| rev:text
| - Smoke: Check
Fins: Check
Smokin' hot quality? Ehhhh
My experience in three words: Crash and burn.
My experience in more detail:
Smokin Fins serves grilled meats, seafood, as well as salads, bowls, tacos and soup/stews. The restaurant itself is really large and has a contemporary warm feel to it. We were in the area and decided to dine here since it had been on my bookmarks list.
We started with the lobster tater tots. For close to $10 we got 4 thumb-sized breaded "tots" which were more like croquettes since it consisted of mainly mashed potato with a bit of shredded potato in the mix. I didn't really taste nor discern any lobster flavor nor see any noticeable lobster meat and it was really super salty for my tastes.
For the entrees I went for the cioppino because you don't see it on menus very often and because it had the "SF" symbol meaning that it was a favorite. Not to be overly suspicious, but my first thought when I saw that symbol next to the price tag was, is it a self proclaimed "favorite" because it is the most expensive seafood menu item on the menu? I figured I'd roll the dice, take my chances and see if the cioppino lived up to its status!
I probably should have known better than to get a San Francisco signature dish in Arizona. When it came out I was initially really impressed with the presentation since they included a half portion of snow crab legs in the "stew." However, those thoughts soon went up in smoke as the entire dish itself was really disappointing. I'll even venture to say I really hated this dish. The plus was that there was a lot of variety in the cioppino: shrimp, clams, mussels, fish, and crab legs. However, the mussels were super tiny and the clams were not cleaned well at all. The sandy grittiness permeated throughout each clam and the more I ate the more the clams dispersed the grittiness into the surrounding stew, causing all the seafood to become gritty as well. You could say it tasted like the beach for I felt like I was eating tomato infused sand. One BIG no no was that they served me clams that were completely closed and could have been very dangerous to eat for anyone not in the know about seafood safety. The fish had bones in it and was served with the skin on. I don't enjoy eating rubbery fish skin if it's been put in a stew but that's my own preference. The crab legs themselves were so salty I couldn't actually taste the natural sweet flavor of the crab. The best seafood out of the whole mix were the shrimp but due to the sand in the dish they were gritty when I bit into them.
I also really didn't like the actual stew the cioppino was in. Cioppino is normally more broth-like. This felt like I was eating a bunch of canned stewed tomatoes or eating a chunky marinara sauce.
The cioppino was served with 3 pieces of smoked grilled bread. I liked the smoke flavor but 2 of the 3 pieces were so charred on the outside that I was basically served burnt bread.
I had a bite of the honey chipotle salmon which I liked better, but had the same problem of being grilled for so long that it had an unpleasant bitter char on it.
The only redeeming quality of my meal was the friendly service.
After all that I was still hungry. I went to a nearby Chik-Fil-A right after my meal and felt more satisfied eating a grilled chicken sandwich for $5 lol. Quite honestly I probably would have gotten better food for cheaper at Red Lobster across the street (Burn!).
The decor and service are nice, but it's all smoke and mirrors if the food isn't good!
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)