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| - We decided to try some place new tonight and saw an advertisement for this place in the New Times. It seems confusing to me, because the entrance is not obvious (its in the same shopping center as Ranch Market on the SE side of Glendale and 35th Ave).
Nothing from the name of the place suggests they specialize in Cajun-flavored dishes and, while the menu's look nicely done, they lack vital information about what they offer. For example, I ordered the fried shrimp basket, but didn't see french fries on the menu, however, the waitress informed me the shrimp basket comes with fries. I did see Cajun fries on the menu, but not shown as included with the shrimp basket. In fact, there is no description of the food whatsoever on the menus. It simply says Crab Legs ... M/P (market price). Today, the 'market price' for snow crab, king crab or lobster tail was $20. Ok, fair enough.
The fries, also not described (shoe string? curly? waffle? steak?) were steak fries. I believe these are frozen from a bag, but they tasted good. Not as good as fresh, but not terrible - nothing special.
They have many LCD screens on the wall showing sports, but they have no bar. They have a stage where a live band can perform or people can sing karaoke.... but they have no bar. At a Louisiana-style seafood place (which this placed could be accurately described as) I would expect to see related things on the walls of the restaurant. The walls are bare, except for the TVs, which you couldn't hear over the loud music (not live and not karaoke) that was playing even though there were only two tables in use by customers. Subtitles on the TV were in Spanish. Only in America! It was hard to hold a conversation over the music, the air conditioning was set too high (it was uncomfortably hot inside) and the place is just a big room that looks rather sparse.
The menu does not offer any kind of salad.
The garlic bread was too salty for me. Its as if they used garlic salt instead of garlic butter to season the bread. If it wasn't so salty, the bread itself was excellent and one order was enough to feed three people as an appetizer. In fact, they should consider including the garlic bread with some of the meals.
The king crab legs were served not just split, but actually in split halves. In other words, instead of most places that cut a slit into the shell and the customer has to crack the shell like a pistachio nut to get the meat out, these king crab legs were served like an open oyster, with the meat completely exposed and the half the shell underneath. We liked this.
That said, I'll cut them some slack for two reasons - one, they are a new business trying to get established, and two, from the looks of things, they've never run a restaurant before (at least, not a successful one). The waitress said they were open to suggestions, so here are nine of mine:
1) Get a web-site!
2) Get a bar and be a seafood/sports club with the Karaoke and live bands or, get an aquarium and Cajun-related wall hangings and dump the stage and the music.
3) Clarify what each item is on the menu and what is included with it.
4) Offer salads.
5) Make your marketing clear you are a Cajun-influenced restaurant to properly set customer expectations.
6) Put some words on the doors of the entrance. It seriously took us a little while to figure out where the entrance was from the glass walls, all tinted with the same tint and no writing on anything to indicate there was a restaurant behind the glass. The tint is so dark, that in bright daylight, we could not determine if they were open until we were almost on top of the camouflaged doors.
7) Make sure everything is fresh. I couldn't tell if my shrimp was fresh or frozen. I suppose that's a good thing. The shrimp was butterflied, and I prefer my fried shrimp to be nothing more than a lightly battered and fried cocktail shrimp. The breading was similar in texture and flavor as the frozen butterflied shrimp I can get and cook myself from any grocery store, but it tasted *slightly* better. Still, hiding behind Cajun seasoning as your only seasoning seems like, without it, everything was pretty bland to me.
8) If things are fresh, it should be written all over the place (menus, windows, walls), but if things are frozen, well, I can make a similar meal at home for much less buying frozen myself.
9) Replace your Pepsi products with Coke products (I am not affiliated with Coke in any way. I just think Pepsi's slogan should be "Pepsi - it's what you drink when they don't have Coke.")
Hope this helps the owners pick a theme and let them know what an unbiased patron has to honestly say about his first visit to a new place. I see the potential, but currently it seems like they can't decide if they want to be a sports bar without a bar or a seafood-themed place or a Cajun-themed restaurant. If I walked in the doors of that restaurant to hear people singing karaoke with no bar, I'd turn around and walk right back out!
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