Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen

Food is always delicious.

Atmosphere: 5

Food: 5

Service: 5

Very good food

This was a excellent experience from the hostess greeting, our excellent server AAliyah who gave us and exceptional experience. We definitely had to tell the manger about her hospitality and the manager was great also. Let me not forget the food.
Kudos!!

Atmosphere: 5

Food: 5

Service: 5

We came from Dayton Ohio to go to the union terminal to see their Holocaust exhibit and I told my friend I said let's go to Pappadeaux’s, I haven't been in probably 10-12 years. I cannot believe how good our meal was, it was outstanding our waiter Craig was wonderful. We can't say enough about him, and the food was fabulous. I hadn't had an appetite in some time .I actually tasted the food was able to eat it and even had plenty to take home. It was incredible we're definitely going to come back, and bring more friends with us. We got the crab and spinach dip with the Parmesan Crostini’s, we had the braised collard greens, my friend got three fillets of fried catfish( they were huge) with french fries. I've got the large size French fried shrimp. I don't remember when I've had such a good fried shrimp perfectly crisp. I tried my friends catfish( I'm not a fish eater), but I thought next time I'm going to get some catfish! Thank you thank you thank you for a very enjoyable evening

Atmosphere: 5

Food: 5

Service: 5

Awesome as always

Pappadeauxs atmosphere is really enjoyable. The food and drinks are amazing. We had the alligator and garlic bread for an appetizer and I had the crawfish ettouffee. So good!!

Atmosphere: 5

Food: 5

Service: 5

Recommended dishes: Menu, Swamp Thang Cocktail Large, Seafood

Service was fantastic and they checked back frequently, my wife and I ordered some garlic bread recommended by our serve, calamari and octopus as well as we both ordered the fried catfish and shrimp the calamari was some of the best I have had, and the catfish was also delicious, the shrimp however was cold and poopy:( literally! butterflied breaded and fried with the poopbeins still intact the wife and I found 3 shrimp prepared like this and for the price was rather upsetting and disappointing to have such a negative takeaway from an otherwise wonderful meal with my wife.

Atmosphere: 4

Food: 2

Service: 5

Recommended dishes: Catfish

Great food and waiter was awesome

Atmosphere: 5

Food: 5

Service: 5

Pappadeaux was clearly my favorite restaurant because I am a seafood lover. I loved the menu selections and I've loved the atmosphere. However I stopped going to Pappadeaux's because there were few things in customer service and the menu seem to change and lack it's initial appeal. However on November 29th 2025, I returned to the restaurant and was greatly surprised. They have a friendly and radiant new manager and it looked like a new team of customer service experts. The Food was awesome the Service was Superior and the Atmosphere was of my choosing. Whatever they done to bring the restaurant up a few Stars is working. Pappadeaux has return to the top of my list in restaurants in Cincinnati. Kudos to Ms Ricochet and her staff for the awesome upgrades. The customer service is 10 Stars Plus and I look forward to coming in and trying to bread pudding.

Atmosphere: 5

Food: 5

Service: 5

Recommended dishes: Menu, Pappadeaux Platter, Oysters on the Half Shell and Catfish Opelousa, Fried, Catfish, Catfish with Red Beans \u0026 Rice, Lump Crab, Giant Shrimp \u0026 Grits

