Bristol Seafood Grill

Had dinner here to celebrate my birthday and it was a phenomenal experience! Our waiter, «Johnny B» was the greatest! Food was to die for (my wife had the enchiladas and I had the salmon) and service was impeccable!
I even noted to the manager as we were leaving, when I went to the restroom, I exchanged pleasantries as with a chef as we were washing our hands, and took notice that he refilled the paper towels because they were getting low. TOTAL team effort at this place!

I enjoyed a birthday celebration lunch at Bristol. Luckily we had a reservation, it was very busy on a weekday at 12:30. There is a huge selection of luncheon specials priced very reasonably. The full menu is also available. I settled on the lobster Cobb salad, which was amazing. There were huge chunks of lobster claw meat throughout the salad. The others enjoyed the lunch specials which included soup or salad, what a great deal! My mom enjoyed the lobster tamale and a side salad and my aunt had the club sandwich and fries. Both of their entrees were delicious and good sized portions. We were thrilled with our «fancy» girls luncheon that didn’t break the bank! And I’d be remiss not to mention the delicious hot out of the oven biscuits that are served. Luckily they have cut down on the size of the biscuits, but you can have as many as you’d like. We shared an apple tart with cinnamon ice cream to celebrate my birthday; a yummy finish to a wonderful lunch.

Consistently one of the best seafood places in town. Love the scallops.

Well, what can I say? First of all we have been to The Bristol many times and it never disappoints us when we go.
This time for my birthday it was no different. Service at the table was excellent. The cocktails are the best in town we think. We had the scallops which were very good and also the lobster salad was excellent. Carrot cake was and always is the go to for dessert time.
We are committing ourselves to at least one time a month for lunch. dinner or even just a Happy Hour at the bar.
You will love this place, try it !!
Paul and Carol of Olathe

If you want a good steak look no further you pay for the quality but it is worth it! The waiting staff was extremely helpful and knowledgeable about the menu and wine pairings and if you are looking to spend a great night out on the town I would definitely consider looking into the Bristol as your dinner choice.

One of my favorite places to eat! Excellent menu any time of year, fresh fish that’s amazing and uniquely prepared. Great service! Beautiful Resturant! Love!!!

I have had brunch a couple of times and it is absolutely amazing. The mini waffles are to die for and the desserts are delicious. The restaurant is also beautiful and family friendly.

Bristol is consistently great and never misses a beat. The biscuits are always wonderful! They go perfectly with a bowl of lobster bisque.
Sunday brunch is my favorite time to go, for the Bloody Mary bar and amazing buffet of everything you could ever want. Second only to the Four Seasons hotel brunch in my opinion.
I love the selection of interesting salads and sides, and the fresh menu created every single day.
You can’t go wrong with the Bristol!

Unimpressed. The food is fine so no complaints there however this place is seriously lacking in making people feel welcome.
First, as we were walking in, the hostess was going back inside & literally let the door close on me rather than holding it open. Ok, maybe she didn’t see us. But we get inside & she stood at the hostess booth just looking at us without a greeting, smile, or any acknowledgement. In fact none of the workers standing around the front entrance ever acknowledged our presence and on the way out, despite there being several girls standing there, not one of them thanked us or ever said a word. We all had bags with leftovers yet none of them thought to take a few steps to the door to open it for us.
There are so many other truly fabulous restaurants in the area where the staff knows how to treat their guests so we won’t be back. Not due to the food but because, when a meal costs more than I spend on groceries in a week, I’d expect to be at least a little welcomed by the workers.
Our waiter was great so it’s unfortunate that the front end staff, who are the first & last you encounter at a restaurant, gave us such a distasteful impression.

I have dined here many times. I always get the scallops. They are fabulous paired with the mashed potatoes and Brussels sprouts. These aren’t your usual sprouts. They are sautéed with bacon, and I don’t know what else.
The mixed grill is another seafood hit, with a little bit of everything. My mom had the fried shrimp. I am not usually a fan of fried shrimp, but this shrimp I can definitely do. It is crispy but not greasy.
Remember to sign up for the birthday club. They send you an email certificate worth $ 25. The only thing better than dining here, is eating the leftovers the next day.
I so love this place!

