Grease is the Word
Written: Oct 23 '01 (Updated Apr 14 '07)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Cheap
Cons: Greasy
The Bottom Line: Low prices, but not worth ingesting all that grease.
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| Bruguru's Full Review: Long John Silver's |
Prior to moving to Georgia, I had never set foot in a Long John Silver’s seafood restaurant. Considering that Long John Silver’s has over 1200 locations that may come as a surprise to some, but the chain has few if any locations in New England. They wouldn’t survive long there if they did, since we New Englanders pride ourselves on having some of the best seafood restaurants in the world.
The Long John Silver’s Chain was established in 1969 and was an instant success, offering fast-food style fried seafood to compete with the standard burgers and fries of the day. The secret to the chain’s success seems to lie with two factors:
1) Low prices.
2) Locations where seafood restaurants are not abundant.
The menu at Long John Silvers mainly consists of fried fish, fried chicken strips, fried clam strips, fried shrimp, fried potatoes, and fried hushpuppies. There are a few sides like coleslaw and corn on the cob but mostly the keyword here is fried, fried, and more fried. A combo plate here is much too greasy for my palate.
Let’s start with the fries. Boring, thin, too crispy coated sticks of grease that taste like Burger King fries. Have I mentioned I hate Burger King fries? OK, on to the fish. Not so good here either. You get these diagonally shaped frozen formed fish chunks drenched in, you guessed it, grease. They call them fish planks for some reason. Sounds like a disease to me.
“Hey, have you heard about Harry? He’s got Fish Planks. They don’t expect him to make it.”
I’d rather walk the plank than eat a plate of these. OK, on to the chicken, which they call chicken planks. This is at least white meat and not so bad but still too greasy. Ironic to me that a seafood restaurant does chicken better than fish, but there you go. Clam strips. Let’s talk about the clam strips. Not much clam to them. I can understand them being strips rather than whole-bellied. Hey, this is fast food. But there isn’t even much strip in the clam strips, just a lot of hard crunchy batter.
The fried shrimp are pretty darn small. You have to dig through a foot of batter to find the shrimp here. I mean, how many bites does it take to get the center of a Long John Silver’s shrimp? The world may never know. If you like, you can get a combo plate of fish, chicken, clams, shrimp and fries. Be warned though, your plate will have more oil than the average Arabian country.
Recently Long John Silver’s has added warm flatbread sandwiches of chicken or fish and these aren’t too bad. They make a decent lunch and are very affordable. Right now you can get one with fries and a drink for $2.99. To be fair, most of the menu here is reasonably priced. For the prices you’ll pay (combos run around $6 but you can eat fish and chips for $3 to $4) you can take a break from burgers and tacos. I do occasionally eat here, but not that frequently. Flash fried frozen formed fish fails to float my fleet. Mrs. Paul, I’m sure, would love this place.
Recommended:
No
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