For my girlfriend’s birthday, we decided to go to Nick’s Fishmarket since she’s heard only wonderful things about this place, and she is a seafood lover. I made reservations and let them know it was her birthday, because they normally have great service and give a nice slice of cake with a candle to commemorate the birthday girl.
Arriving to Nick’s, we were greeted by 2 valet people who promptly valet’d the car. The lot was very very small…probably could hold about 15 cars total, and even if I wanted to park myself, you can’t really since it was valet only. Good thing it was free, but you still should pay tip.
The restaurant is very elegantly laid out. It’s not on the calibur of many other high end restaurants, but it does have a nice “homey” feeling, with dim lights and ample seating. We were promptly seated and served water. As we were looking at the menu, we were given their sourdough bread with butter. It was very delicious as the bread in the middle was very warm and soft with a little crunch on the outside. It was so good we went through two baskets.
When we finally decided to order, we wanted to start off with an appetizer. We ended up ordering the Assorted Hot Appetizer Platter. This wonderful platter comes with blackened sashimi, shrimp scampi in garlic butter, crab seafood cake, and oyster rockefeller. But don’t let the assortment fool you…the portions were very small, as there were two slices of sashimi, one shrimp, one crab cake, and one oyster. Needless to say, even with the small portions, they all tasted wonderful, especially the blackened sashimi.
For entrees, I ordered the Hawaiian Opakapaka, which is sauteed, and served with a sundried tomato, basil, and garlic butter sauce. It is served on a bed of parmesan mashed potatoes and tomato confite. They also included a slice of carrot and zucchini. The fish was VERY tender and everything was piping hot. The garlic butter sauce was extremely good, but if you are sensitive to things that are salty, you might want to look for a different dish. But I do like salty things, and this sauce was phenomenol. And it is more of a salty taste from buttery and not strictly salt.
My girlfriend ordered the seabass which was a very large portion of the fish over a bed of mashed potatoes, surrounded with 1 scallop, 2 shrimp, mussels, carrot, zucchini, and smothered with a tomato sauce with capers. It was very tender and very delicious from the bite that I had.
Our food was complimented with a riesling and a blush white zinfandel. Both were very good and decently sweet.
We ended the night with a banana flambe. Make sure you order this dessert because it’s not on the menu. Not only that, but a cook comes out and makes the flambe right next to your table. In any case, they make their caramel with 3 different types of alcohol with brown sugar and butter, with a few drips of orange at the end. And it’s not a flambe without the flames, which he did twice. He also put in macadamia nuts on top of the cooked bananas that soak the caramel, then pour it over vanilla ice cream. Pure bliss.
The total cost was about $132, but using our Entertainment card, we saved $28, bringing the grand total to $104. Head over there if you want great seafood!
Tags: Restaurant Review
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