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Hours
Sun
12:00 - 22:00
Mon
12:00 - 22:00
Tue
12:00 - 22:00
Wed
12:00 - 22:00
Thu
12:00 - 22:00
Fri
12:00 - 22:00
Sat
12:00 - 22:00
Ratings and reviews
RATINGS
Food
Service
Value
Atmosphere
Food and ambience
Local cuisine, Seafood, British, Grill, Soups, Scottish
“We loved every single dish, and must say - this is how mussels and scallops *...”
“I had salmon which was ok but the homemade onion rings were the BEST I had ha...”
“Good selection of fresh fish, tuna was grilled to perfection and the chips ar...”
“A gorgeous menu that on the day included market fish such as sea bass and mus...”
Is this a fast food place?
Details
About
We are a family run fish bar and restaurant. We have been in the fish business for four generations and we hope to keep the family tradition going. All our fish is locally sourced and is as fresh as can be. We have our own fish house based in Arbroath, Where we are particularly famous for our Smokies! (Haddock cooked over a barrel, giving an intense smoked flavour) and our Humble Haddock is also a customer Favorite! We are passionate about seafood and it comes across in all our dishes from the Humble Haddock to our Seared Tuna steak! We carry a bespoke range of wines and whiskys suited to compliment your dish, just ask our serving staff for advice.
PRICE RANGE
£7.00 – £18.00
CUISINES
Seafood, British, Grill, Soups, Scottish
Special Diets
Vegetarian friendly, Gluten free options
Meals
Lunch, Dinner, After-hours
FEATURES
Takeout, Reservations, Seating, Highchairs Available, Wheelchair Accessible, Serves Alcohol, American Express, Mastercard, Visa, Free Wifi, Accepts Credit Cards, Table Service, Gift Cards Available
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4.5
2,148 reviews
Excellent
1,335
Very good
474
Average
166
Poor
91
Terrible
83
MalcolmMMitchell
St. Andrews369 contributions
May 2020 • none
My wife is an outstanding chef, but in these dark days of lockdown, she wanted to get off the stove! With eating establishments closed, the alternative was to have home delivered food. On Wednesday night, she expressed a desire to have Britain’s favourite takeaway - fish and chips.
I contacted Tailend and spoke to Jessica Spink, the Restaurant Manager. I wanted to have two battered haddock and chips delivered, together with two nice pieces of cod that Wednesday night. It turned out that we had to collect the cod the following morning after our dog walk, which was no problem.
I realised that I hadn’t specified a delivery time and rang Tailend again and rather confusingly spoke to another Jessica. who could not have been more helpful and had a lovely manner. I specified a delivery time for delivery, but she told me that the haddock and chips were on their way, courtesy of a cyclist with Ecoeats, with a one pound delivery charge. In no time at all, he arrived at the house and my wife and I sat outside in the garden and ate the beautifully cooked haddock and chips which were piping hot. As long as we’re in lockdown, we’ll certainly order again and again!
The next morning, I went to collect the cod and spoke to young Jessica and her colleague Daz to order a dozen langoustine to cook on our brand new barbecue. On the Thursday night, my wife cooked the cod fillets in a parsley sauce and on a bed of spinach, together with Jersey Royal potatoes. Magnificent!
When I went to collect the langoustine on the Friday, young Jessica told me that Daz was on his way from Arbroath bringing them, since they had just been caught off Arbroath that morning. Sure enough, Daz appeared ten minutes later and I headed off to the barbecue. The langoustine looked and tasted superb and were a great way to christen the barbecue. We wanted to have a light lunch since we were having a home delivery from Little Italy that night from their recently expanded home delivery menu! Despite the lockdown, we have eaten very well from the home delivery service from these eating establishments, doing a great job in very difficult circumstances.
The Spink family business is based in Arbroath and they are fourth generation fishmongers with a Tailend Fish Restaurant in both St Andrews and Dundee. They were voted Best Scottish Seafood Restaurant in 2018 and were finalists in the Food Awards Scotland in 2019, so their quality has been recognised nationally. Can’t wait for the unlockdown so we can sit in for lunch again at Tailend Dt Andrews!
