Pier Chowder House & Tap Room

The service was excellent. Meal was reasonable priced. Can’t beat the view. This is one of those places you can just take your time and relax and enjoy the scenery. Point Arena is a very small town and no one is in a hurry. Enjoy.

The food here is delicious! Do not go in a hurry. The service is very slow and unattentive. However the food makes up for it. The soup was amazing and certainly homemade! We got the tomatoe bisque and the thai corn chowder… soooo good! The scallops were very yummy as well. They have a great selection of beers and a great view. I’d recommend this place more for lunch than dinner.

Good beer, decent onion rings, worst crab cakes Ever — a few hairs of crab sticking out the breading; tasteless linguini with pitifully small amount of salmon morsels. Too bad — the setting, ambience and service was good. We were so hoping for this to be a good place to eat — having just moved to the area.

The Cioppino was out of this world good. I am looking forward to visiting the restaurant again. They also have a good selection of drinks and beer. There’s a lovely patio and large restaurant with big windows. Nice place.

Stopped into have a «nice» dinner and was VERY disappointed! Started off with a disgusting table… then a bitter Cesar Salad… then our meal arrived. Beer battered rock cod and beer battered prawns… Dripping with grease! The cod was very «rubbery» and the prawns tasted «rotten». I would not recommend this place to my worst enemy! The best part of this experience was the sweet waitress. We just paid for our salads and left… and yes we did leave her a tip :)

This place was a great lil gem! The chowder was amazing and they even make their own mozzarella sticks! Hubby enjoyed his beer and fish and chips, nice and crispy! Wish we could come more often if we lived closer!

Extremely bad food. We ordered the brisket. Both portions were at least 80% fat (no exaggeration). They were kind enough to bring an extra portion for us to share. This one was an overlooked leftover from the fridge that was still cold on the inside. The side veggies were almost not cooked at all. The wine glasses were dirty. For $ 29 an entrée this was a complete ripoff. The only thing I’d recommend this place for is a drink on the patio in the afternoon sun.

Watch out for the «add on’s» They will charge extra for a side of mayo or anything for that matter. So when I asked if they would credit me if I did not want a side of ketchup they said no. What a rip off place. The only reason they are still in business is because there is nothing else around. The locals know but for tourist just skip this place and eat in Mendocino going north or Gualala going south

We had the Manhattan Clam Chowder and the fish and chips. Also an IPA and a nice Pilsner. Food was hot, tasty, beer cold and frosty and the service was great. A sister serving and her younger brother bussing the table. Nice friendly place that serves good food.

View gives it 2 stars. Food was not so good.
Had a $ 15 grill cheese that I could make at home for $ 1. Soggy and what were supposed to be caramelized onions were sautéed and added to the sogginess. Wasn’t even grilled on one side.
Hubby had fish tacos and said they missed the mark.
Best bet have a seat at the patio and enjoy the view and a drink. Then drive somewhere else to eat.

Super expensive. $ 15 for a grilled cheese? Don’t bother with the soup in a sourdough bowl, it’s not even sourdough… save $ 7 and get a cup with the free bread and butter, it’s much better. The tomato soup was not good, tasted like spaghetti sauce. The clam chowder was ok. Nice views and lots of beers.

We have been on the coast for about a week and decided to give this place a try. We arrived around half past four
Me wife had the beer battered fish (rock cod) and onion rings while I had clam chowder and a side of fries. We shared cobbler for desert
The good:
Onion rings and fries were nicely prepared and the batter on the onion rings was tasty
Cod was moist and batter had nice crunch. Was a little greasy but was very enjoyable
Cobbler was very good (a little too much granola for me: however my wife liked it a lot). Easily this was the best thing we had
The not so good:
Service was VERY slow. Server was working a 7 top and he was not too attentive or prompt to us. It is understandable: however, as more help started to arrive around 5 things did not improve
Clam Chowder was bland and average at best. I had 4 bay leaves in my bowl and very little clam. There was much more potato in the soup than clam. At one point I took four consecutive spoonfuls that had no clam. My wife thought I may have gotten what was in the bottom of the pot (thus all the bay leaves, the abundance of potato and the lack of clam)
Overall:
This one is tough for me as everything was good except the chowder. I had much better chowder at the Elk Store. If a place calls itself a «Chowder House» it needs to have epic chowder. Honestly, had the name of this place been something like «Fish and Chips House and Tap Room» my level of expectation would have been different. Will give 3 stars and would recommend to friends with the caveat that they skip the chowder

Great view. Have a beer and skip the food. 100ft from the sea and serving frozen nasty crab cakes. Chowder sucks bad. Hope i dont get sick!

Prawns the size of shrimp surf and turf is 1 slce of tritip and 6 shrimp sized «prawns they call them». Took forever to get served our food.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t too pleased with this place. The best thing we had was the calamari appetizer. My root beer had ants in it (no joke, I found 2 and couldn’t hang), and the food was pretty bland. That, and the amount of flies bugging us while we are started to get really annoying after a while. I really wanted to like this place, but I’m sure we won’t be back.

