Tear S.
Yelp
Big. Long. Sigh.
This review PAINS me because I had such high expectations and wasn't prepared for what I received. Although all hopes aren't lost for this location, it's going to take a little while before I give them another chance.
I follow a quite large figure in the food reviewing community and he visited the Pappas Seafood Center. This location has been here for about a year. I didn't rush to go, but as soon as I saw this person's very highly rated review with delicious photos to match, I knew what I was going to eat for dinner.
I had a taste for seafood and when I saw the seafood eggrolls on the reviewer's page, they looked so fresh and crispy. Not overtly so. But they looked good. So, that's what I decided to get, along with a side of hush puppies.
To note: this is not a sit down restaurant. It's a carry-out and I believe a distribution center. It's a rather large building, so I'm assuming that they make and ship crab cakes and other items, while also accommodating walk-in customers. I called my order in. The person said it would be 20 minutes. I arrived a bit early, so I waited in my car for a bit. There's no where to sit inside, so if you walked to this place, you'd just have to stand somewhere.
Anyhoo, after twenty minutes, I walked in. The place looked clean and well lit. They have an attractive glass case that displayed cold items like salads and doubled eggs. The young lady at the counter told me it would be a few more minutes before my order was done. She was nice, so no complaints with customer service. My order soon came out and I headed home.
As I drove home, I was super excited because the food honestly smelled good through the stapled paper bag! Keep in mind that I live 5 minutes from this place.
When I sat down to eat, I took the contents out the bag. The first thing I took out was the hush puppies. They were in a cup, no big deal, BUT THEY WEREN'T HOT! Like, at all. Even further, some were quite raw on the inside. The batter was honestly good! I ended up eating just the crispy outer layers. I was intensely disappointed in those.
Then...the egg rolls. When I opened the container, I saw two halved VERY browned eggrolls. They almost seemed as if they were pan fried as opposed to deep fried (some sides were burnt while other sides were normal). They came with two sauces, one was a mustard sauce, the other a sweet vinegary sauce. Neither was super amazing, but the mustard one was the better of the two. The stuffing inside consisted of a crab mixture and shrimp. It unfortunately did not taste fresh. More like something that was made a few days beforehand. Maybe it was because it was overcooked? The green onion was overpowering and the whole thing tasted like a sweet, burnt eggroll. I really tried to finish it. I ended up eating the filling, and discarded the roll wrapper, along with the raw batter from the hush puppies (pictures included). I spent about $21 dollars for this meal.
I waited a few days before writing this review to make sure it wasn't based off of raw emotion alone, but a fair assessment of quality and value, which this meal lacked both.
Pappas really does have great crab cakes and sides (look for my the Taylor Avenue review). Maybe it was an off day, but one off day can put off a customer for a good long while.