We have been going to Pappadeaux around the country for at least 20 years. DFW airport, Phoenix, Atlanta, Cincinnati (Springdale). The first 15 years they were amazing. The last five….slipping. Maybe you can blame it on COVID, but it never came back. The menu got smaller and smaller and so did the fried oysters. That is always my entree. The French bread used to be almost like that in France….crispy on the outside and light and fluffy on the inside. Now first of all you don’t receive it unless you ask and the inside now is like air. The butter has turned into that whipped stuff. Cheese grits? Gone. I think they had hush puppies. Whatever the case, they are gone. The cup of seafood gumbo with the shrimp and andouille sausage has now turned into a small bowl. Time before last those two things were just laid on the top, no attempt to even pretend to mix them in. The side dishes I just don’t now care for most so I got red beans and rice. My husband had gotten it as an appetizer. In New Orleans it is mixed together and looks like a thick stew. Here…a small plate with half rice and beside that a mound of red beans with pieces of andouille sausage. No liquid. And….so spicy hot we suffered to try to eat it. Too big, too hot. My husband loves whatever type of fish you have that is cooked in brown butter with hazelnuts. That was ok. My medium order of oysters….lots of breading. Two were huge, several were rather small and one was so chewy I had to just swallow a good part of it whole. At least this time we didn’t have to suffer through the waitress telling us about the specials before she gave us the menus. That happened last time (one month ago). I hope they have done away with that for good. The only thing that has not gone down is the Swamp Thing….and the service and the starched napkins and the servers looking good with the long aprons and nice shirts. They look like they came right out of a Parisian cafe. I would say they are trying to cut corners, trim the menu drastically, raise the prices but appease people by giving larger portions…hoping they won’t notice. Well, we noticed. We don’t want more food, we don’t care about the prices going up. We want consistency and something we can count on. As we drove away I told my husband we were going to have to try to figure out something for side dishes because the red beans and rice was a disaster. He suggested a Caesar salad. How sad.

Loud is my only complaint.

Atmosphere: 4

Food: 5

Service: 5

What can I say, bad service, unclean seafood. Plus waited at my table (which I had reservation) around 20 minutes before drinks and appetizers were offered. The main course came out wrong for both my partner and myself. The shrimp nor oysters seemed to have been cleaned very well since the texture of sand was present in both. At one point my partner's food came out 5 minutes before mine (it was wrong) then my food came out (also wrong) My food was remade and I ate but the frustration of the food orders not being taken in a moderately reasonable time, the food then being wrong and the seafood not being cleaned satisfactorily cause my partner to lose her appetite. Luckily my partners meal was refunded but it does not change the fact that I drove from Columbus to this restaurant specifically placed on my itinerary just for my partner not to enjoy her birthday meal I had planned.

I had really high hopes for Pappadeaux, especially since we drove down from Columbus for my birthday weekend and heard great things. Unfortunately, this ended up being one of the worst dining experiences we’ve had.

We had reservations, but the hostess stand was chaotic from the moment we arrived. Several employees were laughing and joking with each other instead of focusing on guests, and we were even taken to a table that was “suddenly” unavailable before being redirected to another. Not a huge deal on its own, but it set the tone for the rest of the night.

It took a long time—at least 5–10 minutes—before anyone even approached our table. Our server was friendly, but the service was extremely slow the entire visit. We ordered appetizers, which were actually the best part of the night: the calamari and garlic bread were hot and delicious. Unfortunately, everything went downhill after that.

Both of our entrées arrived incorrect. My partner ordered redfish and was instead brought salmon topped with shrimp—despite him specifically not ordering anything with shellfish due to an allergy. Yes, he didn’t disclose the allergy, but he didn’t order shrimp, so the mix-up should have been the main concern. Instead, management focused almost entirely on the allergy rather than the fact that the wrong dish was prepared.

My dish, the Pappadeaux Seafood Platter with extra shrimp and crawfish, was missing several items. No oysters, no crawfish, and definitely not “extra” anything. We had to flag the server down repeatedly just to address these issues.

When the corrected meals finally came out (after another long wait), my partner’s dish was fine — but mine was honestly inedible. The catfish was severely undercooked and slimy inside. The oysters and crab items were gritty, full of sand, and tasted dirty, like nothing had been cleaned properly before cooking. I couldn’t eat more than a bite without worrying I’d get sick.

I had to get the server’s attention again to send the food back. The only compensation offered was removing my entrée. No real apology, no acknowledgment from management about the poor quality or multiple mistakes — just an excuse about it being “a crazy Saturday night.” If Saturdays are always busy, the restaurant should be prepared for that.

For the price and the reputation, this was incredibly disappointing. The appetizers and the server’s attitude were the only positives in an otherwise terrible experience. We won’t be returning.

Atmosphere: 2

Food: 1

Service: 1

Beyond excellent!

Atmosphere: 5

Food: 5

Service: 5

Great. Food was great. Great waiter. I had Sea Food platter. Love it. My favorite. Love mixture of seafood 😋. Great service. Very attentive. Came back checked on us to make sure all was good & to see if we needed anything.

Atmosphere: 5

Food: 5

Service: 5