The guy who rated this blight on the otherwise pristine Sonoma Coast with four stars ADMITTED "I haven't eaten there in years!" Priceless!
Caltrans spends hundreds of thousands posting "deer crossing" warning signs up and down Highway 1, as if anybody with enough sense to merit a driver's license couldn't figure that out. What they ought to be doing is posting "WARNING - TOURIST TRAP NEXT 100 YDS" signs on either side of this crap hole.
Am I PO'd. You betcha, Red Rider! This is always how I get when I embarass myself, which is rarely, but always memorable. Here' s the story. See I was born here. I'm not a tourist. Never was. Going back to the mid-seventies, we'd get a bunch of buddies together, pack up some fishing gear and a few six packs and drive out to the REAL Tides for coffee and breakfast (if you were a real he-man) around five in the morning. Then we'd grab some bait and whatever tackle we needed in the bait shop right there in the same place and then we'd jump a party boat out to Cordell Bank and fill a few gunny sacks with bottom fish. On the way back, if the party boat deck hand didn't fillet them for you for a buck, you'd have them filleted out and packed in a plastic bag at the Tides Wharf by the packing crews at the fish dock. Then we'd cut back into the Tides Restaurant for a late lunch or early dinner that couldn't be beat.
Even though I live about 25 minutes east of Bodega Harbor, we farmers don't do a lot of unnecessary driving, so my focus is east, not west toward the Bay. Still, I had some old friends call to tell me they were renting a place in Bodega Harbor Estates for a week and wanted to get together for dinner. The asked for some restaurant suggestions and I of course gave them Dinucci's in Valley Ford and Negris and the rest, but as I hadn't been there since maybe the early '90's, I saved what I thought was the best for our "night on the town."
So we roll into the Tides with a party of seven, after me giving everybody the big buildup about what a great seafood place it is and this is NOT the place I had in mind. Not the place I remembered. It is, and was, everything everybody here has previously said it wasn't.
Listen, I grew up fishing around here and I know seafood. First off, the prices were WAY over the top for ANYPLACE within a hundred miles. You wouldn't pay more for the same dish at the Fairmont Hotel, Postrio or any other fancy-pants downtown City restaurant, except that they have tablecloths at the downtown places. So, yes, I wasn't expecting Ernie's. I was expecting the Tides, your basic burger and chips in a plastic basket formica table top place with a fantastic locally caught seafood menu. Not hugely expensive but really great.
All I got was the formica table top. The worst overpriced food I've ever eaten, consistently, is inside Disneyland. This place was set up by the same crowd... and then they doubled the price. I know calamari, baby, and only an idiot could screw it up. They found the idiot. Ever eat a rubber band rolled in flour and deep fat fried? And "chips?" Well, they call them "steak fries." Frozen crap. I asked for them well done. They were barely thawed. Others at our table fared less well. When you pay twenty-something for "steamers,' you expect "steamers." They weren't steamers. They were boiled Manila clams. Steamers aren't Manila clams, they are littleneck clams. If you don't have littlenecks, you damn well better not be charging twenty-something for Manilas in some broth that tastes like the cook pissed in it. Those who ordered grilled fish were singularly unimpressed. The service was piss poor.
Unfortunately, I smelled this rip off coming as soon as I walked in the door after commenting to my friends, "Damn, it looks like they fixed the old place up." Any restaurant that is less than 20 percent full at six on a Saturday night is trouble. Any restaurant that makes you run a gauntlet of crappy imported Chinese tourist trinkets and tee shirt racks on your way to the tables is definitely NOT a place to eat. Sadly, when you have seven people in your party, it's kinda hard to say, "Ah... maybe we ought to blow this place and take it back up the road to Dinucci's instead.
Any doubt was instantly removed when one of us asked the waitress (who was pretty wierd for a waitress, actually) if the halibut was fresh. She says, "Oh, that's one of the fish they catch around here in the deep water." No shit, Sherlock. He didn't ask you what a halibut was, he asked you if it was fresh. He took a pass on the halibut, and went for some pasta dish, commenting that he wouldn't chance ordering something a waitress had to lie about. I think he came out the best of all of us with that pasta.
I asked around later. Somebody said the old Tides folks retired and it was bought by Chinese investors. As a "local," I have to say, this place is embarassing. The New Tides is definitely for "The Birds." read more