Hook & Reel Cajun Seafood & Bar — Restaurant in Odessa

Recommended by one of my Good friends. Let me warn you when you drive up your thinking “dive bar”, “cheap or dirty restaurant”. Might be a little….Ummmm…when you park in the front but let me remind you were talking Odessa and Midland Area. We went to the Odessa one but I’ve been told the Midland one is just as great.

So why do I ask you to remember that? Oil country! Most of these new restaurants can’t afford to put a new nice restaurant up when land here is going around….A lot. Example it’s just the beginning of 2023 and Looking on LoopNet for commercial lot. 4 retail properties cost little over 25 million. Another Water burger out in the middle of nowhere is currently going for little over 3million dollars. That’s only 4,600 SF retail. So that said…hence the reason you find some nice restaurants that are brilliantly good in some “iffy” looking areas. Don’t judge a book by its cover.

So, going in we are greeted with staff. Typical normal nothing grand. Business is slow and our server is a really nice lady. I believe her name was “Jamie” She was awesome. Answering questions, explaining how everything works, recommending what most people enjoy. As we start looking over the orders my daughters face lights up. “I know this place”! “I love this place” She then goes to explain she’s been to the one in Amarillo Texas. She states she didn’t recognize it because it’s in a nice standalone building. She’s so excited and starts to order her favorites.

So we had the appetizer sample that had three cheese sticks (good), 4 hushpuppies or more (great), and a lot of calamari (good).

I had what you’ll see on the menu Mini bowl with Snow Crab legs. I got the step 2 “hook and real Special Blend” and the step 3 “spicy”, then for step 4 “sausage”. It was AWESOME! Luckily after fighting yummy crab legs for the meat and was full. So I took the sausage and potatoes home and they reheated great. Smelled Cajun in the house so that’s ….well not so hot but soooo worth it. My hubby did the mild spice and the shrimp he was terribly impressed.

My daughter had crawfish (crawdads…poor things) and snow crab and she gulped it down like they were going out of style. No one tried the fire. I like spicy food and I’d say after trying spicy I’d stay with that. I don’t think I’m brave enough to try fire unless I have a tank full of sugar water on hand.

Price was pricy but worth it for good seafood. I’d say for three people you're gonna look at playing almost 100 dollars or more. I forgot to take a picture of the other side. They do have other meals that might be cheaper. They do have po’boys etc. But you really need to try this at least once. Especially the Boils!

So recap: Cost – Pricy but not out of range Building – Looks cheap Cleanliness – clean Staff – excellent, friendly and attentive Food – Great, two thumbs...

Where to begin honestly... we used to LOVE this place! When they first opened we were there, we came often, never had a complaint! The last few times we have been there, more complaints, higher and higher priced menu items, it’s just not good. We won’t be returning after our last visit.

We started out with drinks & coconut shrimp, a favorite of mine. We both ate one. They were not cooked correctly, mushy and not crispy battered like usual. We ate 1 each and paid $11 for that appetizer.

Next we got the reel catch it’s $58 and we added another cluster of crab for $20 (which is already about $8 higher than it used to be) We got the food quickly, but it was terrible. We paid $6 for sausage that tasted like it was bad, old, something was definitely off! I am pregnant so after eating one I didn’t eat another one of those either. We chose mussels to go in the boil, they were OKAY, nothing special. The corn was dry and flavorless- the peel & eat shrimp was alright, I ate the most of that for sure.

Now on to the main event! What we came for, crab legs, we love crab legs!! This place should not be selling crab legs if they are selling little baby crab legs for that ridiculous price. On top of them being pitifully small, they were so over cooked, it was impossible to get the meat out when you could finally get it open. I got 3 small bites of meat out of one whole cluster we paid $20 for & the claw was even smaller than one of the crab’s legs!

We spoke with the manager who offered us a 10% discount. Didn’t take any of the things we didn’t eat off our bill such as the sausage, the practically untouched appetizer, it was still $120 and we literally left still hungry and very much unsatisfied. Not to mention it was my boyfriends birthday!

Today we are both sick so we are pretty sure now we have food poisoning. This place went downhill fast and I’m sad to say we will not be coming back to visit in the future.

It’s lower quality everything from food to service, and even higher prices than a year ago, it’s just not worth what...

This place is GREAT! I highly recommend you join the waitlist before arriving to the restaurant because both times we have been, the wait is LONG, but certainly worth it. Our server last night, Alex, was OUTSTANDING! He provided some of the very best service we have received at any restaurant ever. He took the time to sit down and go over the menu with us, had extreme patience with our excited toddler and made sure that we never went without anything we may have needed. Unfortunately, it seems like there are some staffing/management issues here which is why I deducted a star. While Alex was sitting with us going over the menu, the manager or maybe owner felt it necessary to approach him, interrupt him and practically yell at him about a drink that belonged to a table of his that had been sitting at the bar for too long...instead of just running the drink herself. Towards the end of our meal, the bartender had an outburst where he screamed a profanity loud enough to cause the entire restaurant to go silent and then ran out of the building...while the employee who upset him loudly talked trash about him taking too long to make a drink and she continued to trash talk him for several more minutes loud enough for guests to hear. This place needs to treat their hard-working employees better and have more than one employee behind the bar in the evenings. Otherwise, it is clean, the food is DELICIOUS and the service is exceptional (at least with Alex as a server). We get the snow crab legs, shrimp and mussels in the Hook & Reel seasoning blend at mild spiciness and it's just perfect! Definitely give the calamari a try too, its...