(ETA: I didn’t post this 3 star review/​comments in order to obtain free offers from Bristol. I just wanted to let them know, in the best way I know how, that they are continuing to provide disappointing service in their restaurants. I only post reviews on Unilocal in the hopes that management of these establishments review the info being posted, and take them as seriously as possible. I appreciate the quick and helpful responses from their management team, and will contact them only to give them the additional info they need in order to hopefully make changes for the better, but not in order to obtain any discount/​free offers.)
Disappointed by our latest experience at the Bristol. We went in at about 5 pm Friday night with hopes of being able to take advantage of happy hour before we headed over to the movies a little bit later. Given, we knew the bar area would be pretty full at that time, but we didn’t realize that they don’t extend their happy hour offer through the entire restaurant. That kinda sucks.
It was a gorgeous evening (70 degree day in February!), so sitting on the patio would’ve been a great option, but they don’t have any furniture out there this time of year, I guess. :/​
I saw another review that mentioned the service as being «combative», and that is a perfect way to describe how our initial contact with our server was. I brought up the happy hour issue, and it seemed to put him off. We asked for a moment to decide if we were going to stay, and he gave us that space, which was nice. But our interaction just seemed… off after that. I felt like I had to overcompensate with friendliness to get him more on our side throughout our time there.
Food was ok. We had shrimp cocktail, a lobster tamale, and a small order of mussels. The shrimp were HUGE, but tough. I think they were a little overcooked. The lobster tamale was underseasoned, and underwhelming. The mussels were perfect. So glad they have the small vs. large portion offering!
I heard another server having to explain the «bar only happy hour» to another patron later on, because we were literally seated right next to the bar, and he was defensive and kind of combative as well. I don’t blame the servers for having to behave this way. I blame management for having the bar only happy hour! It’s plain silly. Look around at other restaurants in the area, guys. They tend to serve happy hour options throughout their entire restaurant, and they have patio furniture out year round. Especially when you have as nice a patio as you do at the Bristol! Maybe they just recently remodeled, and the furniture hadn’t arrived yet? I don’t know. It was just something that added to the disappointing experience, and made it seem like they were trying to limit the amount of happy hour patrons they were serving.

I honestly do not understand the appeal of this place. The service is SLOWWW. Like expect to wait 20 minutes for your first drink and 45 – 60 minutes for your meal. At the beginning of our meal, a couple of us ordered another beer. We didn’t get the beers until after we finished our meals, 30 minutes later. At that point, we were full and didn’t even want the drinks.
Our server was really cute and sweet, and she did a good job, not great, but good. The table remained cluttered and crumby the whole time. In my past experiences from restaurants, even less expensive ones, they groom the table throughout the dining experience.
The Portions are so small for the price. I am perfectly willing to spend $ 10 for a cup, not bowl, of soup. But this was like two or three spoonfuls of soup. Ridiculous. And I would be more than willing to even accept the portions if the food and service was outstanding.
When our food came, it was not even warm.
Overall, the thing that was most annoying was how SLOW everything was. It was a Sunday night and hardly busy. I would think they would want to turn tables to make more money and to please the guest??? I want to stress, our server was pretty good, and I don’t think it was her fault it took so long. Even if it was because she was busy, management should have helped her.
THE WORST: as a employee at a similar type of nice restaurant, the hostess really pissed me off. While waiting for our table, I watched every single guest leave without any of the hosts saying, «thank you»,“bye”, or «have a good night!». They didn’t even get the door for older couples who could hardly open the heavy door. They wouldn’t even acknowledge guests upon arriving until the guests said something.
Just very disappointing. When spending $ 500+ for a birthday dinner, you would expect the best of the best.

Not impressed. The service was combative. My shrimp was over cooked. The drinks were watered down.

We’ve been here for happy hour a while back and enjoyed our experience even though the waiter seemed pretty unhappy to be there. The food is always good and consistent.
We returned for dinner during restaurant week, and in stark contrast, we had some of the best service ever. Our waiter was fabulous… so much so that I told the manager about it. I wish I remembered his name but he was a 30 – 40 something white guy with a shaved/​bald head. He also pulled in another waiter when we had a wine question. This other guy was in sommelier training and he was fabulous too. Both were funny, relaxed, and perfectly on point. They made great wine and food suggestions and even offered samples to help us choose. I nursed my baby while at the restaurant and the waiter handled this so fabulously. He offered to delay putting in our food order to ensure my dish would be hot when I got to eat it. It was fabulous. Hats off my friend! I really appreciated that extra touch.
The food (crab cakes, salmon, bisque, gumbo) were all delicious. The salmon was cooked perfectly. The crab cakes weren’t what we expected (not your 70% bread, 30% crab you see at other places). Rather, they are mostly crab and fall apart with the suggestion of using a fork. It was good and fresh. The only negative notes were the cayenne or other spice was a bit heavy in both the bisque and the remoulade sauce. The crème brûlée and apple croustade were good… the chocolate mousse cake was meh.
In short, it’s a great upscale place that I highly recommend for fresh seafood. AND apparently this company started in KC…#KCpride

