Inferno Seafood Boil — Restaurant in Alaska

I feel like Inferno is receiving the 4.5 star reviews because it's the only of it's kind here in Anchorage.

The food- it's almost as if they're not sure what flavor to choose. The Fiyah crab, not to be mistaken for a spicy, Cajun dish, comes drenched in an Indian curry sauce... and it's not a good curry.

They offer a Cajun seasoning- of which other members of my group did get. I tried them and thought they were tasty but altogether sweet. A surprise to me, having had Cajun in the South and up here.

Then, I ordered an appetizer of tots and wings that come with "prawns, crawfish, and reindeer" but asked that they be spicy wings. I was informed that they couldn't spice them up, despite the flavors offered for just wings. They did offer to make a set of spicy wings for me, but that was never delivered to me. Instead, I was given plain wings.

I digress, the wings were tasty. Sadly, the wings were the only thing tasty about the appetizer that was served with about 3 lbs of tots and 2 tablespoons of indiscernable seafood and reindeer. The dish felt confused about it's flavor pallette- and sweet. Again, most shellfish has a sweet taste to it, but this had a curry base sauce and was sweet.

I love Indian curry, but this was not their specialty... at least not a Cajun-Curry fusion.

Finally, the service was not my favorite. 1- they served drinks in a plastic cup and did not offer to refill for the entire time I was there. 2. I did not like the fiyah crab and asked if I could order the tots and wings dish. The waitress said, "oh, you must not have been thinking of the right dish when you ordered" then offered for me to choose "another sauce" to dip the crab in. I declined and they left the crab on the table until a little after I recieved my appetizer dish, despite my protest in eating it. They even offered to box it up for me to take home after I had expressed several times by then that I was not going to eat it and that it could be removed from the table. You could see where I had opened a few legs, because I wanted to like it, but ultimately left the crab meat in a pile on the dish.

The atmosphere- I actually didn't mind the atmosphere. I think the tables could be bigger, but feel they made the most out of the small space they have and if the walkway was smaller, they might have a difficult time serving people. I would have loved it more with better service and better taste profile.

Recap: The service was insulting and continued to gaslight me despite my politeness and explained distaste for the dish.

The flavor profiling needs to be finely tuned and not all over the map. Stick to one. No infusion.

Most importantly- I won't be going back and have swayed others against the place because the crab was ruined.

I LOVE crab and have been known to go nearly bankrupt to get it. I worked 12 hours and starved myself to indulge on the day I went, only to be gaslit and disappointed- then paid for the whole bill that was over $200 for 4 people with a "suggested tip" that was listed by percentage on the reciept.

Furthermore, the price is reasonable given the price of crab/seafood... but I wouldn't pay it again until they fixed their flavor profile and offered...

Tried Inferno Seafood Boil for the first time after hearing a family friend rave about it. Ordered the Denali Feast for our group as well as some appetizers and a couple of other things including a separate boil in a bag. It was insanely loud in the restaurant. It was difficult to hear the server and we had to yell to have a conversation. First off - the seafood is really good quality and the serving sizes were massive. Definitely meant for sharing! We were very happy with the size and freshness of the seafood. The boil in the bag that was ordered separately and the Denali Feast were supposed to be two different flavors but you would have never known. They tasted exactly the same. The flavor was disappointing - not enough at all. The majority of flavor was derived from the crazy amount of butter and jarred minced garlic dumped into the bag. The bag had several CUPS of melted butter in it. Our group agreed that we wished the flavor of the spices was more dominant. It was just really bland. One other smaller and less significant suggestion would be to have 2 different sized plastic gloves to offer. It would have been a lot more enjoyable to have better fitting gloves. It was difficult for the kids and half of the adults in our group to use the massive Bigfoot sized plastic gloves they offer with the boil. They were slipping and sliding off and made eating more difficult than it needed to be. They do offer a handwashing station in the dining room, but with the amount of butter/grease it is uncomfortable to not use the gloves. It would have been helpful to have our server clear plates/misc stuff off of our table as we went because the used plastic gloves (we had to replace them several times) and napkin/seafood shell trash added up quickly, making our dining area crowded and difficult to open crab shells and whatnot with nowhere to put them. I also understand it was a weekend night, but the tables are crammed pretty tight in the windowed area and it was hard to maneuver around between tables to get up to the bathroom. We had to bump into people every time we got up. Overall, it was okay. Anchorage doesn’t have anything else like this, and it’s clearly very popular based on how busy it was with people waiting outside the door. Personally, I would not consider this a fancy restaurant but many people were very dressed up for it. It’s cut rolls of plastic as disposable tablecloths, disposable plastic cups with cans of soda to pour in them yourself, you wear flimsy plastic bibs and gloves and you leave with a seafood funk on your clothes. It’s fun for a family, though. Kids definitely enjoyed digging around in the trough the Denali...

This was mildly disappointing from start to finish. My girlfriend offered to take me out to dinner for my birthday, and since I love seafood we thought this would be a good option. We came in and were told we could either wait an hour and a half to be seated or order to go. Fair enough! We didn’t make reservations. That’s on me! Since we were trying to have a nice dinner, we decided to wait. After 1 hour and 50 minutes, we finally decided to go back in and check on the timeline. It was getting late! When I asked, they gave me the sense that they’d forgotten about us entirely. They told me it would be about 10-15 more minutes. At that moment my girlfriend came out of the bathroom the tone changed completely. Apparently they were very sorry for the wait and were waiting for the “VIP” seating. Obviously a joke, but we’ve already been waiting for two hours so it wasn’t thaaaaat funny. After that comment it would have been cool to get a seat by the window or something. Nah. Try a cramped table not by a window, crowded by a huge (fortunately not playing) TV. Okay, but at least after 2+ hours, we could finally order! We ordered the mussels and oysters for starters. The mussels came out and were the absolute highlight for me! Genuinely SO good! I would come back just for those. Props, seriously! The oysters were pretty good too. Unfortunately we forgot to specify what flavor we wanted for them. They gave us Tabasco and lemon, which neither of us wanted. It’s on us for forgetting to say a flavor, but it also would have been nice if they asked when we didn’t say one. Whatever. Onto the seafood boil. We got a pound of king crab, a pound of clams, and a pound of crawfish. We got it Cajun flavored. It was actually pretty good, but definitely not Cajun. The sauce was 50% garlic, 25% red pepper flakes, and 25% oil. There was no dipping butter or any dipping sauce aside from The sauce the seafood was already in. The crab was good, but it’s pretty hard to go wrong with king crab. The whole thing was good, but it could have been better, and it definitely wasn’t what we were expecting. They brought us the check before we were done eating too! I get it, you’re trying to start closing and we’re in there. But we’re only in there because you took 30% longer than you said you would to seat us! We weren’t even taking our time eating. We were both scarfing our food down as fast as we could! There were plenty of other people still in there too. All in all, there was nothing egregious, but every single step of the process (aside from the mussels) was mildly disappointing. Not what you’re looking for for a nice...