I've eaten here literally a million times, going back to when it was Joey's. I'd suggest that there…read moreshould be a life-size statue of me at the door along with Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, but it might have a negative impact on sales, due to my haters, and I'd hate for this place to have to go out of business.
Already, there are signs that things have taken a turn for the worse. They're playing music via an ad-supported Spotify account, complete with Rocket Mortgage ads, and the tables are covered with ads for vinyl siding companies that probably prey on the elderly. The latter is an especially sensitive issue for me as I get on in years. Just because I look dumb doesn't mean that I can easily be taken advantage of.
No but really, as many times as I've been here, I don't know that I've had anything other than the (pejorative-sounding) Rajun Cajun, the Seaside Combo and the Fish Tacos. I used to get the Rajun Cajun, but I gradually shifted to the Seaside Combo, which seems oddly generous, given that it comes with six shrimp. It's not exactly inexpensive, but it doesn't seem so unreasonable, at a time when you have to sign up for Klarna just to eat at McDonald's.
The shrimp they use are surprisingly decent quality. They're probably not quite jumbo, otherwise they'd describe them as such on the menu (why waste the opportunity?), but they're not far off. The cod planks, on the other hand, are a tad skimpy, somewhere in between the fish stick you'd get at a good elementary school and the ones they serve at Long John Silver's. You get two with the Seaside Combo, and with an order of Fish & Chips. I wonder if they have separate, larger planks that they use for the Fish & Chips.
The list of sides is longer than you might think. Some of them carry an upcharge, and it's not always clear why that's the case. Spinach, for example, costs extra, as does corn on the cob. Who'd pay extra just to eat spinach, Popeye? I've only ever gone with the fries and coleslaw, neither of which is regarded as premium, though I'd argue that they're the two best things you can get with fried fish and shrimp.
It's hard to mess up food that you're just tossing into a deep fryer, but credit where credit is due: my fish, shrimp and fries were amazing (as was the coleslaw). They were generously battered (by hand, supposedly) and cooked until perfectly crisp. They must be making use of the timers on those deep fryers. They may have purposely cranked the volume on the ad-supported Spotify so we wouldn't hear them going off. If they did, that was smart of them.
Pro Tip: Sprinkle Slap Yo Mama on everything, including the coleslaw. Don't sweat the sodium content. The world is obviously coming to an end sooner rather than later anyway. But don't bother with the signature spicy-and-sweet hot sauce, which is gross.
I appreciated the way the fish and shrimp were artfully arranged on the plate. But they buried the lemon wedge, and I didn't notice until I'd already eaten one of the shrimp. So that was definitely a missed opportunity. I'd suggest that they invest in slightly larger plates, but I shudder to think what they might have to do to finance that.