Pelly's Fish Market & Cafe — Restaurant in Carlsbad

I love seafood. The fresher the better, but all things considered San Diego's fishing legacy is not what it used to be. Something I really enjoyed in a recent PNW vacation was the abundance of seafood markets. A place with different vendors selling their catch. Sure grocery stores have a seafood corner blocked off, but some farm raised salmon, an overcooked Dungeness and 5 sizes of previously frozen shrimp might be acceptable for a landlocked city/state, but not for San Diego.

A personal favorite for many years, it's always a treat to come here. Not only because it's close, but it's also part restaurant and not just a bit of a fish market.

Their Loco Moco is not the Hawaiian Loco Moco with gravy, rice and hamburger, but rather they do a chowder with Spanish rice. Think along the lines of Gumbo.

Most seafood places offer a shrimp salad or a crab louie, but their fresh ono or more well known name wahoo is excellent. The salad's are nothing ingeniously creative with classic dressings their use of shrimp, bay shrimp, stone crab versus Dungeness and the real kicker of smoked fish (varies as they do it in house). They offer a dozen different fish fresh and chargrilled from wahoo to ono to ahi to swordfish to red snapper. The sandwiches are the way to go if your on the lunch break otherwise I suggest a platter which comes with Spanish rice and a house salad. Quite a few marinades, seasonings or unseasoned are your options. I really like the lemon dill or pelly's house marinade.

It's hard not to love a good New England Clam chowder, but if you've ever had the Manhattan version which is tomato red based, you may just rethink all that heavy cream. Its much lighter and one of the only places around that makes it. Unexpectedly good I tell you.

Prices may seem a little high, but when you consider this should be the standard in freshness, getting cheap seafood from a grocery store is the real issue, not the prices here. $$. Service can be suspect as it's less a restaurant that you want it to be. The counter work is amazing though. True fish mongers that can give you recipe's, tips or just talk about your last time on the line totally makes up for not having a waitress, hostess, server.

Cocktails are really good, but I really expected them to carry a wide variety of oysters to choose from. Fresh none the less. Sashimi plate is pretty big, but your gonna pay for it, even more than some sushi restaurants, but easily more than anywhere else I've seen. Taco's are pretty good, not quite authentic, but what's great is they'll make a taco for you of anything in the glass case. Lobster is seasonal as well as their cioppino. If you love fresh seafood in a no nonsense deli market diner then you'll love this place. If you've ever had not so fresh seafood you have no reason to not come here as they stand behind their product 100%,...

I have to say I'm pretty bummed with our experience. I grew up going to Pelly's my entire life (probably the last 15 years) with my father. When they closed & reopened, I was so excited when we were back in town that it was the first place we went.

The menu looked good & so did the fish in the display case. The guy taking our orders seemed pretty overwhelmed but we did have a group of 5 so it was a lot of food.

The tables were too close together. It was winter (too cold to sit outside) and almost all the tables were for 4 people. We had to squeeze a chair on one 4 person table to fit 5, and the waiter kept using the door that I was blocking so it was super uncomfortable. I know I was 100% blocking the door so that could not have helped at all. Just mentioning they didn't have nearly enough tables and only 1 was there for more than 4 people and it was taken by a much larger group.

When we got our food, it was wrong. My brother ordered 1 lobster taco and 1 shrimp taco. He received 1 lobster/shrimp taco and 1 fish taco (the fish was freezing cold and rock hard so that was gross). I brought it up to the counter and the same guy taking our orders seemed super confused on how to handle it. So I just told him to take the fish taco off the plate and bring the shrimp taco. It took about 8 minutes to get the new taco (which was not a huge deal, it was just a ton of unnecessary confusion). My father got a sea bass plate, which was not very good. First, he told our waiter that he ordered bass and the waiter said "we don't have bass" and just looked at my dad all weird. What?????? After my dad said (about three more times) he got the sea bass plate, the waiter said "next time order it with cajun seasoning, it's much better" before my dad even took a bite. I know it was a nice tip I guess, but it seemed weird to imply this wasn't going to be very good. The sea bass was thin and not that great, nothing like the smaller, thick sea bass Pelly's served prior to closing.

Overall, the meal was good. My snapper sandwich was good, the swordfish plate was good, the chowder was good, and the tacos were good. The sea bass plate was the only major miss.

But the cramped seating, confusion on serving us, and annoyance I felt from the staff really bummed me out. I used to brag about Pelly's to pretty much anyone going to Carlsbad, so I hope they can...

It makes me so sad to write this review, but I couldn't even make this stuff up if I wanted to.

On 4/24 we decided to stop by Pelly's on our way to Legoland. We love this place primarily for their sashimi plate and grilled sea bass. It wasn't that crowded, so my order was taken fairly quickly (we decided to go with lemon butter sea bass and sashimi.

I took a seat at the counter located a couple steps away from the cashier. I say this because it's pretty crazy what happened next. SOO as I am waiting and browsing on my phone, I overhear the cashier and a very frustrated cook talking about an order that had just been picked up. At first I'm just casually hearing words in and out until the cook and cashier start to say my name. I honestly couldn't believe what I was hearing:

Summation of the convo: Cashier: oh shoot, I think that guy that just did a pickup has the lemon butter sea bass (runs out of the store and looks) Cook: (upon cashier's return) well you better convince Courtney to take the garlic butter sea bass Cashier: I'll see what we can do

In the back of my mind, I'm hoping this isn't me. The cashier walks over to me, and I'm full on expecting him to ask if I wanted this mix-up. He brings the food over and says "Okay here is your sashimi, your fries and your fish plate."

I proceed to look at him, wondering if he is going to possibly tell me the truth. NOPE. Now that I'm fully irked, I ask him - this is lemon butter, correct? His face looking a little shocked says, it should be - "why is there a problem if it's not?"

What the actual heck.

So I respond, "Yup! I'm allergic to GARLIC" (I really am not), but by now I'm pretty much pissed that this guy (and staff) straight up lied to my face.

Now he looks concerned because she sure as heck knows its garlic and takes his courtesy look to "confirm" that it's the wrong order. He then gives a look to the already super disgruntled cook who proceeds to start cooking.

As he handed me the order, I almost told him that the counter was earshot from the cash register, but I couldn't handle any more BS. If he had told me the mix-up in the first place, we probably would have been fine with it, but the fact that he knowingly was going to give me the wrong order makes me lose faith in the staff and how things are run at Pelly's.

Sorry, it was great...