Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Joey's Only Seafood Restaurant

I am a big fan of seafood, especially lobster and King/Snow crab.  A BIG fan.  So big I like seafood as much as I love steaks, that is how much I love seafood.

Anyway, I think I am a pretty adventurous person when it comes to trying out restaurants and after listening to the numerous radio ads for 'Joey's Only Seafood' and seeing their 'All you can eat King crab' everytime I drove down 8th street, I decided to try it out.  So goes the adventure...

We arrived at the restaurant shortly after 7 to be greeted by the only waitress on staff serving approximately 15-ish tables.  The restaurant was quite busy and after having the waitress tell us she would clean a table right away, we waited for a good 30 minutes before being seated (good thing I had my itouch).  The food had better be good.

The restaurant itself reminded me of a toned down Red Lobster with lobster traps and fake fish hanging off the walls.  The most impressive thing about the restaurant decor was the chalk drawings depicting an octopus and a fish.  The seating are is nothing to write home about.

After being seated, we found out they did not have any beer on tap which wasn't surprising as it had a family atmosphere.  Their menu did have a wide selection of items, where each day was all you can eat shrimp for $19 and all you can eat king crab for $35 on Wednesdays.  Unfortunately the day we went was not Wednesday.

Having selected the 1 pound Snow Crab with my 2 side dishes of garlic toast and ceasar salad, John went with their salmon and rice pilaf and the vegetable of the day (peas - gross).  We proceeded to play checkers on my itouch while we waited and just as I was about to make a game winning move, our food came.

The food itself was medicore.  The crab was definitely boiled and if their goal was to boil the flavor out of the crab they definitely succeeded.  I accommodated this by drenching my snow crab in butter which my stomach later told me was not a good idea.  The garlic toast was the standard garlic toast you could find in other restaurants while the ceasar salad was overly creamy.  John's salmon was well-cooked which probably suited the majority of clientele that ate there but it definitely could have been cooked less.  He did manage to eat all of his rice pilaf and vegetables, mainly because he had to wait for me to finish my meal.  When asked what he would rate the restaurant/meal he said 7 only to retract it when I said I would have rated it a 6.  All in all, if you are craving seafood, I would not recommend Joey's Only Seafood Restaurant.