Food is good, service sucks.

I’ve been there a few times but this last trip was a bit disappointing. Service was slow (though the restaurant wasn’t that busy). Food was average not as good as I remembered. The vibe and decor are cool though!

The food was great, our server was efficient and patient with one member of our party member’s many requests. It was just really loud where we were sat. That pineapple upside down cake is no joke when it comes to delicious

Food and service were excellent!

Beautiful restaurant, some of the tables are a bit too close together. Service was very attentive.

Our waiter Brian was really fabulous. He was so very kind and on top of everything. The food was really fantastic - especially the yellowtail appetizer.

Service was excellent and great ambience for Valentine’s Day dinner. However Valentine’s Day menu was just ok. Had been to Herringbone before, food was excellent then.

Horrible Service took forever for our food

Food was delicious and fun atmosphere - very loud though

Not sure what was going on that night, but sat at the bar at around 9:30 and the service was awful. The laker game was on the tv and in the middle of the game, at around 9:45 while eating, a worker walked up to the tv and shut it off. We were obviously watching and he looked at us and then just walked away. I guess his shift was over. Then the bartender was quite rude and brusque with us. She had an awful attitude. Didn’t smile once and had terrible customer service. She obviously wanted to go home as well. It was so bad that we asked to have our food packed up to go because we’d rather eat in the hotel instead of enduring more rudeness. For an establishment that charges high prices for food and drinks, I expect at least DECENT service. We were very disappointed for it was a place we had our first date and this time left a very bad taste in our mouths. We wont be coming back.

Great food and service

Super service, and really tasty food! Their $1 oysters are super, and an amazing value! Loved it!!

This was recommended by a friend and it was a great recommendation!! The food and service were outstanding. Excellently prepared and conscious plating of the whole meal. I had the Chilean sea bass and my family had the lobster roll and snapper. Each dish had the right amount of seasoning - not overpowering the flavors of the seafood. The only tick marks not so favorable was the pineapple upside down cake was too much of a hearty bread instead of the more traditional cake without a fresh cut of pineapple - it seemed to be something akin to a dried pineapple ring then baked. I was hoping for a much juicier thicker ring of fresh pineapple and a wonderfully light textured cake. Other than that, and the loudness level of all the patrons making it difficult to hear our own table conversations the place was a delight. I most heartily recommend the restaurant for the food and service and would go back for a second helping when in the Santa Monica area again!

They changed the menu but not on the website. Food was delicious but very little seafood in the risotto. Service was excellent but VERY noisy.

I had researched their menu ahead of making a reservation as both I and some members of my party have specific dietary needs. However, when we got to the restaurant we were surprised to find that their menu was quite different in person and when we asked our server what they recommended for needs, he and the chef seemed befuddled and annoyed at our request.

Once we got an order in, our server disappeared and service overall was slow and unfriendly. The food was fair at best. We were clearly paying for the ambiance and locale of the place more than anything.

I don't see a reason to return.

Herringbone was the perfect place to get brunch with old friends, just enough noise for a vibe but not so loud that we couldn't catch up with each other. Fantastic food and service, a knockout overall!

Went here for brunch. Amazing service, very friendly staff. great food and drinks. Can’t wait to come back again!

Will not be dining here again for dinner. While the service was fine, the food was overpriced and underwhelming. I paid $28 for a fish and chips dish. The battered fish was extremely soggy and flavor-less, and the cole slaw served with it had clearly just been pulled from the freezer because it had frozen chunks throughout it. We were also disappointed to learn that happy hour does not extend to the reserved tables/tables that are not the first-come-first-serve high top tables (which is mentioned nowhere on their website or on open table). Overall thoroughly disappointed.

Loved Herringbone! Came here for a birthday party and everything we had was delicious! For a seafood restaurant, that was some of the best pizza I’ve ever had. I would highly recommend the mushroom pizza, ceviche, Brussel sprouts!!

Great service and food

I really want to like this place! I've been for a sundown/happy hour and it was pretty good - oysters and champagne.
I've been for dinner twice now and both times the service is not great (waiter did not pick up the menu, waited too long for a glass of wine - the waiter was talking with the bartender, then said the bar was backed up -, was not offered dessert). The food is okay, but nothing is really that good or worth it.
If I ever go back, it will just be for oysters or raw options (crab legs, lobster and shrimp good too, but the butter arrived cold/hard twice and the waiter didn't even notice).
The decor is nice!

I had just gotten married that afternoon and we came to Herringbone for their WONDERFUL oyster Happy Hour and good celebrate with a bottle of champagne.

I wrote a little note about our occasion on my reservation and although we weren’t able to get our own table, we were able to sit right away. This was especially important (as I usually wouldn’t make a reservation for Happy Hour), but we were with our parents and they have never been to Herringbone, nor do they get to experience these type of restaurants as they don’t go out much also they don’t live in this area.

Our server was great, very attentive, food came out fast, and everything was delicious. Only thing there was quite a draft as the outside patio door kept opening, another woman from another table closed it a few times. Seemed like the air was on high, could’ve been a little less cold but overall a great time as always. This is one of our favorite places to go in Santa Monica, for oysters, happy hour, and the regular dining menu. Thank you for making us feel special on our special day!

