I normally make great allowances for "special circumstances". Last night however, I wrote my first Yelp review.

What pushed me over the top was the outright fraud.

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I live on Orcas. I try to be supportive of the local restaurants. I really do. But tonight...was special.

Our party of 5 just had the worst dining experience we've ever had on the island at The Loft.

It was not a busy night (odd for a holiday weekend, this should have been our clue...).

Our waitress was clumsy, and not particularly attentive to her job. She at one point managed to dump a glass of ice water onto my mother and sister's laps.

The $6 plate of bread from the amazing bakery across the street consisted of 4 thin slices, for a party of 5.

My mussel appetizer consisted of 30% dead mussels that failed to open. Not for want of trying, the other 70% were cooked to little dead rubbery bits. The sauce was nice though. I pointed the issue out to the waitress and was told "oh, that happens". I asked her to let the kitchen know. About 10 minutes later, a small cup of replacement mussels arrived unbidden, after our appetizers had been cleared, and I was huffily told "there, that's even *more* than the ones that didn't open."

Our entrees took nearly 90 minutes to arrive *after* our appetizers had been finished. Clearly the waitress forgot to even put the order in. We were given an excuse consisting of "oh, the risotto is cooked from scratch..." I note that every other table on the dining deck had been served and finished, even though most had arrived after us, by this point, and some of them had risotto.

The risotto was tasteless, bland, and unseasoned. It had all the appearance of rice left to cook in a thin brown stock. The recipient of this dish elected after several bites to just give up.

The salmon dish my mother had selected - the fish itself looked lovely, it however was cold, and mostly raw. The waitress explained haughtily "we try not to overcook the fish here". Now, I know how to cook salmon... This was raw. And appeared to have perhaps been frozen on one side at least to start.

The halibut dish was supposed to be served atop a papaya salad. It was not, it was served atop some other random assortment of things, reasonably-decent according to the person who ordered it, but totally unexpected and not what was ordered. The otherwise-great piece of fish was cooked to a crisp on one side, and overdone throughout.

I had ordered the dungeness crab louie salad. This was a fraud, and poorly-prepared at that. The lettuce was not the type specified on the menu, and it had just been thrown onto the plate in a small untidy pile, oddly shaped, and then positively drowned in "traditional louie dressing" - "traditional" in this case must mean "the kind that comes in #10 cans from Sysco". The hard-boiled egg was sulferous and nasty. The "heirloom tomatoes" consisted of a single sad mealy flavorless seemingly commercial greenhouse tomato, which is a shame, as the local tomatoes available two blocks away at the farmers' market are awesome right now. The visual appearance of the dish was silly - giant spears of cucumber radiating from the sad heap of lettuce. The crab was inoffensive, but not premium jumbo-lump pieces of crab, just shredded "special" grade meat. Absurd for the price.

My wife got a nice-looking shellfish pasta. The shellfish was plentiful and properly cooked. The pasta had been cooked into a single sticky molecule of noodle, and wasn't edible with the tools at hand.

My wife asked to speak to the manager, and we were informed there wasn't one. We also got a lengthy sob story about how many people had just quit and that had left them short-handed. I wonder why they all quit...?

The initial bill presented to us was ~$220 for 5 mains, 2 appetizers, 1 plate of bread, two ice teas, and tap waters. No wine/cocktails.

Anyways, such a shame - it's a beautiful spot, and there have been some nice restaurants in the space in the past. Hopefully whoever is next will do a better job.