We mystery-shopped Harry’s Seafood Bar & Grille in St. Augustine last night. Harry’s has always been a favorite of ours, so we were looking forward to the visit. Unfortunately, it didn’t live up to our previous trips.

We arrived at 5:00 and were offered the choice of sitting inside or outside. It was still a little warm and the sun a little too high, so we opted to sit indoors. Everything started off fine, with out waitress arriving in a timely manner and taking the order. Unfortunately, Harry’s required us to order specific items from the menu, and to have 3 courses: appetizer, entree (with salad), and dessert. Experienced mystery-shoppers will tell you that this type of shop sucks; you stand out like a sore thumb when you are ordering specific items and large volumes of food. In 12 years of mystery-shopping (probably 100+ assignments), I have never been made.

Until last night.

I ordered wings and my wife ordered a the Voo Doo Shrimp appetizer. Our waitress came back after nearly ten minutes to tell us the appetizers would be arriving shortly, and that the wings were the hold-up because they took 10-12 minutes to cook. They arrived 10 minutes later, telling us that the waitress must have been a problem getting the order in right away. The shrimp came swimming in some sort of brown gravy, but the gravy had a skin on top as though the shrimp had sat out while the wings were cooking.

At this point, our radars started going off. Our waitress became overly attentive, with too many stops to see how we were doing, and if our forks left our hands she was ready to drag away the plates. At first, I thought she was rushing us because the entree was right behind. That probably was a factor, too.

I’d finished half the wings when she arrived looking to clear the plate. No, but I can stop eating and move on to the salad if I can have a box for the wings. The salads came and my house salad looked fine, but it was room temperature as though it hadn’t been refrigerated in a while. My wife’s Caesar Salad was room temp as well, and the romaine was wilted. Again, as soon as the forks went down, the waitress was ready to clear.

Our entrees came fast on the heels of the salads. My Chicken Baton Rouge was tasty, and the chicken was piping hot. The Smashed Potatoes were good, but there were crusty pieces as though it had been a leftover from a batch made earlier in the day and reheated. My wife order red beans and rice to accompany her chicken, but it arrived sans beans.

A New Orleans-style restaurant with red beans and rice on the menu, and they make the mistake of forgetting the beans? Think someone was focused on making up time lost during the wait for the appetizers?

The rice was not very appetizing, either. My wife had to pull bits of undercooked rice out of the serving. But, at this point, we became aware that our waitress’ attentions were anything but normal; in fact, she become overbearing. Frequent checks to see how we were doing, and again, as soon as my fork hit the table she was clearing plates. I mentioned to my wife that I thought we’d been made.

Dessert came and went without incident. We were also required to do a bar-shop while we were there, so my wife left to run a few errands while I took a spot at the empty bar and order a beer. Then, I hear our waitress’ voice calling the bartender from behind the swinging doors to the kitchen. I was pretending to be engrossed in ESPN, and saw the bartender stop at the doors, glance in my direction, and then thank the waitress. She returned and stared away for five seconds, then quickly turned to me and asked, “So, how are you doing? How was your meal?” The big grin on her face confirmed my earlier suspicions about being made.

I just mumbled a quick, “Fine,” and returned to ESPN, annoyed at the set-up of the shop and promising myself to never again take a shop that dictates the specific items that can be ordered.

As an aside, it is also annoying to be told which items can be ordered, then find that the compensation provided for doing the shop does not cover the cost of those items. Ordering only what was on the menu, with no alcohol, came to $6 over the compensation which is not a big deal until you added the tip on top of that. Then, I still had to shop the bar, for a few bucks more out of my pocket. Most companies provide the minimum cost of the meal, plus a nominal five or ten bucks for the time it takes to fill out the survey. In this case, the survey was a two-hour job, so we were left feeling aggravated by the whole experience.

As I said in the opening to this post, Harry’s is one of our favorites in St. Augustine, but I can easily say that this visit was the worst ever, even without the mystery-shopping. Service was overbearing and the food was not prepared well or with attention to details.

Should someone from Harry’s find this post, I am sure they will be tempted to pull their records and see if they can figure out who did the shop last night. No to worry, folks, we won’t be accpeting any more shops. We’re not too worried about being made because turnover in these places is so high that nobody will remember us six months from now. No, we won’t be doing any more shops here because of the structure of the shop – the small selection of items to be order, having to order all three course, plus a bar shop, then compensating us so poorly that this shop wound up costing us almost $25, after minimal 15% tips.

Come on, guys, you know how much your food costs, does anyone down there have a calculator?

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