Shrimp Basket — Restaurant in Cullman

First time ever going there and honestly I can't say I was very impressed. It was ok...... sort of. We got the fried crab claw appetizer to start. The waiter came back with them immediately. So its pretty obvious they're precooked ahead of time and sitting under a heat lamp. They taste like it too. I will say you do get a bunch of them. For us the melted butter was a better choice than the cocktail sauce.

Dinner was blackened redfish for me and the coconut shrimp basket for my wife.

The redfish filet was a lot bigger than I thought it would be. I was expecting something along the lines of a steak. So that was a pleasant surprise. The yellow rice was horrible. I couldn't eat it because a good portion of it was dried out and hard as a rock from sitting in a warming container all day. I know that because the waiter told me so. He did offer to replace it but i passed. As for the redfish it was middle of the road. Ive had better and I've had worse.

The wife really liked the coconut shrimp and she's quite picky about it. They were surprisingly large. She liked the hushpuppies and the corn fritters as well. She did not like the orange marmalade sauce and switched to their tarter sauce.

The service was..... OK. The total bill came to $55 and some change. Our dinners where $14 something each. The crab claws were almost $17 and definitely not worth it. Crab claws are something you expect to be sweet and at least moist. These were not. The melted butter helped with that but you shouldn't need it to be able to eat them.

With all that said if you go in with lower expectations it maybe just what you're looking for. There's a lot of things on their menu and the portions are quite large. Just know that its pretty obvious that most of their stuff is pre-made to be heated up quickly for service.

So, for us, overall is eh..... We hoped for better and fresher food. In a nutshell even though the wife liked her shrimp she said "I don't think I...

UPDATE: I went back today to give you another try... one table occupied, and us. Seated us across the restaurant from them, and that was great. Next group that came in, seated them directly next to us even though it was an empty restaurant - as the other diners had left. And the service from the moment we walked in was definitely lacking. Food was great, just haphazardly served. Staff standing around talking, goofing with each other. If you are having issues breaking even, maybe train your front staff so people will want to return.

Late lunch/early supper. The waitress took us through the mostly empty restaurant to the "porch" area. (Outside door was open) We did NOT ask to go out there, but thought they may have a party scheduled inside, so we said ok. Our nice meal became sweaty and loud. Having open doors to the ocean would be a pleasant experience; open doors to the traffic, not at all. There were times we couldn't hear each other, like being at the race track. As for food, I asked for extra crispy fries. I can't even describe them. I might go with gooey, or soggy. Nothing crispy- and I had to pay extra for them. The seafood part of our meal was good. AND, I didnt get a corn fritter. Overall, not a...

Edit: Still have not been back. Reduced rating from a 2 to 1. Notice the generic auto responses on the 4's and 5 stars? How much do they truly care about their customer service especially when an automatic response is provided to each above standard rating? I truly wished we had a better experience, and I love giving out 4 to 5 stars...

The true highlight of our evening was the wait staff. Truly amazed on how frequent they visited us at our table. We truly didn't mind the hour wait time after being seated since everyone was friendly.

If you decide to order from the appetizer menu, please be cautious on the tuna salad. $9 for a similar serving size of 'Subway's' canned tuna (white albacore albeit) on top of lettuce with 1 halved slice of tomato with 2 slices of pickles.

Yet, we still had high hopes.

We ordered a combo platter and a lb. of steamed shrimp for our meal, and felt so let down. The highlight of the combo platter was the soggy fries and the lb. of steamed shrimp was dry and rubbery, as if it was prepared earlier in the day. It made us curious to know why the hour wait.

After we paid our bill, we were so deflated that our ice cream at home was our highlight...