Barnacle Bills

My wife and I have lived within walking distance of this place for 5 years and only finally tried it tonight. What did we think?

So, this place has a nautical theme, right? And the sign says "Steak & Seafood", right?

The thing is that the menu itself has precisely 3 seafood entree's:

Salmon
Walleye fillet
Fried shrimp

That's it.  And on the steak end of things, there's only ribeye and prime rib (which, if you didn't know, is the same cut of meat). No sirloin, flat iron, New York Strip, or any other cut of steak.

That means that by the time we did order, we were already pretty let down, given all of the outward presentation of the signs and the decoration, etc.

We had the chicken wings for an appetizer, which were over-sauced, but otherwise better than most chicken wings. Most places, the breading has gotten completely soggy from the sauce, showing no signs that they were ever fried. These had a satisfying crunch under the sauce.

My wife had the taco salad (not on the regular menu, but a special tonight), which she said was pretty good, but greasy by the time she got to the bottom.

I started with the chicken noodle soup, which, if it wasn't some sort of canned soup, certainly tasted uncannily (sorry, couldn't resist) like Campbell's chicken noodle.

For my entree, I had the walleye fillet and fries. The fillet was HUGE and was fried properly, with the batter crisp and forming a shell around the flaky fillet inside. The fries, too, were properly crispy.

Their "dessert" was featured on the table on a stand-up card and was several varieties of the same boxed pie that Burger King, etc. sell.

Service was good and friendly. However, the ambiance is pretty bad. No background music or anything to stop you from hearing every conversation in the dining room as well as the BINGO being called in the next room. If you like eavesdropping on trailer trash conversations, this might be fun for you. Otherwise, they could do with a bit of background noise to mask conversation a little bit.

In short, if the thing you really like is on their menu, it's probably pretty good, particularly if it goes into the fryer. Someone in their kitchen understands how to keep a fryer hot enough to properly fry food.