Colonial Heights, VA 23834
In my last post, I mentioned how Amanda and I tried to go to Red Lobster to get dinner because I had a gift card there but were met with a 40 minute wait so we walked out and decided to eat elsewhere. Since we were both in the mood for seafood we decided to go to Captain Tom’s Seafood on the Boulevard in Colonial Heights. The sign in front of the restaurant, while missing a letter or two, claims that Captain Tom’s has “the best seafood in Virginia.” I thought any restaurant ballsy enough to proclaim that their seafood is the best in Virginia must have some delicious seafood.
To our delight it was open at 7:30pm on a Sunday; many other locally owned restaurants we passed were closed. As we walked in, we could tell that the place was a little on the dumpy side but I thought of it more as it having character than actually being trashy. Inside it goes for the over-the-top ocean and fishing décor everywhere -little tackily I must say. It made me feel like I was at a little seafood shack at the beach. We seated ourselves and after waiting for about five minutes I finally stopped one of the waitresses who kept walking right past us to ask for menus. As soon as we had our menus in hand our waiter was quickly at our table taking our drink order, two waters and a basket of hush puppy rings. The hush puppies were bland. The wait staff was very friendly but a little rough to say the least.
The menu was large but this was mainly due to the fact that everything was listed twice once as fried and once as broiled. It had everything that you would expect - a variety of fish, shellfish and crab cakes. The only non seafood items were chicken tenders and a few things on the children’s menu. Since Amanda and I are practically an old married couple we both ordered the exact same thing, the broiled crab cake plate with a sweet potato and a salad for $10.00.
Almost immediately we had our salads. A very simple salad, bare bones, and seemed like it was sitting already made in the refrigerator for a few hours. The blue cheese dressing was very good though full of large chunks of blue cheese. It made up for the skimpy salad. After we finished our salads our crab cakes were ready and being served. We each had two and a decent sized sweet potato. The crab cakes smelled ok but looked a little sketchy inside and out. The crab meat mixture was very unappetizing, looking brown and stringy. They did not taste horrible but were in my opinion extremely salty, almost like they just pulled the crabs out of salt water. The amount of crab in the cakes was not terribly slim but also not chocked full and it was definitely not jumbo lump. The worst part was not the lack of crab but that it was brownish in color and so salty. The sweet potato was cooked well but only served with butter, no brown sugar in sight.
There are places in the Tri-Cities with far superior crab cakes but probably none other than Captain D’s that have them for a better price. Other people’s food at Captain Tom’s looked and smelled very good. Fried fish, shrimp and scallops I saw brought to other tables looked good, so I cannot in good faith tell you not to go to Captain Tom’s because I bet some of their other seafood is great but I do recommend skipping the crab cakes
No comments:
Post a Comment