With at least 50 locations nationwide, Hook & Reel has a great formula going and knows how to execute it: affordable fresh seafood, attentive service, and an explosion of flavor you’ll talk about for days. For this purpose, Hook & Reel has wisely installed washdown stations in the reception area. But how do I go back into the world with my hands coated in spicy salty seafood juices? Wetnaps alone wouldn’t suffice. I crave garlic and this was exceptionally delicious! Creamy with butter and studded with big bits of softened garlic, I mashed my steamed potato into it and loved every bite.īy the time I’d finished my meal I’d attained that rare state of shellfish satisfaction. What really set his seafood boil apart, though, was its drenching in a sumptuous garlic butter sauce. I find those long spindly crab legs to be a lot of work with little reward but, armed with one of Hook & Reel’s plastic picks, he seemed to tear through them and eagerly enjoyed each morsel of crabmeat.Īs with my mussels, his cherrystone clams were in-shell fresh. Into the boil they added potatoes, hard boiled eggs, corn and served it with steamed rice. My friend had chosen the ‘Awesome Weekday Special’ which featured a cluster of crab legs he combined with cherrystone clams and shrimp. Which is all to say: this place is Tasty Fun! I filled the trash bucket with all the paper napkins I used to continuously wipe my sticky fingers. Halfway through all this my lips were tingling with spicy heat that I relived with my glass of Harpoon and glasses of ice water. Of course, there was much less tail meat in each of the deep-red crawfish, but there were so many of them I got my fill. Seafood lovers, dig in! Lovers of big flavor, rejoice! Each mussel came packed with spicy old bay seasoning the shrimp, I didn’t bother to count them, were sheared of heads, and only required a quick peeling to get to their thick juicy meat. In a regular boil one chooses from a dozen different shellfish the Cajun comes with crawfish, mussels and shrimp plus creamy-soft red bliss potatoes and a half-ear of corn. I had chosen the Cajun Boil with Old Bay seasoning, in part, because it seemed to be their specialty I’d dialed mine in as ‘spicy’. Forget forks, this is finger food of the messiest degree, so don a plastic bib – juices are gonna fly! We opened our bags and dumped their contents onto our plates. Each bag was nestled over a wide metal pie plate. After leaving us for a few moments he returned in a flourish with our seafood boils: towering plastic bags knotted closed at the top, puffed up like jiffy-pop by the steaming contents within. He also restocked our supply of plastic bibs, seafood picks and wet naps.
Setting the stage for our entrée’s, Ray, our server, removed a metal bucket from the table and lined it with a plastic bag it was our personal trash bin for the seafood shells and other debris we’d soon generate. Defying my expectation of breading balls tasting vaguely of seafood, Hook & Reel’s Crab Bites contained maximal crab meat, minimal binder and delicate crab flavor. First, the remoulade sauce: it tasted fresh and zesty and would be a respectable effort anywhere. Everything tastes better elbow-to-elbow with friends, swapping stories over music, getting down and dirty and eating with your hands all with a cold drink at the ready, ‘cause that spice ain’t no joke. But eating seafood is only part of the fun. I was prepared for disappointment.īut this was destined to be an evening of surprises – several happy ones. At Hook & Reel our signature boil forks over bold flavors with a genuine, down-home feel. What could go wrong with that? In my mind, a lot there’s a world of culinary evils that attach to anything named ‘bites’. And while the menu includes Po Boys and a Pasta special, their heart is in Seafood Boils various shellfish steamed together with add-ins and spices.įirst, we started with the Crab Bite appetizer. Their name leads me to expect finfish, and there’s some of that, but for the most part Hook & Reel’s specialty is shellfish. I took advantage of one of their many daily specials with a bargain-priced sixteen-ounce glass of Harpoon IPA while my friend ordered a frothy cherry-topped rum punch. Once inside, we left all that rage behind and were greeted, shown to a booth, and started to familiarize ourselves with the Hook & Reel concept. That was my feeling as a friend and I raced through their entrance, narrowly escaping a summer storm whose cloud vortex looked like the hounds of hell unleashed. When a restaurant is sited in the middle of a shopping plaza parking lot, well, anything is theoretically possible, but who expects very much? Reel to reel repair vancouver.Lincoln Plaza, 539 Lincoln Street, Worcester.
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