Glow

Absolutely fabulous. We celebrated Father’s Day with my father and father-​in-​law. We were 8 in total. Quite charming atmosphere. The food was scrumptious!!! Service was friendly and attentive. I had the Redfish. It was fantastic!!! The vegetables complimented the main dish. We also had several appetizers that were delicious as well. My husband has the steak and enjoyed it as well. Highly recommend.

Not just a great restaurant for Rockport but a great restaurant period. Atmosphere is perfect — a small house just off little bay with an outdoor area and a nice bar, that somehow pulls off beachy and chic at the same time. Chef Karey’s food is a perfect reflection of the gulf and other local ingredients. Loved our last dinner where we shared a series of small plates. Easter brunch was also fantastic!

First review I’ve done… Came here on restaurant’s 5^th anniversary and even with the busyness, the staff was friendly and cordial. Bartender Dave is a drink master and I don’t call many bartenders that. Truly impressed! Food was worth the wait and fresh. Couldn’t ask for a better atmosphere and company.

We held a rehearsal dinner for the wedding party and family of our son and daughter in law’s wedding here last Friday evening. It was perfect for our group! Karey and her staff were welcoming and gracious hosts, so easy to work with ahead of time as we were doing all the planning from Pennsylvania. The night of they had the menu printed up and a sign and the menus had the bride and grooms names on them… a nice touch. The restaurant was a treat setting for our group; small and intimate but still comfortable. But most of all, the food was amazing and met or exceeded our expectations in every way. Great night for us made special by the attention and care of Karey and the Glow staff!

I’m all about eating local. With that said, the locals have got to stock their kitchen and staff accordingly. We arrived at 7:15 on a Tuesday in May. Granted, the beginning of May, but it wasn’t January. We sit at the bar. It’s just two of us.
We hear from afar that they are out of fish.
Wait? What? It’s now 7:20…maybe 7:30 and you’re out of fish???
Ok, what DO you have?
I’ll order the seafood stew. It has snapper, shrimp and crab with a tomato lime broth.
They have it!
I’ll have a side of your house-​cut French fries with a caper aioli.
I’m sorry we are out of that.
Ok.
I’ll have the fried oyster salad.
I’m sorry. We are out of fried oysters.
Ok. I’ll have the seafood stew and a house salad.
Next person in my party, knowing there is no fish, but due to a physical issue, cannot eat potatoes.
He orders the beef tenderloin.
I ask that if there is any cauliflower purée that was being served with the Grouper, left? If so, may we sub that for the mashed potatoes?
Sure, but she’ll check.
Guess what. Out of cauliflower.
Ok. We will deal. Bring the beef tenderloin with the mashed potatoes.
We laugh. Choosing to try and deal with it. But it’s still odd.
The question being… What DO you have in your kitchen at 7:45???
Seafood stew arrives. Broth is VERY TASTY. It has a good amount of heat. I realize though, that it only had three pieces of less than medium-​sized shrimp.
No Snapper.
No Crab.
Was it noted on the menu because it was cooked only into the broth?
I ordered a $ 13.00 bowl of stew that was maybe 8-​oz. of a delicious broth and three pieces of shrimp.
Our sweet waitress, who I need to mention was overwhelmed that night. She and the other waitress were waiting tables, bussing tables and tending bar. Good lord! Who does the staffing?
Once again, it’s not 40 degrees and January. This is the first week of May.
When our waitress stops by to ask how our food is, I tell her the broth is delicious, however, it’s missing the snapper and crab. She apologizes and returns to say that the cooks had put some mushrooms and carrots in the stew to replace the snapper and crab. Hmmmmm???
I ordered a seafood stew with the first, second and third ingredients being, Snapper, Shrimp and Crab.
Three pieces of shrimp is all I received in a shallow bowl of, once again, a delicious broth.
It was all a ridiculous evening.
We watched as two people arrived and sat at the bar while were there. As soon as they were told that there was no fish, they left without ordering dinner.
At sometime between 8 and 8:20, a couple walked in and was told the kitchen was closed.
Shall I keep going???
Dear Glow,
I really want you to succeed. When your name is brought up as a restaurant option for the evening, people roll their eyes because they don’t know if you’ll run out of food, or your staff will be too
overwhelmed.
I promise you, we all want you to succeed. You’ve got the right idea. You have just got to manage your menu and staff better.
Do you have a history of numbers so your manager can staff and buy accordingly?
Look at the events calendar. Look at the weather.
Look at restaurants that are closed. Can you pick up their business?
You are too wonderful to keep… floundering…no pun intended.

Delicious desserts! Great appetizers! Cute establishment. My family enjoyed visiting here.

