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Friday, August 18, 2000
Red Lobster offers consistency, little more
Though cheese biscuits were a good start, overcooked shrimp overshadowed meals
In Corpus Christi and along the coast in general, good seafood isn't too hard to find. There are locals-only, hole-in-the-wall fish houses right next to the docks in Rockport and there are some more elegant establishments just off the water in Port Aransas.
And then there is Red Lobster. Just off the highway, just as it is in Dallas or Lubbock or numerous other cities across the county, Red Lobster offers consistency and a corporate advertising budget that has driven a slogan into the seafood lover in you.
Our recent visit to the Red Lobster off South Padre Island Drive confirmed suspicions that marketing here is given more emphasis than what's on the menu. The overall experience felt as if it had been scripted at corporate headquarters.
There were 19 different appetizers, including gumbo, lobster and crab stuffed mushrooms, calamari and coconut fried shrimp. There were shrimp and fish combos, fried seafood combos, mix-and-match combination combos (in which you select items from other combos and arrange them as you choose, such as a shrimp scampi and fried shrimp), lobster and crab combos, seafood pasta dishes, steak and chicken combos, etc.
But the food quality on our recent visit didn't quite look like what you see on TV.What we got appeared to be largely pre-breaded, frozen and fried. Not bad, but then again, the same kind of seafood you can get in Nebraska or Nevada.
Caesar not worthy of hail
Both entrées came with salads, which were built upon fresh, green leaf lettuce. That's great. But one was a "Caesar" salad, which usually consists of Romaine lettuce tossed with a mix of anchovy paste, Parmesan cheese, oil and egg white, or a variation thereof. This salad had a vaguely Caesar-like dressing ladled on top.
The highlight of the meal, however, arrived with the salads - the Cheddar Bay biscuits. These soft, hot, salty and cheesy treats were quickly downed after arriving at the table. They were delicious.
The shrimp feast consisted of regular shrimp cocktail, a dish of shrimp scampi, fried shrimp, and some shrimp Rockefeller, a kind of variation of oysters Rockefeller, mixed with bacon and spinach.
The platter was huge, and was packed with shrimp. The only ones that weren't cooked to a rubbery texture (a problem with frozen shrimp) were the boiled shrimp on the cocktail. The fried shrimp appeared to be pre-breaded, frozen and fried.
The scampi, rather than being sautéed in butter or olive oil and, was broiled in a dish with what the manager said was a butter sauce. The dish was garlicky and butter flavored, but not very good. The shrimp Rockefeller, consisting of shrimp broiled in more of that butter sauce with spinach and bacon, was served atop a bed of rice and bore little resemblance to oysters Rockefeller I've had, other than the bacon crumbles.
Overcooked shrimp
The create-your-own-combo my dining companion ordered was perhaps most notable for a side dish of mashed potatoes, which seemed to be the instant variety. My dining companion selected the aforementioned scampi and a dish called Delta-Seared Shrimp, which appeared to be much like the shrimp Rockefeller, but with bacon and pineapple, also served over rice. Mostly, the Delta Seared Shrimp were, like the others, overcooked under the broiler and unremarkable.
At the end of the meal, the manager brought us our check and asked us if out waitress (who was adequate) gave us excellent service. "She was OK," I told her.
The manager then asked if the food was cooked exactly as we'd like it. Again, "sure." I figured there wasn't much point in delving much deeper into the matter. She then wrote a five, telling us it denoted an excellent ranking, on the receipt and exhorted us to call in to a number on the bottom of our ticket and take a telephone survey. In return for out marketing help, she said, we'd get a free desert or appetizer. We passed on that call.
At A Glance
Red Lobster
5825 S. Padre Island Drive
991-2160
Hours: 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday; 11 a.m.-11p.m. Friday and Sat
Entrees: $4.99 to $18.99
Checks: no
Credit cards: All major
Alcohol: full bar
Wheelchair accessible
Food: *1/2
Service: **
Atmosphere: **
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