitress was sent to our table.
Interestingly enough, in a practically empty restaurant, we were still seated at the back near the washrooms and the kitchen… which actually didn’t turn out to be a bad thing.
We were able to see the Chef at work with his team as they prepared our open-​faced pulled port sandwich and fish & chips with mushy peas and it’s always a good sign when you see the Chef taking pictures of his food before you’re presented with it!
After our foods photo-​shoot and repeated ringing of his bell the Chef was unable to get either of the girls attention so he came out of the kitchen and brought the meals to us himself.
It gave us the opportunity to chat with him and we commented on him taking pictures because, well, I was about to do the very same thing. As it happens, Chef Rob had been brought in (I suspect, that day) to turn this place around due to some rather less than favourable reviews they had received on Tripadvisor (judging strictly on our experience thus far, I reckon those reviews will not improve until the front of house staff does).
The food was fantastic, plain and simple and we thoroughly enjoyed our meals. Absolutely worthy of 5 stars. After watching the Chef work with his team in the kitchen you could see that they were all eager to learn from him and they took pride in their work.
Had it not been for the shoddy service we received from the wait staff, this would have been a 5-​star review and the ONLY reason why it’s not a 3-​star review is because the food was THAT good.
Nice job Chef Rob. Nice job.

Food was good. But the service was disappointing. A group of 9 of us across 3 generations but we waited and waited for our meals. A couple of drink orders got lost. An extra order of one dish appeared.
The people seemed nice. Just lacking in organization.