Smack Shack — Restaurant in Bloomington

We visited for restaurant week. A $35 preset 3 course dinner with a few choices. If this is supposed to give you a tasting to entice you to return, it did the opposite. Overall, our impression of this place is chain restaurant in suburbia. Which, for most part, it is. Yes, this is landlocked MN, but the prices and amount of seafood received make it feel like you are lucky to even get to wet your lips with a bit of lobster. Restaurant week typically gives you a smaller portion of a few select menu items. We had the lobster guac and lobster mac&cheese for course 1. The lobster was almost ice cold and had really no flavor. It was a waste on both items. We ate it separately, but really flavorless and too cold. Also, some shell was left on it. The guac itself is good, no need to pay extra for a bit of lobster. The chips served with it were also cold. Cold tortilla chips are not satisfying. We wish they had been warmed. The mac&cheese itself was pretty good. Enjoyed more by my husband, but I'd pick a nuttier flavored cheese than the creamy one they use. Again, lobster added nothing because it really had no flavor, and I'm not sure the benefit of adding what amounted to a few kernels of sweet corn. I like that but it needed more or simply none. For our entrees we tried the scallops with brussels, and the stuffed salmon. I know I got a pared down version on the tasting menu, but I got 3 small scallops alongside the winner of the night - decadent brussel sprouts (These could be a meal in themselves!). The salmon, which was supposed to be stuffed, just had stuff on it. The lemon beurre blanc sauce had no zing and was not highlighting the salmon. Good, but not great, and why call it stuffed? It absolutely is not. We also received dessert - a small piece of key lime cheesecake and a chocolate chip cookie. The cheesecake was actually pretty good. Zingy, but too much whipped cream on top - we are not cheesecake fans anyway so to even say it was good is a lot. It could have used way more graham cracker crust, IMO. Not sure where they get this from. The cookie we took home, and it does look like it will be good, is from B&E over at Potluck in Rosedale. The thing, again, that kind of bugs me is that the restaurant seems to be using whatever way to minimize the tasting. Typically their dessert menu offers an ice cream sandwich made with these cookies. I would be much more impressed if a restaurant offered a bit more, "WOW!" in a tasting menu like this, rather than leave us feeling like we were trying to get a deal and they are trying to not give away too much, if that makes sense. The highlight, though, which comes with a lowlight is that we were seated late for our reservation which seemed to be happening a fair amount while we were there waiting. The manager that sat us knew it was late and kindly offered, with a genuine smile, to get our first drink. Very appreciated and that did add to our overall enjoyment. If only the food had lived up to the hype, we'd be raving, but it just truly,...

This was our first time here and it was completely underwhelming all around. We visited the Edina/Bloomington location on a Tuesday afternoon at 4:30. It did not appear they were overly busy yet they seated us in a back room which was unoccupied at the time. Wouldn't have been a big deal if they were not also preparing a table near us for a group of 20 that were doing a wine tasting. There were 3-4 servers working on this, talking loudly as if we weren't in the room (even discussing the tips they were expecting), with additional servers stopping by to chat. The party arrived halfway through our meal. Still, nothing we couldn't deal with. Our server was polite, but we did have to ask others to find him for us on 3 occasions before, during and after our meal. I really wish I could say the meal made it all worth it, but we both found our entrees lackluster and overpriced. My jambalaya had a nice kick to it but was more rice than anything; 5 shrimp, small shreds of chicken and thin sausage strips instead of the standard round chunks. I didn't realize until the end of our meal that I never received the french bread. My husband's go-to is a chilled lobster roll and has had them in several midwestern cities. This was by far the most expensive with the least amount of filling...at $28 with only fries for a side this was an absolute joke. The "fun" continued when our server rang up our bill incorrectly. We had a gift card that covered a portion of the $71 meal (we each had one beer), but when he brought back our receipts they said we did not owe a balance. We sent someone to find him (again) and explained that we still owed money. He said he didn't understand what happened but went to make the change. When he came back he said it "must have been a computer error" and quickly exited. Needless to...

Save yourself $100 and head over to King Cajun off University in St. Paul if you want an authentic seafood boil experience.

Where to even start? This was, without a doubt, the worst seafood boil I’ve ever had. If bland, flavorless food is your idea of a good time, then this might be the place for you. But if you’re expecting true Creole or Southern flavors, don’t bother.

The lobster tail was rubbery, chewy, and completely overcooked. It’s like they had a five-year-old in the kitchen experimenting with lobster for the first time. There wasn’t even a hint of seasoning in the corn, and the andouille sausage was so bland it felt like it forgot it was supposed to be spicy.

The service didn’t help either. My dining partner’s order wasn’t even entered, and we waited an hour for her crab cake Benedict. Instead of apologizing, the server blamed “the system.” The restaurant wasn’t even busy—there were maybe six customers on our side of the bar. I had already finished my disappointing seafood boil before her meal even arrived.

To make matters worse, the server’s attitude was appalling. There was no apology for the long wait or her mistakes. Instead, she literally tossed the dessert menu onto the table and did the same with the check. It felt dismissive and unprofessional, to say the least.

The only semi-redeemable part of this experience was the lobster poutine, and even that was just okay—not great. After this ordeal, I wouldn’t return to this place or any of its other locations. Spend your...