We were just stopping in for Happy Hour before heading to a movie. I hadn’t been there before, but knew it was a bit fancy. The hostess greeted us with «DO YOU HAVE RESERVATIONS?» in that snobby kind of way that insinuated that maybe she’d prefer we’d stopped at McDonalds.
I told her we did not have reservations because we were there for happy hour and she happily informed us to go the bar area, which is what I was trying to do anyway.
We got a little booth in the corner that was cold like the North Pole. I kept expecting a polar bear to take our order. Instead, we just had a normal, human waiter that was very nice. We ordered some drinks and a couple of appetizers. I mentioned I was FFFFreezing. He went off to get our stuff and before I knew it, warm air was surrounding us… he actually did something to make us more comfortable. You don’t get service like THAT at McDonalds ;)
My ceviche was fantastic, I loved it. The cocktails were great. Next to us some ladies were sharing a lobster roll, which I’d seen on the menu, but I’d had a lobster roll somewhere else recently so had opted for something different. It was a huge portion, so when the waiter came back I asked him if that was an entrée or if that was the happy hour portion. He confirmed it was the happy hour portion so I decided to order that too. It was really yummy, although mine did have a pretty hefty piece of shell in it. I guess, that way you know it’s authentic. It was still great and a great value.
We enjoyed our waiter very much and appreciate how well he took care of us.

I came to this Bristol location with a group of coworkers for lunch. The atmosphere is great, and our service was fantastic considering we were a pretty large table and had a lot of needs throughout the meal. I ordered the lobster mac and cheese and it was great, and the portions were huge. While I prefer the downtown location for Bristol, this is a nice little stop if you are on the south side of Kansas City.

Happy Hour experience was meh. Food was mediocre and the service was definitely interesting. Our waitress seemed extremely confused about everything. Two mixed drinks and one app was $ 26. Not the cheapest happy hour in town but, it was a chill atmosphere.
There were plenty of options on their HH menu! Shrimp were a little over cooked. Calimari was good but, nothing to write home about. The biscuits were hard as a rock but, if you’re into oysters there were plenty of options to choose from.

We chose Bristol Seafood Grill since Houlihan’s no longer has my favorite restaurant food (fried shrimp). It was delicious! There were a lot of shrimp, and it’s a good thing, considering the prices are high! The fries weren’t that good; they are shoe-​string fries, and were cold/​hard. :(The salmon was great. The bread was handed out before we got our meals, and drink refills were at times slow. It would have been nice to have bread *with* our meals, but the bread server went to every table but ours. Not the warmest welcome by the hosts when we arrived, either. «Do you have a reservation?» Not a smile or a welcome.
The food and service were good enough that we’ll be back again. It won’t take much to move this rating up a star or two. Dessert was pretty good (crème brûlée). We’ll try the patio another time. :)

First time that I would have given four stars but the subpar service drops this place to a 3. I’ve dropped close to $ 400 here and I don’t know the chicks name working the bar but she just doesn’t give a hoot and holler about her patrons. Pizzes me off. Food is very good, especially the oysters and the trout but the bartenders attitude soured the night.
I won’t be back.

Lauren took excellent care of us at Sunday Brunch! They made an extra effort to welcome us for our Anniversary, which we really appreciated. She checked that we knew where the brunch stations were, (cold seafood, desserts, hot foods like lobster mac n cheese, omelet station, carving station and waffle station) came by to check on us often, cleared plates and refilled our glasses attentively.
The food was superb… simply excellent. I cannot wait to go back!!!
Chilled shrimp w/​buttermilk sauce was a hit, as was the seared ahi.
I didn’t like the cooked broiled chilled salmon (the smoked salmon lox were good though) as I felt it was dry/​overcooked but that was the only thing I didn’t enjoy.
The carving station ham and prime rib were wonderful!!! That horseradish sauce was smooth, creamy and addictive. I had seconds of the prime rib.
The hot station hits: lobster mac n cheese, and sautéed French green beans.
My shrimp and spinach omelet was fluffy and made perfectly.
The waffles made my tyke happy (small so we topped one w/​strawberry, another with chocolate chips and the last w/​blueberry
And the dessert station was outrageous: mini crème brûlée was perfect, the chocolate fondue with strawberries and mini brownie were decadent, and that pistachio canole was scrumptious. But the cheese blintz w/​blueberry sauce was our fave: silky cream not overcooked as many others are at a buffet… So yummy!!!