Timothy’s Restaurant

We were there last night. Three really good meals and one disaster.
$ 10.00 salmon was great. So was the crawfish étouffée. The gumbo ya ya was real good too.
The boiled crawfish was awful! The wait person had no idea how to eat it. What a mess…
The guest who ordered it said «it was the worst meal of her life».
Don’t order it!

It’s rare to find a restaurant with as incredible service as the food, and Timothy’s provided just that. I wish I remember our waitresses name, but she had short hair, black stud earrings and was so knowledgeable and so incredibly helpful with our meal. She picked out the perfect wine and had great recommendations for our entire meal. We started with the tuna tartare appetizer with lobster. Incredible. So delicious and fresh and paired amazingly with the mango salsa. For entrees, I got the special seafood Asian bouillabaisse and my boyfriend got the Thai spiced sea bass. Both were absolutely fantastic. I am biased and think my choice of the bouillabaisse was the best but both were 10 stars. For dessert, we split the white chocolate crème brûlée. YUM!
Overall this was the perfect meal and I hope to come back and have the exact same experience. The service is honestly what pushed the overall experience from a 9 to a 12.
Thank you for an unbelievable night Timothy’s!

Had off season reservations in November, not that having reservations means that someone actually reserves a table for you at a specific time, right?
Waited a good 15 minutes while being ignored by every server except one that said: «She’ll be right with you».
After getting checked in we were asked to wait a little longer.
Then we were asked if we wanted to sit at an open table, outside of the dining room, next to an outside door, in a dark corner. Sure, what could possibly be less than first class with that kind of offer? We can tilt the menu towards the middle of the room where the nearest light is to read it. Still not unhappy, but getting there.
Our server was terrific. The appetizers were filling and well prepared. The steak came out under cooked. Please re-​fire, no big deal. Our other entrée was a chicken confit, which was also under cooked and THAT is a bigger deal. Don’t bother re-​firing that, I’ll just leave it.
Re-​fired steak came back, darker around the outside, still too rare in the middle. Screw it, the dog will eat it.
We had some good food, but the expensive parts were under cooked and turned out to be expensive dog food.
The dog gave them 5 stars. Me, it’s so very rare for me to complain, so these two stars should be a dire warning to choose elsewhere.

I am a seafood fan and foodie, after two visits here I’m planning on coming again and again in obsessed. We drive over two hours just to come here.

What a surprise and a delight at the end of an afternoon of exploring southwest Michigan coastal living! This historic inn and restaurant is a oasis of delights. My husband and I were seated at 6:00 pm without a reservation and service was prompt and professional and friendly. The Ahi Tuna and the Miso Salmon, both encrusted with sesame seeds and surrounded by crisped spinach, were delicious.

Stopped in on vaca ten minutes before our reservation. Three servers passed us up, a hostess walked up to get menus and no one greeted us for five minutes. Unimpressed, we left for another establishment. Good food here from times past but we will take our money elsewhere.

Stopped by for our 20^th anniversary dinner on recommendation. Great menu but service and food quality was merely passable. We had a reservation and were seated in a great outdoor porch immediately. Nice! Unfortunately, dinner was over 2.5 hours of waiting for everything… drinks, food, table service. Everyone around us was obviously experiencing the same thing. I had to send back my $ 34 Halibut as it was truly inedible due to overcooking. The rest of our dinner items were hit and miss. We are forgiving but like to get what we pay for. Note to owner and managers: employ more staff and food runners. Beautiful location but you need to be more involved in the guest experience.

this place is pretty darned good. sat at the bar. kevin is an awesome BT. generous pours. food was excellent. had the walleye. with asparagus and a side o shrimp. good stuff. come here and give em a try.

So our friend took us to dinner sat night the restaurant looked like an old resort and Is still operational We sat right away and John was our server. That had a nice selection of beer and a decent cocktail list. They use a lot of fresh ingredient which is nice. We started with battered squash blossoms which were quite good they had a siracha sauce
Dinner I had a grilled Caesar salad and the local walleye The salad was definitely one of my favorites a very large portion (or course I got the larger size) they have a smaller portion which I should of gotten but anyways The romaine was grilled very nicely with a smoky flavor and some shaved pecorino was perfectly balanced between flavor sit was really good! The sautéed bacon onion walleye was very large portion. It was served over an arugula salad with berries It was ok but I thought it had a little too much going on. With such a great fresh local fish I would minimize all the extra ingredients and go with a couple of things to bring out the flavor other entrees were fish and chips very good the crusted grouper which was also overdone with too many ingredients and the Lemongrass chicken which was also pretty good Desert the chocolate bread pudding was good all in all good place
Oh one important thing they might want to put up a better railing in
The front It was difficult for some of the older people to enter and leave just an FYI

This is a favorite in the area! The food is delicious and we have never had a bad meal here. The sauces are great and the seafood always fresh. Don’t bring young children as this restaurant is more upscale and worth enjoying with other adults or your significant other. Great cocktails!

