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| - Anyone for seafood? YES!!! How about seafood at Sea Level? NOOooOO!! Why not? Because: (1) oysters are just OK; (2) super greasy, bland food; (3) less than stellar service (we got charged for another table's more expensive meal); overall, we should have spent our $65 before tip for 2 elsewhere.
I was super excited to learn that there is a seafood / oyster house down the street from where we live because I LOVE SEAFOOD, especially fresh raw oysters. If they have them, I'm ordering them! I've been to Sea Level a few times and my advice would be to just stick with the $1 oyster happy hour and pass on everything else.
Good ambience. I can't speak much for the indoor dining because I prefer outdoor patio dining if it's available. I will say that for this being a newer restaurant, each of the patio tables I've sat at were wobbly, which would be a vestige of an older establishment so it's a little bewildering. Otherwise, the patio is tucked back from the street and if you go after rush hour on a weekday, it serves as a calm escape from the bustle of Uptown.
Not good service. Our server got my order wrong, she served us duck tacos instead of a duck salad. They were quick to serve the salad and offered the tacos complimentarily, which was nice of them. Our server only came back sporadically to check up on us, which is tolerable except when we asked for a sauce for our bland crispy shrimp, they never brought it.
Finally, we typically don't review of check before signing except to calculate the tip. I wondered why our meal could be $90 for 4 oysters, 2 salads and a crispy rock shrimp order... When I looked at the ticket, I noticed that we were charged for someone else's meal. We had to find our absent-minded waitress to correct it and even after that, she didn't seem very apologetic for actually overcharging our credit card for the wrong meal. If I hadn't checked, it would never have been corrected!
Greasy, bland food. We wanted seafood because we were looking for something on the lighter side but boy were we wrong! We had:
++ oysters. We ordered the Sea Level cheap ones ($1.75/oyster) and the Delaware most expensive ones ($3.75/oyster) to do a comparison. Although the Delaware ones were a little less briny, they weren't much different in taste.
OYSTER TIP: You can get: AYCE equal quality oysters at Georges Brasserie during their Sunday brunch; equal quality for cheaper at Pearlz Oyster Bar with better service and better food; AMAZING oysters at Baku; better quality at Capital Grille or BLT Steakhouse.
++ crispy shrimp. The sauce was really bland and the shrimps were heavily breaded and soggy. You can get better at Baku, Fahrenheit, Cowfish, or Mr. Tokyo Sushi.
++ Caesar salad. It was a huge portion but the dressing was about the same quality as grocery-store Ranch dressing; not even Newman's brand. It was very bland and mostly mayonnaise without the extra flavor. All steakhouses do Caesar better as does Pearlz Oyster Bar.
++ duck salad. The salad is a huge portion and the dressing is a sweet cranberry-based dressing with candied pecans but the duck is very, very greasy and bland. The heaviness of the duck really defeated the purpose of the salad altogether.
++ duck taco. I can't really hold this against them because it was complimentary, after all but the steamed bun was very soggy and the grease that came off the taco from the duck made my stomach churn. I don't mind grease, I love bacon and pork belly done right but I've never typically found duck to be so greasy ever. The flavor of the plum sauce is sweet and goes well with the duck but seriously, it was drowned out by the greasiness.
We walked away regretting the meal and thinking that we could have been more satisfied eating at a drive-thru chain for $15 or worse, heating up a frozen pizza for $9. I don't mind paying $$ for a delicious meal but when the food is bad topped off with bad service, it makes me feel ripped off, which is exactly how we felt after our latest meal at Sea Level. I won't be back but I do recommend just sticking to the $1 oysters at happy hour if you want your dining experience to be commensurate to the cost of your meal.
UPDATE: increase from 2.5 stars to 3 stars. Immediately after I posted my review, the owner reached out to me to offer his apologies and asked us to return. Any owner who personally seeks out to ensure that a customer experience is positive definitely deserves kudos for seeking to advocate good customer service. At the end of the day, all we really want is to ensure that we get what we bargained for. An owner who assumes accountability means boosted consumer confidence in an establishment. We will return and update the review accordingly when our schedules permit.
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