Written 23 May 2020
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Ed cartvale
Prestwick922 contributions
Feb 2020 • none
Called in for lunch, restaurant behind counter, ordered the tiger prawns and half breaded haddock, total bill for two £22.00 good value for the town. The ambiance clinical but clean, toilets immaculate. Server went out of his way to assist, advising us they had another site in Dundee across from the Contemporary Arts centre.
Probably better as a fish restaurant than some of the establishments up the coast.
Written 27 February 2020
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
ianwelby
Glasgow45 contributions
Feb 2020 • none
I went with some of my family for fish and chips while visiting St. Andrews. Full haddock fillet for the adults, haddock goujons for the kids and portions were excellent for everybody. Had an oyster too and my only suggested addition on that front would be that some places I've been to give you a couple of extras to add to your oyster if you like which means you can mix it up a bit. Service was good, a decent selection of bottle beers (not a huge number but a decent variety from good breweries) and the fresh fish they sell looked excellent too.
Written 10 February 2020
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Anne
St. Andrews29 contributions
Jan 2020 • couples
This used to be my favorite restaurant but unfortunately I would not recommend in fact I advise people not to go there! The 3 I have had the mussels and returned full sand and grit! Today I tried the chicken burger it was burnt dried out and inedible. The manager/ chef apologized and very kindly said he would not charge us for the meal, customer service pathetic. Having worked and
Brought up in hospitality industry I AM SHOCKED with the service and food here and how quickly it has gone downhill since this man has been swanning around here,a If he paid more attention to the food than his ego! And I might add I am not the only one who has this opinion! The management is so incompetent that a fish restaurant and shop had no smokies and the table behind were told they were out of lemonade even though there is a Tesco next door. The only person working for the poor waitress who served the whole restaurant herself while the manager walked round introducing himself.
Written 8 January 2020
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Jordy S
2 contributions
Jul 2020 • family
We visited their St. Andrews restaurant for my nieces 3rd birthday on 21/07/2020. We had booked a table for 9 people which was our first restaurant visit for us all to be together since COVID-19 started.
We sat down at a nice table at the back of the restaurant which had a lovely glass roof and we had our order taken fairly quick as you would expect,
When taking the order, 7 out of 9 people wanted a starter and one person in our group who didn’t have a stater needed to leave earlier than the rest of us so we asked if we could have his main course with our starters so he could leave, to which we got the reply “we can just bring everything out together” which is not what we had asked. We wanted our starters first and mains after with only 1 main course to come with the starters to which the waitress replied “ok, I understand now, that’s fine”
45 minutes went by without having any food after ordering.
When the food finally arrived the starters came out... followed by the mains all at the same time.
We told another waitress that we had asked for starters together and then mains after so they took the other 8 main courses back and sat them on the pass which we could clearly see from our table.
Half way through enjoying our starters the original waitress who took our order called Morvin came up to our table and said this... “I am going to have to bring you your main courses as they are on the pass and we don’t have enough room for all the plates to be sat there and they are going cold.” We replied saying “we did ask for them to come separately” “starters first then main courses after” to which the very rude waitress just said
“I apologise It’s my fault as I didn’t write it on the order but I can either bring them now or bring them in 25 minutes for you when they are cold.”
My jaw dropped to the floor and I couldn’t believe what she had said. Never had we been spoken to like this at a restaurant before.
We were not even given the option to have them remade or kept warm while we ate our starters, we ended up letting them bring all the mains out and be at the side if us while we finished our starters so the mains were going cold anyway.
We asked morvin to speak to a manager.
The manager came up to our table mid way though our main courses and we explained the situation to her, she agreed that what Morvin had said was not right and offered us all free desserts, coffee and 10% off the bill which was very kind of her and it did make us enjoy it a lot more as many of us were not going to have desserts as it’s fairly expensive for fish and chips anyway.
I wasn’t going to write a review at all following the managers actions in this instance but then I remembered how many people are sat at home without jobs due to COVID-19 who are very eager to get back to work and would bend over backwards for customers and then you have this young girl who could potentially be loosing this restaurant business after they have been closed for the best part of 3 months. It’s just not fair.