Thank goodness I found this place! This is exactly what all the small restaurants in the surrounding area and Corpus Christi should strive to be. Very welcoming, single page menu, outstanding food done right with the most locally fresh seaside ingredients you can possibly get.
They even had online ordering through Unilocal’s Eat24! What small restaurant even does that? AWESOME! Ordered the crab cakes and linguine online and got an e-​mail alert once everything was ready. Stopped by, picked up my order and was eating down by the boat harbor with a great view within minutes. Just typing this out makes me want some more. Guess I know where I’m going tonight.
Pro-​Tip: I’ve found a single page or very simple menu is a superb indicator of a great establishment and the owner/​chef knows what they are doing. I’ve been to so many places with massive menus that end up with a very disappointing experience, especially during the busy season because they over-​extend themselves with so many items that they end up doing them all very poorly. Glow knows what kind of restaurant it is and it does it very well. GET THE CRAB CAKES, THANK ME LATER.

I was seriously impressed with this little gem! We happened to stop in during happy hour, the cocktails were great and the small plates were delicious! We even saw the chef come out to the patio to cut his fresh herbs. We will definitely be back!

The ambience is phenomenal whether you are looking out onto the water or seated inside the very beachy, cozy, white washed interior; you feel like you are having dinner at a good friend’s house. I brought my brother and my mother for dinner to escape the madness of oyster fest and we were delighted and very impressed. The fried oyster salad featured oysters that were crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside — delicious and perfectly paired with little Pickles and split baby tomatoes, the gulf stew, the gumbo and the chowder were meals in themselves with chunks of shrimp and white fish and oysters. The New York strip Was perfectly cooked to order raw per mom’s wishes. My brother enjoyed the cornmeal fried oysters and shrimp and finished them first before the rest of us could even try one bite! After dinner my brother and I had the Chocolate Pot which we spoon, spoon, passed back and forth eating the whip cream and digging into to get spoonfuls of some kind of chocolate love sludge at the bottom of the pot! Best meal we’ve had in Rockport in years — thank you, Glow, and best of luck for more GLOWing recommendations just like this one!

My family has been going to rockport for as long as I’ve been born, so let’s call that 26 years.
So i’ve seen restaurants come and go in this tiny sleepy fishing town.
My mom and I came here on our last girls trip to Rockport, and we LOVED GLOW.
We vacation frequently in Marthas Vineyard, and the first response we had when we walked in the first time was that it reminded us of classy new england, hard to find in rockport.
We decided to take our whole family in when we were in Rockport for Thanksgiving (half who hadn’t been), and we all left raving how much we couldn’t wait to come back.
First off, I reccomend making a reservation. Even if its an off-​season random Tuesday night, this place is tiny. There is bar seating, but inside only holds 20 people max. We made a reservation day after thanksgiving, and the owner was super accomodating to our semi-​large party (of 5), and squeezed us in. Pro Tip: Reservation.
I am not a big seafood eater, but everyone else who had the seafood loved it. I tried the Chicken Parm the first time I went in, and this time I tried the Siracha Mac and Cheese. Easily, without exaggeration some of the best mac and cheese i’ve had.
Chicken Parm is excellent too. All dishes beautifully displayed and equally creative in flavor.
It is pricey, but well worth it. Probably the most expensive meal you’ll have in Rockport so why not splurge? Our biggest regret is that it took us so long to try out Glow. So don’t be like us and wait, just dive right in!

It made me give one star — but if I had a choice it would be NO stars lol. In spite of the horrible reviews ~ my boyfriend and I thought we would give it a shot anyway. Service was horrible!!! Nice enough people… but inexperienced. The kitchen was beyond backed up because the chef/​owner was busy tending bar and flirting with the locals lol. When we showed up — there were only 10 people in the restaurant — not like they were slammed or anything. The bruschetta was good — the drinks were great — when you could get them (the chef/​owner did quit tending bar when the kitchen was backed up)… BUT wait! The best part… we waited an hour for our food… and the snapper was decent —- but the steak which I ordered as a STRIP, and medium/​rare at that came as an OLD, sour-​tasting ribeye that rare… too rare. Disgusting place sorry to say :(

Glow is a somewhat trendy restaurant that you really wouldn’t expect to see in Rockport. The atmosphere was classy/​nautical (that’s a thing, I think). It was refreshing after having gone to a dive bar the night before.
It was maybe 8pm on a Saturday and the little restaurant was pretty crowded. Instead of waiting for a table, the four of us opted to sit at the bar. The service was pretty slow, since it seemed that they didn’t have a dedicated bartender. It was just multiple servers and the owner helping out here and there at the bar.
I had a Big Tree to drink, which was a cucumber vodka cocktail. I’m usually not a huge fan of cucumber, but the drink was actually really good. I wanted to order the red snapper for my meal, but they were unfortunately out, so I went with the grouper. It was alright. Honestly my favorite part of the dish was the little roasted tomatoes. The rice pilaf it came on was citrusy, but nothing too special. Boyfriend got the chicken Parmesan, which I liked a little better than my own dish.
I’d go back for the drinks I suppose.

