Bay Grille - Berkeley

The comfort food, such as the hamburger and salad, was excellent. The restaurant offers a beautiful view of the harbor area, and the service was outstanding.

The food was excellent. The server was nice, but very neglectful.

The food was decent considering the price of the meals. Our server was fantastic.

Had a good look at July 4th fireworks. The service was slow, though he wasn't busy. They never brought the mustard I asked for my burger. Warm, edible, but not much better than a fast food joint.

It 's the only restaurant convenient to this hotel 's location by the Berkeley marina, so even after reading the reviews, we figured we would check it out rather than leave and lose our free parking space on the street (not the $30 self parking in the hotel lot! . So we went with a low investment dinner of a Caesar salad and bowl of soup. The Caesar salad was quite impressive, a hearty serving of fresh romaine cut in perfect size bites with big shavings of fresh parmesan. Although the croutons were not freshly made, the dressing tasted like it was and it all came together nicely. For the soup part, one of us had the tomato soup (faint hint of the canned origin of the tomatoes combined with fresh basil to make up for it and the clam chowder, which my dining partner said was okay. Neither soup was heated beyond warm. Each was served with sour dough toast. Portions were not generous. When we got the bill, we paid for two soups and two salads a la carte. With one soda, the bill came to over $55 for what felt like a $35 meal. Our server was quite chipper and delightful. The dining room is very open and large, but surprisingly not drafty despite the large windows and location on the marina. In summary, this was an acceptable meal, but it cost about 50 percent more than it should.