Written 21 July 2020
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
DarrenS1923
Hi
Firstly, I would like to reiterate our managers actions in offering you an apology for the misunderstanding during your visit. It seems that there has been a lot of confusion between the staff, which had resulted in all your food being served together.
A situation like this is quite a rare occurrence. We would typically ask the customer if they are ok to have their mains sooner, mainly to avoid food going to waste. However, if this is not suitable, we would cook everything again. Because your order was quite large I expect the kitchen were quite stressed about the food waiting and the thought of having to redo everything during a busy service. This stress would have filtered through to the restaurant and affected the actions of the waiting staff.
I have spoken to our management team and I am happy with the way they attempted to deal with the situation. We have only been open for a few days under extremely challenging conditions and I feel everyone is working incredibly hard.
Finally if I can ease your concerns over the actions of 'this young girl'...
Morven is an incredibly bright, friendly and likeable young girl and has been a great addition to our team. She was devastated to hear of this review and indeed the personal nature of your attack towards her. Personally, I find it quite unnecessary. I welcome your feedback and as always I will work together with our team to try and improve things; however what I cant tolerate is the use of a public forum to deliver a personal attack on one of our staff members. It really isn't an appropriate way to voice your opinion and I will be seeking to have your review removed.
We have clearly made mistakes in this instance and we will learn from them, that I am sure. I have faith in all of my staff, they are all trying their best; however, occasionally the stress of the situation will result in them saying or doing something unintended and the current climate and new processes we have had to adopt can only exasperate the situation further.
If you would like to discuss anything further I would be happy to speak to you privately
regards
Darren
Written 22 July 2020
This response is the subjective opinion of the management representative and not of Tripadvisor LLC.
CazNosReviews
Ardrossan19 contributions
Jul 2020 • couples
My partner went to pick us up a Tailend tonight, we were expecting a long wait because we’d seen the new queuing system etc down to Covid (rightly so).
My partner was an hour in total waiting for the food (not complaining about that, these are unprecedented times), the order was taken about half an hour in as she stood in the queue. When she got to the till (an hour after she started queuing and half an hour after the order was taken) she was told they were out of haggis and that they’d put a black pudding in instead as it was “similar” and “the same price” my partner told the staff member that neither of us particularly liked black pudding and asked for an alternative, she was told that if she ordered an alternative then her order would go to the back of the queue. Not one to cause a scene, she paid and left.
This restaurant has clearly got far too much custom to care about their customers any more, our family visits the Tailend many times a year and we were really taken aback by this, even more so when we read recent reviews and realised we weren’t alone. How terrible to have at least half an hour to give somebody an alternative option and just not bother. Maybe not as bad as the man six in front who got to the till to be told “no cash” to be turned away to return to his family who had been waiting outside for an hour, but bad enough.
The food has dipped in standard too, very greasy and flavourless. Think the Tailend needs some tips from friendly Ayrshire chippies!!!
And before anyone wades in with a brutal response, this isn’t aimed at anyone, it’s an honest review of the business.
Written 26 July 2020
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Yvonne W
Cupar10 contributions
Jul 2020 • none
Don’t get me wrong. This place is clean and the staff are friendly. My friend ordered fish and chips which was lovely and plentiful. I ordered chilli garlic prawns. I’m not a big eater but I left hungry! On my plate was a small dish wish 7 pretty small prawns, a handful of chips and a very basic salad (lettuce, cucumber and tomato) with no dressing. This dish, at £16.95) was the most expensive thing on the menu. At the end the waitress asked if everything had been alright. I politely said that I’d been disappointed there were so few prawns and that I hadn’t had enough to eat and that it wasn’t great value. The waitress seemed to think this was really funny and suggested that next time I come I try my luck and maybe I’ll get a few more!!!! I’ve been here for fish and chips a few times but given that response I don’t think I’ll be rushing back or recommending that anyone else does!
Written 20 July 2020
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Adria
7 contributions
Mar 2020 • couples
The restaurant gets very busy and can be noisy, especially given the close proximity of the seats. Tables are rather small.
We have eaten many times here and generally the quality of the fish is good and portion size pretty good.
Service can be variable - waiting staff can be a little bit disengaged.
We have also had take away. The main problem with that can be the rather silly queuing system!
On the whole, based on our last visit (March 2020) we would return but avoid peak times.
