Dockside Seafood and Oyster Bar

Went here Friday evening like most people do on Friday evenings looking for seafood that is edible. I ordered a seafood platter. Very pricey. I was offered a side so I chose hush puppies. Waitress returns to tell me they were out of hush puppies so I settled for sweet potato fries. Well guess what? No sweet potato fries. I asked «what do you have»? Onion rings. Great.
Platter comes out and for $ 17.95 you would have thought the plate would have been over flowing. NOT !!! The fish on my platter was not cooked properly and was spoiled.
Call the owner over and told him I could not eat the fish because it had a very bad taste. He replies «No one has ever said my fish was bad». Just before I received my plate, a couple next to us had a «BAD Food Issue» also. They carried their plate to the waitress.
All I can say is the staff in the kitchen did not have on hair nets, aprons or gloves. The owner was in soiled clothes and shoes. How do I know this? The owner waited tables and the kitchen staff came out and into the bar area. We could see into the kitchen.
Greasy food and not worth the money they are charging. Poor quality of food, Waitress never came and refilled our glasses.
We eat out often and enjoy trying to spend our money at local restaurants and very very rarely do we have issues like this.

Best time to go: 130p or later, after the lunch rush. They’re dishes are consistently good & generously portioned. Dinner is good too, but it’s more a lunch spot for me.
Charbroiled oysters are a little better than Acme’s (who I find has smaller ones anyway) and there’s a steal of a special for a dozen certain weekdays. As far as entrees, I’m a fan of the catfish, which isn’t thin cut, thank goodness, since I don’t like eating nothing but batter with hardly any catfish. It’s not thick, but you get a good fillet. For a side, gotta go with the dockside potatoes, which is so generously portioned you can make some bitchin’ hash browns the next day :)

Typical run of the mill Louisana seafood restaurant and oyster bar… which isn’t a bad thing.
I had the soft shell crab poboy, fries, and fried green tomatoes. The tomatoes were a little bit bigger than I would have liked which led to them not being as crispy as I wanted, but they were okay. The crab was a little small but very good. The fries were actually maybe the best part of my meal.
Overall, it’s nothing special, but it’s perfectly fine, and I’m sure I’ll be back in the future.

The char-​grilled oyster were ok but everything else not great, not even good. The service was bad, she was nice enough but took forever and then got the order wrong… Some advise, write it down because you got my order wrong and the lady next to us.

This is an oyster bar. And at $.35 per oyster how can someone give this place only 2 stars… Don’t go to an oyster bar and order a fancy dinner. We ate here 15 years ago and I swear the price is the same on their special day. Two beers, dozen oysters, fried green tomatoes, garlic bread for $ 20 including tip!

Great oysters shrimp and crawfish. Just a local joint that is always packed. Thursday specials on oysters

Went here for lunch and were were pleasantly surprised! Fried shrimp was a little spicy but the blackened shrimp was amazing!!! Best I have ever had.
Good service.
Will definitely be back.

Let me start by the review by saying this is local bar. Not a trendy hot spot, not a fancy restaurant but a bar. The name even says «Dockside Seafood and Oyster BAR». So the reviews who complain about the décor and ambiance did not interpret the word correctly. Honestly some of the best oysters I’ve ever had. If you come on a Thursday expect to wait at least 45 minutes for your Oysters — but it is totally worth it. We actually ate here two nights in a row because the food was so good and service was incredibly friendly. If you are an oyster fan you don’t need to go to Acme or somewhere on bourbon street — Dockside will do. We also tried during our two night oyster extravaganza the fired grilled oysters, blackened shrimp and blue cheese wedge salad and fried shrimp and oyster platter. A pearl of a place

Love their oyster specials. They made oyster stew for us as a experiment. It was delicious.
Strongly recommend this place.

I’ve been here twice, and both times I’ve walked away with the same thought process: the seafood and french fries are good; everything else is mediocre at best including the other side dishes (hush puppies are bland as hell; coleslaw was inedible) and service (the server took my husband’s drink to refill it, then disappeared into the kitchen for 10 minutes only to emerge with nothing because he’d completely forgotten). Both times I’ve been I ordered the seafood platter, and they’re great. Friends have ordered the grilled seafood platter, and that’s great, too. Stick to the seafood & friench fries and only go when you’re not in a hurry, and you’ll be fine.

I heard good things about this place and was so disappointed.
We waited 15 minutes for a glass of water. The food was not good at all– I got a piece of dry fish smothered in a heap of lumpy, greasy sauce with those mini, previously frozen shrimp stuck on top. The hush puppies were the only edible part of the meal. Also, many of the ceiling tiles were bulging and one was leaking on the table in front of us. It wasn’t a rainy day. The server disappeared with our credit card at the end of the meal and it took him 15 minutes to bring it back AFTER the manager asked him to. She offered the excuse that the server «just spaces out sometimes». Never going back.

We really wanted to get take out at Seither’s on Hickory but they are closed on Sundays; so we decided to try Dockside near our house. It was a bad idea. We ordered fried catfish po-​boy and grilled shrimp po-​boy with fries. The shrimp was fried instead of grilled, the catfish had this funny taste, and the French fries were so soggy they tasted terrible. We called to let them know of their mistake with the shrimp, they offered to make a grilled shrimp po-​boy. It was nice of them, but we decided we didn’t want to go back out in the rain. Needless to say we will never eat there again.

