C.I. Shenanigans

Reviews 5

CH

Chris Smith

My wife and I had to pick up one of our kids from a summer camp at 7AM on a Saturday morning. We decided that rather than waking up at 5AM and driving for two hours groggy and annoyed, wed come down the night before, get a hotel and take in the Tacoma experience. On a side note, if I find out whose great idea it was to have people pick up kids at 7AM on a Saturday morning in Tacoma, theyre going to have more than a bad Yelp review to contend with. Tacoma has historically been a place where you can get robbed, murdered and possibly witness some gang violence and thus, we avoid it but we were pleasantly surprised to see a lot of gentrification. I was telling people that Tacoma maybe wasnt such a bad place after all but then literally the next evening, a Wendys employee started shooting at some of their customers in that end of town and I thought, now THATS what I expect to see in Tacoma. My wife wanted seafood and that sounded good to me as well, although if she had left it to me, we would have found some good ghetto eating. I do believe that if you have a chance of getting robbed or murdered in the parking lot of a restaurant, the quality of the food might be better but thats just a theory. We hit Yelp and settled upon Shenanigans, not to be confused with the Shenanigans from the movies Waiting or Super Troopers. This restaurant has been around for a long time and when I lived in the south end, I certainly drove past it plenty of times. Its right on Commencement Bay and the views are beautiful. The erstwhile "Tacoma Aroma" also seems to have been eradicated so we didnt have to tolerate any bad odors in the parking lot or anywhere else around the city. I used to have to come down there twice a month for work and I remember one morning sitting in my car before getting out to visit a client and wondering how I could have stepped in dog poo in Everett and not smelled it before reaching Tacoma only to open my door and have my senses fully assaulted by the funk. The new, non-foul smell of Tacoma is a mark in the plus column. Our waiter was not awesome. He was friendly enough but not only did he not offer us bread, he told us he didnt even know if they still had any. We got there around 9:30 and they didnt close until 11. If they were out of bread that early, that would have been ridiculous. We ordered some chowder, seafood dip, chicken Caesar salad and crab mac n cheese. It was all really tasty but we never did see that Caesar salad. It worked out though because we got pretty full with the other stuff so we didnt say anything when it didnt show up on our bill either. I guess well call that bad service serendipity. All in all, it was a very enjoyable evening and we might just come down and do it again. The prices werent low but we were expecting that. We just figured that if we were spending that much, the service would be better.

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Jeanette Parmley

This used to be my hubbys and my favorite place for date night. Tonight we are horribly disappointed. We ordered 2 beers. I ordered the calamari appetizer for dinner and hubby ordered clam chowder and then shared creme brûlée for desert. We waited over half hour to 45 minutes for our food to come. The people next to us who sat down and ordered later than us recieved their food a good 15 minutes before we received ours and they ordered steaks. Our food was cold, my calamari was mostly jalapeño, hubby couldnt even eat that much pepper. It was ridiculous. Our waiter was extremely inattentive. We sat there done with our plates piled up on the table the entire time I am writing this, and still being looked over. I am extremely disappointed. I posted than edited this post and we are still waiting..... And waiting......yup still waiting.........even hubby who is full of patience is done now...... Did I say I was waiting? Oh finally had to request check. And now hes chatting with other waiter...and waiting.....still waiting. FINALLY lets see how long to get card back. Btw the people next to us has been long gone. Oh and we recieved the wrong bill $77!!!!!! right grrrrr still waiting, now lets blame the computer..... Waiting.....now lets see how long it takes for the $77 to be refunded back to our bank. It is Tuesday. The $77 is still not refunded in my bank. I will update more later

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Terri Lynne Olson

Ok C.I. Shenanigans.. what the heck happened??? Went for dinner last night (Thursday) with a group of 9. The restaurant was quiet, not many customers. TWO hours later we left. It WASNT because we lingered after a nice meal and had coffees, after dinner drinks etc. The service was not what I have experienced in the past nor what was it expected. We had out of town guests, and after raving about your restaurant, left with "my tail between my legs." The view, as always, spectacular! What happened to your service? The staff spent more time with each other then they did with the few tables of customers that they had. The meal took way too much time to arrive. Especially with the few customers that were in the restaurant. It was disappointing. After almost an hour we asked for a basket a bread. We received it and paid a pretty penny to have it. One from our table politely asked the waitress, "I have a long distance call to make, do I have time to make it now or will our dinner be arriving soon?" We all laughed. Once our meals arrived, it was mediocre at best. It makes me sad that such a restaurant that delivered excellence has succombed to medocrity. Wont be returning. Will watch the spectacular view from Katie Downs.

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A Private User

Overall: price not worth the way you are treated (can you say overrated?). Delicious food (Black Angus Sirloin & Maytag Blue), great location, but TERRIBLE service. Upon entering we requested an outside table which we were told was going to be a 20 minute wait. That was fine, we decided to go to the bar for a drink while we waited but the hostess became distracted with a phone call before she could even direct us to the bar. Once finally seated outside our waiter seem so overwhelmed or hurried that he never had time to refill my water or take the time to listen when I wanted to order wine with dinner. At this point I decided to not even bother to get a glass of wine as it took quite awhile to get our food. Our waiter acted annoyed when we asked to split the check and at one point one of our party had to get up and find someone to ask for ketchup to go with our fries. While I commend the cooks Shenanigans was expensive ($27 for my sirloin steak) and if you are going to have high prices you should receive, at the very least, friendly service. Our waiter (Patrick) seemed to have no interest in making sure we had a pleasant experience and I recommend that people take their money elsewhere.

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A Private User

Yesterday, Saturday, day before Mothers Day. Sun shining, beautiful day to be by the water. Decided on a late afternoon dinner on C.I. Shenanigans waterfront deck. We arrived and were told at the front desk there was a 45 minute wait for a deck table! Stunning part was, the deck was less than 1/2 full! Supposedly, they did not have enough staff for the deck but we could eat inside (where several staffers were standing around). Several customers were complaining about not being able to sit outside! We took a table inside and ordered a Crab and Shrimp Louie, and a flank steak salad. The flank steak was ok but was ordered cooked rare, not raw! The Louie was minimal at best! The crab and shrimp tasted like thawed out mush - no flavor what so ever. The Louie included two deviled eggs, loads of sliced onion, and limp red peppers, and two cherry tomatoes, halved, all on a mix of salad greens. Definitely not an enjoyable meal!, especially at $14 to $15 a plate. On a good note, the cups of clam chowder were quite good! There are many other restaurants in the area that would be more than happy to seat you on the deck if possible on a nice sunny day!

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