Our waiter, Andrew, was excellent. Recommended great menu items.

Over rated!!

Come for the ambiance, stay for the oyster hour!! Also tried lobster tacos (lacked flavor) and calamari, both overpriced for the portion. I will just come for oysters next happy hour!

Everything was great!

Our waiter Spencer was terrific My food was great My husband had one issue and Spencer fixed it A great date with my husband

No one in our party liked their entree as the meat was dry and or undercooked. Apps were very good and drinks were average. Erin our server was very good. For the cost of the food you would think you could afford to turn on some heat lamps when you put people outside... overall a disappointment and will probably not return.

Mussels undercooked with virtually no sauce, accompanied by small slice of rustic bread.

Good experience, overall! Fortunately, they DO have a valet...but not a moment before 5pm. There is an oyster bar/lounge to the right...but if you’re not an oyster slurper, or are able to sit on stools with no back support, it’s fairly useless. The ambiance is seaside cute. The menu is a la carte, so if you order salad or flatbread before the entree, it’s another charge. I think they should offer more diverse selections: something old-school, something spicy, something nouveau. There seems to be some similar flavors repeated as options, and there should a choice of say, rice or potato rather than just ‘it comes as it comes.’ There is no complimentary bread and butter, so if you need that, you’ll have to order something. We tried a Harvest salad and and Caeser salad. The Harvest salad was described as having pears, cheese, nuts on greens with vinaigrette...but it came as a finely chopped jumble of stuff, perhaps with a nut, a 1/3” cube of pear, and a tiny crumble of cheese. Not bad, but not what I expected. The Caeser was absolutely what one expects, plus a few giant homemade croutons. One diner enjoyed the short rib selection, but not its accompaniments. Another diner had asked about the seafood pasta dish as to avoid tomatoes...the waiter explained that it was a certain type of seafood sauce (it’s hard to hear in there!) but it was obvious that it was a tomato-based sauce. The most wonderful dish was the scallops! The waiter described them as “a safe choice” (I guess he meant ’not very adventurous’) but they were the size of biscuits, tender, fresh, and tasty! Dessert was vanilla poundcake with lemon marmalade and a chocolate tart: both fantastic, and very, very rich! Now we’ll have to go back and try some other dishes!

Expensive but good. The lobster roll was wayyyy better than the crab cakes. Mimosas never emptied. My boyfriend was mimosa drunk all day so that was successful. Great for our big group. Also, the fries were delicious and the kid's menu was big portions.

Food and cocktails were delicious, our waiter was polite, friendly, attentive, and knowledgeable, atmosphere was perfect for a nice evening out

Great! Food was amazinng

Food was nasty

I have been to Herringbone a few times now. All of my previous visits were for Oyster Hour, which is fun, a great price and an overall outstanding value. So I thought I'd try dinner. It was a series of fails. And I will never eat dinner there again. My server was outstanding and he was a pleasure to work with. The food was abysmal. The baby artichoke appetizer was almost inedible. They were very poorly trimmed and we all got poked by the sharp points on the leaves, AND we each had to spit out leaves that were too tough to chew. My scallops were cooking nicely but the sauce and the random cranberries in the bowl were weird and not good. My friend ordered the striped bass and I could smell the sour, fishy smell from across the table. He tasted it and said it was bad - then we all tasted it and sent it back. It was beyond bad - super fishy and sour. He didn't order anything else. My other friend ordered the Seafood Pasta and there wasn't any sauce on the pasta. It was pasta, a dash of sauce enough to color the pasta and then random seafood scattered throughout the bowl. She did not finish it. To top it off, I had checked their available online menu before dinner - I was celebrating and was gifted a bottle of Veuve and wanted to share it at dinner. Their current list of wines by the bottle is NOT available online, so I brought my bottle and then upon checking in for my table, I asked the hostess if it was ok to bring my own and pay the corkage fee. She said it wasn't a problem. As soon as we're seated the server comes over and tells me that his manager just told him that since they sell bottles of Veuve in the restaurant, they can't open MY bottle. I say - "Well you don't have the list of bottles available online." He says, "You are correct. It's because the list changes all the time." So essentially, you're telling me that there is no way I could have figured out what you're serving without coming in. So we didn't open my bottle. yeah, worst dinner in ages.

Meh food. Hard to find waitor.

Nice restaurant, food was very tasty and fresh, table was nice and comfortable. Service was good, waitress was very attentive. Enjoyed the meal and left happy.

Great oyster happy hour, delicious drinks & really cool decor. Note that the happy hour is only available in the bar area!

Simply delicious

After all day of traveling from the east coast, we were ready for a relaxing evening. We sat at the bar to start and enjoyed their specialty cocktails and “one buck shuck” oysters. They were awesome! We then moved to the dining room where we enjoyed artichokes, pear and Gorgonzola salad and sea bass. I would skip the artichokes next time but everything else was fantastic! Our waiter was also terrific.