Nice folks. Great 35 cent oysters on tues. thurs. good selection of beers. Overall. We are coming back.

Dockside is under new ownership. This was our first visit since it changed hands. Still looked like the old place, except they had white butcher’s paper on the tables for a touch of class in a neighborhood restaurant. I ordered the shrimp platter. It was a good size platter with plenty of large shrimp, just out of the fryer. The platter came with several options for the side. I took the fries. They were alright. My wife ordered the half fried shrimp, half fried catfish poorboy on toasted wheat. It amounted to a small platter, although the shrimp were the small ones usually found on poorboys, not near the size of what comes on the platter. The waiter had the kitchen convert the «dressed» fixings into a small salad for her. She nibbled on my fires. It was a good meal. Doesn’t look like they lost anything in the transition. The menu has been expanded and I’ll probably try something different on the next visit. No complaints about the wait staff. They were a little overwhelmed as every table was in use. We were happy with our service. They also have shucked oyster specials a couple nights week, including Saturday.

People of Harahan/​River Ridge, I implore you to stand up for yourselves and fight… for your right… to be fedddddd well!
Dockside reminds me of every other dining establishment in the H/​RR area — all items are frozen, pre-​packaged, boil in bag, etc. There is nothing exceptional about the taste, presentation, variety on menu… anything. Wait, scratch that, the levels of sodiem found within the items offered is exceptionally high!
I’m not just getting onto Dockside about this because every restaurant in the area appears to think it’s okay to feed diners this way. It’s not! Harahan/​River Ridge is a scoot down the expressway from great New Orleans dining. Restaurants where vegetables are fresh, salt is used to enhance a dish, and diners actually refuse to eat at a spot (no matter how convenient) that serves up bad, pre-​packaged, just-​plain-​bad food.
Waiter and management were kind. Dining room was clean. Hence, 2 stars.

Pretty decent seafood place. The combo platter is huge.
The char grilled oysters were exceptional also.
The place wasn’t that busy so our waitress had plenty of time to take care of us and did a good job.
Not my favorite place for seafood. But for a quick bite at reasonable prices dockside isn’t a bad bet in Harahan.

I live in the area and suggested Dockside to my parents for a late Sunday afternoon lunch. I’ve only been there a couple of times for takeout. I am never really happy with the service level. We got there and we were one of three occupied tables in the place. I asked the server if the chicken club sandwich was on French bread and she said «It can be.» I just brushed off that comment and proceeded to ask what came on the chicken club, to which she responded «Ummm, baconnnn, chickennn, I don’t know.» She did not offer to find out. I just said «That’s okay, I’ll order it. No tomato please.» Also, they were out of regular buns, which I find is ridiculous that no one can go to the store to buy buns?!
Our food came. The fried pickles appetizer was rather small. They did have a good flavor though. It came with an orange (onion mum-​type sauce & ranch). The onion mum sauce was good but they give you a very small amount. The sauce cup was less than half full. It also comes with ranch dressing. They don’t cut their shrimp po-​boys in half, which is weird. My chicken club sandwich came with the tomatoes that I asked to have omitted. The batter was okay, although a bit overcooked and the chicken breast was a little too thick for my liking. The bacon seemed like the precooked type. The french fries were average. My parents ordered a fried shrimp wrap and a fried shrimp po-​boy. Everyone enjoyed their food, but the service ruins the whole experience. Not to mention they were sweeping the place the entire time we were there and sliding wooden chairs around on the tile floor, which made a lot of noise while trying to hold a conversation. This was quite annoying. We also had to flag down our server for the check as she was engaged in a conversation with another employee.
We probably won’t be back. There are too many other places nearby with better service and the same quality of food. Dockside ownership/​management really needs to take customer service seriously. I noticed several other Unilocal reviews with negative service comments.

I love love love raw oysters and Dockside is my go to spot for big salty raw oysters. I usually go on Thursday or Saturday when they are running the .35 each raw oyster special.
Service is never really fast, but since I’m always pleased with the large oysters I’m served, I don’t mind waiting.
The fried seafood is okay and I’ve ordered other items on the menu that were mediocre, but for raw oysters, this place gets 5 stars!

My husband and I love Dockside. We came because of their special.$.35 raw oysters! Recently, they added Tuesday, Thursdays and all day Saturdays to the special.
The oysters are always served fresh and chilled. We love the horseradish served there! It has a nice kick that goes excellent with the chilled oysters. When we go, we always order at least 4 dozen raw oysters and a whole bunch of sides to snack on.
Also very good are the poboys. we had the hot sausage poboy last night.
Staff are all so nice. Dockside feels very family oriented and it’s nice to see smiling faces everytime we come.
Definitely a 5 stars in our book. because WE KEEP COMING BACK!!!

I’m from out of town. Nothing has changed in the roughly year and a half since I wrote my original review, last time I was in the NOLA area.
LOCALS, support this restaurant.
Good food and prices, friendly service.
Easy to find for out-​of-​towners, just a few miles/​minutes from MSY airport.