This restaurant is in a great location, right on the ocean. You’re upstairs and can see right out on the ocean.
The craft beer selection is great. Had their award winning Manhattan clam chowder, reminded me more of beef barley soup. It was tasty though. Had a cheeseburger and fries, fries were hand cut and a little over cooked. Burger had a great bun and great condiments.
Service was pretty slow, but it was Friday night, and I wasn’t really bothered.

We stayed at the inn up the road.
We found the beer good, very happy with the Oysters.
Then the Fish Tacos — the rock cod — Excellent Fresh but the slaw was this russian dressing mess,
The Clam chowder that I expected to be excellent was heavy in potato and light in clams and just very lackluster. Ohh well

Should’ve Listened to the Unilocal reviews and stayed away.
Trying to get home from Mendocino to the Bay Area coasting on hwy 1 and we got hungry.
We Unilocaled and Unilocaled (as much as our service would let us) for a yummy seafood place and finally came across this place.
Hard to find just because the maps told us to stop before going all the way to the end of the pier.
We got here around 5pm on a Saturday and the place was quiet empty.
We ordered the clam chowder which seemed like it came from a can.
Crab cake sandwich was really good but the soggy old tomato ruined it for me, if it was fresh it would’ve been that much better.
And lastly the fish and chips with onion rings. The fish was so soggy and tasted like it has been sitting out and then just re cooked.
The onion rings were big and very oily
We also had French fries that were super salty…
Service was fast and quick but I definitely wouldn’t come back for food

We were tooling down Highway 1 on our 35^th anniversary. How cool is that.
It was about 3pm, and we were hungry for some good seafood — we’re from Kansas, yet on the Pacific coast. Unilocal suggested this place on a search, so we stopped in.
Beautiful view of the ocean and the pier. The restaurant is on the second floor and was empty. No one there except for wait staff, and they were eating themselves. So, we were told — just grab a seat — we opted for outside, facing the pier, so we could enjoy the view.
We enjoyed the view, talked about 35 years of marriage, and just tried to enjoy. But after about 15 – 20 minutes… well, was the restaurant open? No one had come to talk to us. I went inside, grabbed a couple menus from the desk, and we looked them over. After another 10 – 15 minutes, I walked in and asked if anyone was going to come take an order.
Oh, ok, and someone came out. We ordered fresh fish (caught off the pier) and some chowder. It finally arrived, and it was delicious. Of course, I had to go back inside to get salt and pepper off a table, as well as napkins. Somehow I guess they didn’t think we needed them sitting outside.
Overall, the food was good, but it seemed almost self service. Luckily, we were in a good mood, on vacation, and the food was very tasty. You’d think with us being the ONLY customers at that time, we would have gotten adequate attention, but we did not.

I was in Gualala for the weekend and decided to take a short drive up Hwy 1 to visit Point Arena for what I hoped would be an amazing bowl of clam chowder. What a let down this place was. The service just downright sucked and the food was nothing special.
I took a seat at the bar since I was dining solo and didn’t want to take up a whole table just for me. I sat at the bar for about 10 minutes, watching the bartender look at me but not say a word or ask if I wanted to order something. Another girl came up and handed me a menu and said someone would be with me shortly. Nope. As I was about to give up and go elsewhere for lunch, the bartender finally came over and asked if I wanted to order something. She quickly jotted down my food order but didn’t get my beer… that was another 10 minute wait even though I was literally sitting directly in front of the tap of the beer I had just ordered. It was at that point that I decided the bar was the wrong place to sit, so I grabbed a table next to the window over looking the water, since it seemed like people in the dining area were actually being served.
My order was simple, just one bowl of clam chowder and a side of bread. The clam chowder was served in one of those giant plate like bowls that serve no purpose for soup, and are supposed to look fancy but aren’t all that practical… especially in a place that looks like it hasn’t had a décor update since the 1980’s. Aside from the awkward bowl, the chowder tasted okay. Not great, not awful, just okay. It was bland and lacked clams. It was mostly a bowl of potatoes with a few clams, some celery, carrots and cream. Not impressive and tasted similar to soup out of a can. I suppose I expected better from a place that’s called «Pier Chowder House».
The service at this place was the real disappointment. I was literally ignored. Other tables around me were getting served and checked on after people had gotten their food. Not me. So I finished my food and I waited… and waited… and waited. Nothing. Finally after sitting there for 30 minutes waiting for someone to acknowledge me, I got my check, paid the bill and left. I wanted to order another round or two of beer, but couldn’t really spend the whole day there, and that’s likely what I would have had to do in order to get another beer. So they lost out on getting more of my money because of their poor customer service and inattentiveness. It shouldn’t take an hour and a half to get a beer and a bowl of chowder. Next time I’m in the area I may give them another shot, but I’ll be sure to check out what other restaurants Point Arena has to offer first.