Fishing for Quality Dining

                This last weekend, the wife and I were doing a little charity work in Rochester.  Upon completion, we went out to eat, settling on Bonefish Grill in the Eastview Mall.  At the Taste of Syracuse last year we sampled the bang bang shrimp, so this seemed like a good opportunity to see how the rest of the menu stacked up to that delectable experience.

                First of all, as soon as we got there we were greeted by two hostesses, one old and one young.  The young one seemed nice enough, smiling the entire time we were at the door.  The older woman, however, gave us the worst eye-fuck you can imagine.  She looked my wife and I up and down like we were the scum of the earth and how dare we come to her restaurant.  My wife was wearing a long, spaghetti strap dress and I was dressed in a t-shirt and shorts with a baseball cap on (my usual summer attire).  The look on this woman's face from the moment we walked through the door was about as unwelcoming as I have ever seen.  Once we sat down I asked my wife if she saw the look that lady gave me and she brought to my attention that she did it to her as well.  I wanted to ask this old twat what her problem was and why she felt so superior?  She was, after all, a hostess at a restaurant…in a mall, but I kept my mouth shut.  What a great way to start out the experience though.

                We ordered the bang bang shrimp appetizer to start us off.  It was okay.  At Taste of Syracuse it was delicious, covered in that spicy cream sauce that is often imitated but never perfected.  Here, the shrimp were nice and crispy, but the sauce was barely there.  Not only that, but it was heaped high in a small casserole dish (like a large ramekin) that was only half shrimp.  The other half was just lettuce.  I would rather have the shrimp piled on a plate than have it mounded on top of lettuce for no conceivable reason whatsoever.  I am definitely in the camp of “don’t put something on the plate if it does not need to be there.  Unnecessary garnish is wasteful and ridiculous in my opinion.

                For dinner, my wife ordered crab cakes while I had the fish tacos.  The crab cakes were probably 90% meat which is a tasty ratio, except they fell apart into crab pieces as soon as the fork hit them.  They tasted pretty good and the remoulade that came with them was outstanding.  It was a bit overpowering when consumed in conjunction with the crab cake though as the subtleness of the crab was easily masked by the remoulade.  The fish tacos were tasty as well.  The (I’m assuming) tilapia was well masked by the rest of the taco fixin’s.  The mango salsa was the most prevalent flavor on the taco, but the lime crema and cilantro were nice touches as well.  The fish did leave an aftertaste that lingered long after the rest of the ingredients were gone from my palette, but it wasn’t that unpleasant. 

                In all, our waitress was very good, very welcoming, and the food was okay but not great.  I’m not sure if I would eat here again, at least not at this particular location, but it wasn’t terrible by any stretch of the imagination.