The Bistro - St. John's

I recently dined at this family-friendly bistro and was impressed by the delicious food. The portion sizes were substantial, more medium than small, which caught me off guard. As a result, I ended up ordering more food than necessary for my party of three.

The food was excellent, although a bit expensive. My spouse and another couple had a great night out at this tapas-style restaurant. The atmosphere was nice.

We had a great time at this restaurant. Even though it is advertised as a tapas spot, the plates are actually quite large.

The food was good and the waitress did her best but the restaurant was short-staffed. Kudos to the restaurant for being wheelchair accessible - a rarity for restaurants on Water St. One waitress was handling the entire restaurant on a moderately busy Friday night. We saw two parties leave after waiting at their table for about 15 minutes without any attention. The menu was obsolete so she had to recite the actual one from memory. Not surprisingly she forgot some items including the shrimp and crab bisque that fortunately I had remembered from the on-line menu.The prices were also about 10% higher than are shown on-line. Another oddity was that the menu said the restaurant's name was "Duck on Water". The name on the signboard over the door is "The Bistro". The name on the receipt when we received the bill was "The Black Sea". Two of these are former names. The shrimp and crab bisque had an excellent spicing if somewhat short on shrimp and crab. I could have made a meal of the bisque alone. My main course was flavorful Tandoori chicken. It cost $31, not the $27 shown on-line. My wife enjoyed her tomato soup and caesar salad but her lamb stew entree was on the dry side.Things could easily be improved by printing the current menu, updating the on-line menu, having adequate staff and settling on one name for the restaurant.

Superb ambiance with perfect tomato gin soup, shopta (spelling) salad, cod dish, lamb shank and salmon dishes. My group loved everything!You gotta go here folks -relaxing, great and healthy food. Chef Gregory is always so self effacing and gifted beyond belief.Support a local chef and restaurant owner.