Hometown Seafood Padre Island — Restaurant in Corpus Christi

First time trying this new restaurant Hometown Seafood which replaced the old Scuttlebutts. It's been open a couple of months now so the initial crowds, rush, and staff learning should be mostly over.

Unfortunately, this was not a 4 star experience. I know everyone likes to give and every business likes to receive 5 stars. And I am generally lenient and forgiving, but several unfortunate outcomes prevent that rating for this visit.

First off, our server seemed a little miffed that we just ordered water as drinks around 7:30pm this Saturday Nov 10th, 2024. Nothing blatant, but the "oh, you're one of those" vibes were evident.

The hostess had provided us each a laminated page which contained the menu. Upon the servers return, with our delicious tap water, she asked if we were ready to order, and we did. This included one soup (the Gumbo, which was good), two appetizers (Boudan Egg rolls and Calamari), and two entree's, both the Spicy Cajun pasta. I asked if the Calamari was mainly rings or longer strands, to which she replied "it's a mix" somewhat dismissively and not at all convincingly. These items would put our tab at almost $100 with tax and our typically generous tip, but when the menus were placed on the table by where she was standing, she just walked off still acting like we were peasant class. I looked around thinking they may be intended to be used as placemats, but in fact, no one eating still had their menus.

The ambiance is clean, light, and inviting, but the chill in the air from our server cast a nasty shadow over our experience so far. I see the owner often comments on reviews, so let me just say up front that unfortunately your "face" to customers is your service staff, and a little charm or politeness goes a long way in my book. We just got the cold shoulder.

I was impressed that the soup arrived soon, and first as is appropriate. We spoke positively of this amongst ourselves. We still didn't have napkins or utensils, but the soup came with its own spoon. Lets just hope we don't need a napkin.

A few minutes later, both appetizers arrived. Impressive kitchen response on a Saturday evening, although the place was not crowded and there was no wait for a table. Turns out the Calamari is all rings. 100%, no longer strands. I really enjoy the way Virginia's in PortA has that. My dinner partner suggested some tolerance here. The Calamari was good, but not great. The Egg rolls were a tad soggy. We didn't get appetizer plates, utensils, or napkins. We just dove in and hoped for the best.

We had barely started the appetizers when the server showed up with our main entree's. Now of course that's not good, and the kitchen bears some responsibility on timing these things, although a good server could push back and tell them to wait or replate in a few minutes.

Instead of any apologetic tone, the server just observed that we had no napkins or utensils or napkins, returning shortly with two wax-paper sheathed forks and a short stack of cocktail napkins. No table knives for cutting anything, like long pasta.

The seafood pasta was a nice mix of Shrimp, cubed chicken, and sausage. The pasta was slightly dry, and numerous clumos of strands were stuck together on each of our plates, as if it were not stirred enough during cooking. That's a bit disappointing for about a $20 entre. I'm not a five star chef, but I wouldn't even serve myself pasta that had lots of the strands stuck together. The sauce was good, and the 5 shrimp were tender and delicious.

Ah, and here comes the manager type checking in on all the tables to see how things are going. Great, nice time for a little constructive criticism. Except his "stop" at each table was an extremely brief "Good evening folks. How's it going? good? Ok" - with less than 2 seconds spent actually making eye contact. Before we could swallow a bite to comment, he was gone. And so was his opportunity to show that he did, indeed, actually care how things might be going.

Well, that's what these reviews are for folks. There...

This place is fairly new to the Corpus Christi / Padre Island area having opened at this location just a few months ago. Their other 2 locations are in Pearland, TX (directly south of Houston).

I ordered takeout from this location as I was looking for some tasty seafood and this was definitely not a disappointment in any way! All of the food ordered was OUTSTANDING!!!

The restaurant has sort of a sports bar casual vibe, but looks to be very family friendly.

For the prices, the food quality and quantity were both fantastic!!

We had the seafood bisque which was rich, creamy, buttery and smooth with plenty of large shrimp in it. This is some serious comfort food!!!

Then we tried four diffferent fish entrees, and I would gladly order any one of them again. All were excellent!!

We enjoyed some Redfish on the half shell which was amazing with some lovely rice and broccoli that was cooked tp perfection.

We also had Salmon sauteed in lemon butter and served on a bed of rice with edamame and asparagus. The salmon was cooked to perfection and the asparagus was still slightly crunchy and delicious. Superb!!

Next we tried a Mahi Mahi fillet stuffed (covered more accurately based our takeout order) with crabmeat and resting on a bed of cavatappi pasta in a mild cajun seasoned sauce that was also absolutely delicious.

Lastly, we had a fillet of blackened Black Drum that was smothered with sausage, shrimp and mushrooms in a cajun style sauce. Again, this was absolutley scrumptious and was accompanied by more of the delicious rice and prefectly steamed broccoli.

We come down to Corpus over the Memorial Day weekend every year and have been doing so for more than 20 years (apart from the 3 years directly after Hurricane Harvey). I have to say that ever since Hurricane Harvey came through this area in 2017, we have been disappointed in the seafood dining options in general. It has just felt like good quality and good value were no longer anywhere to be found......until now!

This place will be our new "go to" spot for very high quality and reasonably priced seafood!! Hooray!!!!!

Give them a try. I am confident you will not be disappointed!!

We will definitely be going back for more....and more..... and...

Let's start with drinks. As you know, you do not drink the water in Corpus Christi. We ordered unsweetened tea because we aren't soda people. After what felt like a decent time the waitress came back and said the drink machine was not working. They cannot serve tea. Our options are Pepsi products and fake lemonade. We settled on fake lemonade.

For appetizers, we ordered crab fingers and fondue. After another decent wait time we were told the crab fingers were out. After a little while more we received what was allegedly fondue. Fondue is supposed to have a cheese pull and a thick consistency. Instead, the cheese sauce had the viscosity of water—thin and splashy. On top of that, the toast on the side was just untoasted bread chunks. It had good flavor, but it was impossible to eat what was supposed to be fondue. We picked out the shrimp, crawfish, and a few mushrooms. There were no assorted veggies as the menu stated

With the soup fondue in front of us, we assume a manager approached us. He apologized for the crab fingers and said he would let us know before the fondue came out.

I ordered the Mexican shrimp cocktail. It was mediocre at best. It's paired with Red 40 and Blue Lake 5 stale tortilla chips. It was overly horseradish flavored. Nothing seemed homemade about this; once again, the sauce was soupy and the shrimp were overcooked.

The side Caesar was not good. Too much Caesar dressing. It was drenching the limp iceberg lettuce, with not croutons, but soup crackers instead.

The surf and turf po' boy—my partner said the ribeye was too thin and tasted like burnt gristle; any other flavor was muted by a fake cheese sauce. The shrimp were okay. The fries were also okay.

Service was awful; you just have a bunch of kids on their phones.

Overall, we live down the street, and as we were walking out after paying for our unanimously awful dinner, we giggled about never...