How disappointing! Our favorite restaurant, Latitude was closed. We opted to try once again Glow, we could not have been more disappointed. Not only was the food very marginal, they attempted to overcharge us by a substantial amount according to the prices listed on their website. Website listed Grouper at $ 18.00, bill was $ 25.00. Website, sides listed at $ 3.00, charged us $ 5.00.
Explanation given by waitress was «manager wasn’t there and she couldn’t do anything other than adjust the prices.
We won’t return!
This is the second time we have tried this restaurant and have been disappointed both times.

Oh my, I love this place! Rockport needed this place. I want to give 5 stars & when the owner/​chef is in house I always can but if she is gone its hit or miss.
The food is OUTSTANDING! You can’t get anything like it anywhere else in Rockport. Back to comment above, if the chef is there its remarkable but if she is gone it can be only ok.
The atmosphere is adorable! So cute & quaint & relaxing. Not kid friendly!
The prices are reasonable for what you receive but «high» compared to Rockport. BUT you can’t compare this place to Rockport. It is its own class!
Wait staff is great!
All in all I highly recommend this place!

Very small place, very cozy. Atmosphere was very inviting.
I’m not a seafood or fancy food connoisseur and am always worried I’ll look like a fool but the wait staff was polite. My only issue was trying to find something for my 2yr old to eat.
The food was delicious and we had a hard time deciding on what to get, we settled for the snapper and the trio, and ordered a pasta for my daughter but she didn’t eat it so we ate it and it was still yummy. We decided on the bread pudding and that was my first time having bread pudding… Other than desert being super hot, everything was YUMMY!

Our party of 5 arrived at our reservation time, were told when we made reservation we’d be seated outside. The fiasco started when we were led out to the patio area and there was not a table for 5 available. It took some moving around on the part of other diners for our party to be seated.
After ordering our drinks they arrived 45 minutes later and it took over an hour to get our entrees which were not all brought out at the same time which to me makes for an awkward meal.
The food was average, not at all spectacular as we had anticipated and definitely not worth the wait.

This place was AMAZING. We are from Colorado and were road tripping to Houston but last minute decided to make a detour to Rockport. We had no idea what was down here but this place was recommended on multiple websites and everyone we asked had great things to say about it. We hadn’t eaten all day and showed up for local social. We were seated immediately on their covered patio overlooking the bay (great view). We ordered basically all of their small plates… and I think we could’ve just ordered the rest of the menu it was so good ! The staff was so welcoming and nice. The drinks (margarita and big tree) were fantastic and refreshing. I’m just bummed we were only in town for a night because I could eat there all over again ! A must if you are staying in the area.

Never disappoints!
Critic in major markets/​major hubs — New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Austin to name a few.
Random weekends we get to our paradise of Rockport.
Island time is a virtue. Never change.

This is how you dine at GLOW. Pony up to the BAR when they open and get out before 7pm. (nice happy hour apps and drinks)
If you come in with a group after 7pm, and you see one person handling the entire restaurant, turn around.

We dined as a party of ten which was prearranged and confirmed that we would be able to be catered for.
Glow is a quaint small restaurant which is well decorated.
The service was atrocious from by he beginning. The waitress were lovely but had no clue as to what they were doing. It took a long time to get everyone a glass of water.
For a long table we were given one board with 5 pieces of homemade bread, which was pretty good. But when it was finished and not all the table had had a chance to sample a piece it was not refilled till an hour later.
After 30 minutes 2 members of our group got their appetizers the other 8 did not. 45 minutes later after my aunt inquired the other appetizers arrived. Orders were muddled up but we were just excited of the idea of food having waited for an hour and 15 minutes.
As we continued to wait for our entrees we saw a number of tables around as arrive after us, get seated, order and receive their food. There was even a table of 6 who were eating before us having arrived 30 minutes after.
After another inquiry and discussion with the owner our entrees starting finally coming out. The waitress brought out 4 gulf plates which was an incredible mistake on her behalf as we had order 4 snappers.
At this point most of the party were so hungry and unhappy with the absurdly slow service and miscommunication that the meals were not enjoyed.
The snapper to me was ok, not anything special.
The service was terrible along with the attitude of the owner who started making excuses saying that we had made a mistake with coming in at the time we did. We had booked way in advance and called to confirm.
The only highlight was we were given free desserts. I had the bread pudding with a salted Carmel sauce and sliced bananas– it was actually very delicious.