Whenever we come to New Buffalo, we make it a habit to come to Timothy’s. The service is good, but what they really do well is fish. The walleye with the bacon and berry sauce is outstanding.

I’ll go to Grande Mere next time… BIG disappointment!!! The crab legs were cold,
it definitely was not a pound and a half, they were the size of snow crab legs, salmon was undercooked, and to top it off, there was a plastic bag in my food. They were not in the least bit concerned about the huge plastic bag I could have choked on! All they did was take our iced teas off the bill! Next time I want to spend $ 200, I’ll go to Grande Mere in Stevensville.

Ein sehr tolles Restaurant mit 10 Gerichten für 10 Dollar von Mittwoch bis sonntags. Sehr gut gemacht und tolle freundliche Bedienung

Timothy’s is nice.
Nice. Not great. Not unforgettable, stunning, amazing or brilliant.
I have had some really excellent meals here; others not so very. The quality control is inconsistent. Sometimes the kitchen is so heavy handed with the salt, I can feel my blood pressure rising after the third forkful. But there are also some flashes of brilliance — like a grilled Caesar salad with the romaine kissed by the smoky ghost of every steak ever fired in the place.
Lovely.
So the pendulum swings from «yuck» to «awesome»; and eventually settles at «nice».
Recommendation? Roll the dice. Try it.
And pray that the salt monster is not lurking on the night you visit.

I had not been to Timothy’s in many years due to bad kitchen service previous times but thought I would give it another chance last evening. Service was good however we were served a substitute fish for two of our four orders with the kitchen trying to pass off the fish as our original order. I will not be back as there was no adjustment to our bill other than one free cocktail?

Great charred Caesar. Good service. Trying to be a special place – kind of succeeds in atmosphere. Not so much in food: good ingredients but sickeningly sweet coatings on grouper (macadamia nut) and sauce with pork chop. If you want a special place and can afford ok food for a high price, and you’ve got an ability to pretend well, it’s actually kind of fun. Or maybe, just get appetizers and dessert.

«Meh, I’ve experienced better» Sums up my thoughts about Timothy’s perfectly.
Have to admit though, that I had really high expectations from the reviews here. Unfortunately this place fell really short. To start, we had a group of 6. From the time we sat down until the time we were done eating was more than 3 and a half hours. That wasn’t us taking our time, that was the monstrous wait times all around. Luckily we haven’t seen each other in a while and had a lot to talk about.
Our waitress was kind and nice, but the food just took too long. We ordered one appetizer within 10 minutes of seating and we ordered our entrees within 20. We waited 1.5 hours for our appetizers and another 1.5 hours for our entrees.
Looking past the atrocious wait times, when we finally got our food and there was huge disappointment all around. Not one person at the table said anything close to «This is amazing». I personally had halibut and it was overcooked.
The plating and the aesthetics of the food also left a lot of room for improvement. The plating was sloppy and made no sense at all. I’ve seen better plating at Fridays.
To top that off, it was crazy expensive, which I was prepared for and would have been more than happy to spend if the food matched the quality.
Unfortunately, I will not be able to justify giving Timothy’s a second shot, considering the price.

This is a downgrade for a restaurant that I previously held in the highest regard. Timothy’s is a restaurant in the Gordon Beach Inn in Union Pier, Michigan, and the food has been of the standards one would expect of the best downtown Chicago establishments, with prices to match. When one charges $ 30.00 or more for entrées, there should be a reason to pay such a price. In the past, those expectations were fulfilled, and our visits were happy and memorable ones.
We dined there last night, and at first glance, nothing had changed. The décor is rustic, with tables in an open room covered with pink tone linen covered with white paper, with square green towels as napkins. A narrow screened in porch offers a few 4 top tables with a view of a back garden. We were seated shortly after our reservation time (a point of interest is that the restaurant works on the Eastern time zone, the western border of which is the Indiana/​Michigan line at Michiana). Things started to go downhill at this point. We looked at the menus and the specials menus. The specials were printed on cards which were stained and torn. Two specials were not on the list. We waited a few minutes, and finally a waitress came to ask about drinks. (BTW, the wine list was nicely priced, with many selections in the $ 30 to $ 40 range). Then she disappeared for at least 10 minutes. When she came back, she told us that one of the appetizers on the specials menu, the fried zucchini flowers, was not available.
We ordered the crab cakes and the tempura fried soft shell crabs as appetizers. Entrées come with either house salads, or a choice of fire roasted tomato soup or the soup of the day. When asked what the soup of the day was, we were told it was clam chowder but they had run out! 2 items 86’d (a restaurant term for no longer available). The appetizers arrived with a different server who stated she saw they were waiting and she helped out so they wouldn’t be cold. They weren’t cold, but they were not hot out of the kitchen either. Despite this, both the crab cakes and the soft shells were delicious, both with a drizzle of wasabi aioli. Then the salads and soups were served. The soup arrived without the dollop of crème fraiche that had always be a part of the presentation, and they were colder than tepid. Our waitress apologized and took the soup back. When she returned with the soup, now sporting the crème fraiche, it was clear that they had been placed in a microwave, as the bottom of the soup was warmer than the top, and the overall temperature was still less than what one would expect. Good taste, but…
Our entrées came and all of them tasted excellent. However, there was the 3^rd strike. Some of the entrées were to come with mashed potatoes, and a pasta was offered as a substitute. How can a restaurant run out of potatoes? Is it beyond the competence of a line chef to create more? My other comment concerning the main courses is there are too many competing favors on the plate. My bacon onion crusted walleyed pike was excellent, but did not meld well with the arugula strawberry blueberry citrus salad served with it.
Sorry Timothy, until you solve the serving and kitchen gaffs, we will not be back.

