Maxx M.
Yelp
A couple of good things and several screw-ups - 3 stars.
I checked out this place tonight with an old friend of mine that works for the State of MN not far away. They seem to be a Louisiana style place with seafood, crawdads, and Po Boys. You get the idea.
Disclaimer: I'm not a huge seafood fan and my friend IS a seafood fan...but...she wasn't too interested in dropping a Ben Franklin on one of the big "by the pound" trays. We went with simple baskets, but I feel the big messy seafood trays are definitely the main thing to order. Everyone else was eating a version of that tonight. You're gonna drop some dough due to high seafood prices and inflation - not the fault of the restaurant at all though.
To start things off, you can have a glass of water or soda in a can. Basic stuff. Our first food items were fried calamari and a cup of shrimp gumbo soup and a side of corn (3). For the meals, we got a fried shrimp basket with Cajun fries and a fried oyster basket with Cajun fries. I topped it all off with green tea flavored cheese cake.
The Calimari and the soup were good. Our fried baskets were okay.
NEEDS IMPROVEMENT:
Hummm, where to begin? There were several irritating things, most of which can be easily fixed.
1. They forgot my order of sweet corn. I didn't say anything about it to our server (the owner?), I just went with what they brought us because I was starting to get a negative vibe.
2. They gave us wimpy portions of cocktail sauce. After my second time asking for more, he dropped the bottle on the table.
3. I wasn't impressed with the Cajun fries...whatever.
4. The lettuce leaf under my fried shrimp had brownish rot around the edges. Back when I was a kid and cooking at a Happy Chef Restaurant (remember those?), my boss would have kicked my ass if I let that leave the kitchen. Come-on, just grab the next leaf off the lettuce head!
5. The green tea cheesecake was good and looked beautiful. But I couldn't taste any tea flavor whatsoever. None. Zero. What's worse, the front was warm and the back 2/3 was frozen like a rock. You can actually see this in my photo...where the ice crystals start and where they end. Amateur.
6. They tried to bill us for a catfish meal, which we didn't order. I was a little suspicious when he didn't take notes during our order. I figured he was one of those savants that can remember everything. I guess not.
7. Last but not least, the neighborhood is super sketchy. When I was driving west, getting ready to take a left at the restaurant, a car was literally parked in the middle of both east bound lanes to talk to his buddy, blocking everything. I went around the car by going into a parking lot. The dude finally stopped talking to his buddy and took off. That's not all. Next, another dude was dancing and swaying on the light rail center island but then he walked into the middle of University Avenue, dancing in the road and stopping all traffic. I can't believe no one hit him because it was rainy and getting dark. All of this happened in front of me, trying to get to the restaurant. What the hell?
I'm going with a middle of the road, average 3 stars. I probably won't go back to this one.
-Maxx