This one is a tough one to really rate... I'm torn on Fishbones. Let me give you the quick and dirty first, then I can explain, and you can see my confusion on a proper rating.
Food: Good to Decent, I wouldn't say great, but definitely above moderate (average).
Service: Friendly, but slow... a bit faster than a crawl.
Price: For the food and service, a bit overpriced... but for the portion it's a TOUCH closer to what their charging you.
So, a friend of mine was in town and craving seafood for dinner. My girl and I decided to take him out someplace local, and we were hoping to find something none of us had experienced yet. A quick yelp search brought me to Fishbones in Chelmsford. With the 4 star rating it had, and the mixed reviews, I figured this place was worth the shot.
It was a Thursday night, and while we weren't expecting the place to be vacant, we hadn't expected it to be over crowded either. It ended up being the latter. Thankfully we showed up just early enough (5:30ish?) to get a table without waiting... we noticed very shortly after that people were waiting (standing at the bar) for tables to open.
This actually got my hopes up - this many people after the food was a good sign... right?
After we were seated, that is when service became noticed. We must have sat for 5 mins (or more) before the waitress even noticed we were there or took our drink orders. NOW... I don't blame the waitress, like I said, it was a busy night and she was handling a LOT of tables... I hate to say this but I blame the restaurant. There was literally ONE waitress on our side, basically handling 10 (if not more) tables, the majority of which were seating 4 people. One extra staff (waitress) would have increased everyone's service... but I digress.
So, while service was slow, she made the most of it... was friendly, and even joked around with us and made it as pleasant as possible. She grabbed all of our orders (drinks, apps, main courses, etc) and when she could in passing by would make sure to check with us to see if there was anything we needed.
As for food, we had a Fried Calamari Appetizer, I had the stuffed baked shrimp with mashed potatoes. My friend had the Steamed Lobster with Mashed potatoes and rice (it wasn't a plain rice... but I'm not exactly sure what type of rice it was). And my girl had the Lobster Risotto.
My shrimp were cooked very well, and had a nice flavor, but I had more stuffing then shrimp (4). Past orders of the same dish were giant (jumbo) shrimp with a proportional amount of stuffing. These were rather average size shrimp with much more stuffing, which was rather bland in flavor... I ended up eating the shrimp alone, and scooping the occasional bite of stuffing up. The mash potatoes were well made, but bland. I had to add plenty of salt and pepper in an attempt to flavor them up... my friend said the same.
His lobster, according to him, was very good and the rice complimented it well. But (as I said above) he agreed with me on the mashed potatoes lack of general flavor.
My girl said that the risotto was good, mostly... the problem was they smothered it in parmesan cheese. While she doesn't mind it as a small addition of flavor... it was smothered... so it ended up killing a lot of the flavor and the taste of the risotto alone. It would have been better served as an option, which most places do: "Fresh ground black pepper? Shredded/Parmesan Cheese?" She did say that there must have been an entire lobster in this dish (lol).
The portions were perfect to big. The calamari (which was very good by the way) was plenty for 4 and there was only 3 of us at the table. My friend managed to finish off his lobster but the combination or rice and mashed had him throwing in the towel. My girl didn't finish off her plate, mostly because the cheese was just too much for her to bare... but even had it been a perfect dish, the she would have thrown in the towel early as well because there really was quite a lot of risotto on the plate. I managed to finish my shrimp, but had a bit of stuffing and mash left over as well.
The prices could be a bit lower, but we acceptable. The size made it worth it more, but the overall flavor was barely par... so I would rather pay the same price for better food.
All that said, I do want to go back and try some other dishes (they had a lot of great offers) and hopefully give this local spot so close to home, a chance to redeem themselves in my eyes (and stomach)! So if you're in the area, check it out, hopefully you're experience will be better than mine... but it can't (hopefully) be horrible. read more