Timothy’s was one of the more notable dining experiences of my life. It is located inside a historic inn on a beautiful serene property in quaint, quiet union pier. We sat on the side patio and it was like dining on an old southern porch. The service was great: attentive, knowledgeable and genuinely cared about us and our experience. The food was amazing! Loved the Thai influences! We couldn’t decide what to get and went with recommendations from our server-​always a good idea.
Timothy’s is a wonderful dining experience, but definitely meant for foodies and those who appreciate a well known chef and exploring off of the main drag. If you love good food, ambiance and rustic fine dining this is the place for you. If you are more of a chain restaurant, meat and potato kind of diner this is probably not the place for you.
Would I go back? I would plan another trip to the area with the sole purpose of dining there!

Just went there last night and what a mess! Old towels for napkins. Waited 40 minutes to be served. The waitress was terrible. Service terrible! Had a glass of wine and after waiting over an hour for soup to be served, we left and went to Bentwood Tavern where we were served with professionalism and good food.
Timothy’s, a word of advice, train and hire a more professional staff. Our server looked like she had been homeless at one time !
Terrible place!
I had been there two yrs ago and the food and service was great, I don’t know what happened but way over priced for the service and environment !

It gives me a good feeling about a restaurant when the guy who puts his name on it is actually in the kitchen, working at the stove and plating the orders, as Timothy was on the night I visited, looking rather dashing in a black chef’s tunic.
The Gordon Beach Inn where the restaurant is located has a slightly ramshackle, old-​time-​ski-​lodge-​meets-​The-​Shady-​Rest-​Hotel sort of feel to it. On a late-​fall evening the dining room off the lobby was warm, cozy, and inviting, with lots of old dark wood, soft lighting, and a cheerful fireplace. Indeed, it feels like the sort of place that’s at its best, in terms of ambiance, between October and Christmas.
I started with house-​made pork/​sage ravioli in a butternut squash sauce infused with apple. Delicious, everything flavorful and well-​balanced. The plump mezzaluna ravioli had an appearance and texture, if not shape, almost like won tons, because of the relatively thin pasta skin, with a generous lump of coarsely ground filling inside. The combination of pork, sage, squash, and apple flavors definitely worked and evoked late November.
The fire-​roasted tomato soup had a very pleasant sweet smokiness to it.
My entrée was a rib eye with French fries (substituted for mashed sweet potato) and some surprisingly yummy, mild-​flavored, slightly sweet grilled kale. I appreciated the option of a «small plate» sized piece of meet (I was told the steak was about 7 ounces, which I think is plenty if you’re trying to eat in a reasonably sensible way.) The steak was quite tender, though grayish inside. It had a sweet topping heat-​affixed onto it that was apparently a mix of garlic, heavily reduced apple cider, and beef Demi glacé. I was ambivalent about the sweet taste this gave each bite of meat, but it was interesting.
Had a glass of house merlot and another of cab, both from «Grand Cru,» which is apparently a Bronco Winery (big by-​the-​tank-​car sort of wine producer) label available only to restaurants. Both were perfectly acceptable — nothing distinctive, but they didn’t taste like jug wine, either.
As others have noted, Timothy seems to be big on sauces and interesting seasonings and flavor combinations. The plating is thoughtful, colorful, and attractive, with lots of little sauce squiggles on the rims.
I finished with a decent white chocolate crème brûlée (though any white chocolate taste was very faint) and very good coffee.
My server was pleasant and professional. It wasn’t a fast meal (which was fine, a meal like this shouldn’t be rushed), but I didn’t think the waits for each course were unreasonable, especially since it’s a small kitchen.
For being so small, the place has a very long, ambitious menu. I thus assume lots of the fish and meats must be frozen, not fresh, but only Timothy knows for sure, i guess. I’ll be back to try some other things.