Written 17 July 2020
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
spygrl9993
45 contributions
Nov 2019 • couples
I wouldn’t go back! My experience wasn’t overly pleasant. Firstly we were ignored by one of the waitresses who appeared to be very “snooty”. Waiter who eventually served us was lovely. Husband had a special of sea bass which he thoroughly enjoyed. I opted for calamari and a side of onion rings. Although the calamari was cooked perfectly, the coating was just dripping in grease. The onion rings were large but again dripping in grease. Yes, I know, it’s deep fried, what do I expect - I expect some greasiness but it was like an oil explosion in my mouth which wasn’t nice. Later that day I was rather unwell which I put down to the amount of grease I ate, think it was just too much for my stomach. Haven’t been back.
Written 11 July 2020
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Rest757
Glasgow223 contributions
Mar 2020 • none
After a disappointing lunch at the Cheesy Toast Shack with disengaged staff - a welcome return to the Tailend. On entering we were welcomed and offered options regarding whether we would prefer grilled or battered fish. Our meal was cooked to order, the fish was a delight and the chips were crispy and not at all greasy. A text book example of how to deliver great food and exemplary customer service. There might be competition in town but this venue has a first-class menu, is clearly customer focused and well managed. What a delight to be served by a team that takes pride in what they are doing and deliver great fish and chips.
Written 16 March 2020
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Abi P
4 contributions
Aug 2020 • couples
My partner and I went for takeaway during covid measures. Distanced queuing and max 5 people inside to collect food. They also send someone for your order and to take payment while you queue to keep things moving. Chips are cooked in palm oil (not beef dripping) so vegetarian but less eco than other vegetable oils.
Food was very nice and would go again!
Written 4 August 2020
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
David M
Stranraer5 contributions
Jun 2020 • family
Living locally and having used the tail end for both take away and sit in we thought to make a review of our previous and past experience. The sit in has been excellent past and fairly recently. However in the past 3 take away visits have frankly been appalling the fish is so overcooked the batter actually shattered when attempting to eat it. This place was by and far our favourite chipper in town but the last 3 visits have been awful. It’s likely no surprise that Cromars has a much larger queue outside maybe an idea to have a good look at who is frying your fish after all without a decent product it will not be long before you won’t need any reviews you only have to look at Nardini’s for precedent.
Written 9 June 2020
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Amy W
31 contributions
Aug 2021 • family
Having read various reviews we had to try Tailend during our stay in St Andrews and boy did it live up to expectations. If you are thinking of going I would recommend booking for peak time (we did) as it was busy, but you can wait for a table or get takeout if you don’t have a booking and there isn’t a table free. The staff were really friendly and helpful, they all appeared to enjoy working together which I always think creates a great atmosphere. We had scallops, monkfish skewers, battered - prawns, halibut and hake and a fish burger, oh and onion rings. Suffice we say we were all very full! The batter really is crispy and delicious and you could taste how fresh the fish is. The mushy peas and chips were yummy too. 100% recommend to anyone who loves fresh fish in a relaxed and comfy atmosphere.
Written 19 August 2021
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Scotsman449
Linlithgow65 contributions
May 2021 • none
Some weeks prior to visiting St Andrews on a short stay I booked a table, via the web site. This was easy to do and proved to be both very reliable and a good thing to do - it proved to be very busy. The food - grilled haddock with lemon butter was very very good as was the table service. All staff were very polite and were adhering to COVID guidance. Today (Mon) as we passed the door of the shop we thought we would check to see if we could possibly book for a meal this evening. Unfortunately, it must have been an off day for the male member of staff behind the counter because I am sure he didn’t mean to be so rude. I will return for the food and I will book on line
Written 31 May 2021
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
irene007
East Kilbride199 contributions
Oct 2020 • couples
We had a fish supper from here on a day trip to St Andrews and it was honestly one of the best fish suppers I've ever had.
Batter and fish were perfect .
Chips were great too but we had a lot of bits of chip crisps with no potato inside.
Little tub of tartar sauce was £1.20 and I've had nicer tartar sauce for a lot cheaper but I would travel back to St Andrews for another fish supper from the tailend.
Written 19 October 2020
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
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