Tugboat Fish & Chips — Restaurant in Rancho Cordova

Here's the deal... I have a Love/Hate relationship with this place. I moved to Sacramento told my friends and family about this great place to get fast, hot, good, fish and chips. My friends and family that are pescaterian, I personally took them to this restaurant myself and they were pleased with the food just as much or more than me. My major issue is that I patronized the restaurant and promoted the business saying nothing but great things until Covid-19 hit. My daughter was working at Target and would try to pick up food & Half the time the card machine was out of service but, my issue was when my daughter and I went on 3 different occasions and were treated worse than someone with Leprosy. We were ordered to stay in our cars. Don't get out of the car, Don't come to the door or attempt to enter the restaurant. We were told we had to stay in the car and make transactions through the window. It wasn't so bad reminded me of the soup kitchen on the Seinfeld episode "NO SOUP FOR YOU"! Lol! The last straw for me was when we handed our currency be it credit card or cash, the cashier/server had gloves up to her elbows but, still proceeded to handle our means of payment by holding it upside down by the tips of 2 fingers as if it was hazardous waste. The entire time we were treated like this by simply ordering food, I thought... Look, WE are TRUSTING YOU ALSO... We don't know who's sick and who's well and we are taking our time to bring you business and trust you to cook us food that isn't being mishandled and we are not watching or seeing what goes on in your kitchen. Well, it was so off-putting, offensive, and inappropriate to me, I didn't go back for a few years. I am not one to hold grudges and I love their food so I recently stopped by last week and placed a to-go order. I was very pleased with my food as before but, I am hoping that the owner and staff read this review and remembers that customer service is just as important if not more important than having good food. I hope they make an effort to be nicer or kind to their customers and remember that we are coming to your place for good food and a smile and good service can bring in more customers and keep the customers you have coming back. I really wanted to give the best ratings for your review but, improving your customer service will definitely raise the bar. See you next time! My food...

I’m in town visiting my godparents and found this little gem. It wasn’t too far off to where I was staying. Love that it is so small and quaint. I’m always down for fish & chips. I used to live here when I was a teenager, and fish & chips was my after school staple.

I ordered quite a lot of food for myself but I wanted to try everything! I got the fish & prawns combo but added an extra order of clams. I would have to say, they don’t skimp out on the portions and I love that! So you order at the counter and they’ll bring it out to your table. Food came out relatively fast! Probably about 10 minutes at most! It came out piping hot! And love the fact that it was brought out with all the condiments necessary (tartar, cocktail, malt vinegar, ketchup) I do have to say that their tartar was a little bland for me. And not as thick or had a tang to it as I would like.

Fish - it was lovely. super hot & fresh. The fish was cut a little thinner than I would like but the batter makes up for it. It was so nice and crispy! Super flaky.

Chips - I barely touched it. It was a lot of chips and I believed it could of been fried a little longer. Wasn’t crispy at all. Needed salt.

Clams - I could of done without this. Haha it was a lot of food. The clam strips weren’t bad but didn’t taste much of the clams. It was just heavily breaded.

Prawns - these were my favorite! So crispy, airy and light! I ate this up so fast! Would definitely order more of these next time!

Would definitely come back the next time I’m in town. Or maybe. Even the day I leave town! It was one of the better...

Updating my review : I'm updating my 5 star review to now 1 , I love the food don't get me wrong but the customer service is terrible . They are so rude . I come here all the time and honestly I don't think I'll be coming back anymore . I just can't deal with how poor their customer service is. I gave them a 5 star review about 2 years ago and it's taken about 5-6 consistent visits of them being rude and giving bad service that I decided to change my review . I don't know if it's new owners , or different family members or what but they've lost mine and my families business . If the owners are reading this ... it won't kill ya to smile . You don’t deserve your customers hard earned money with the way you treat them. Being pregnant and craving fish n chips is a bad combination only because of how hard it is to find good fish n chips. We just moved to the area and I'm so glad I found this place. Satisfied my craving AND more. We ordered the tugboat for 3 people , I was thinking the fish was going to be the size of chicken strips from McDonald's but boy was I wrong. The size of the fish is HUGE. 3 adults stuffed and doesn't even look like we made a dent in the fish. The tugboat could easily feed 5-6 adults . The fish tastes fresh , it's fall apart tender and not fishy at all. The size of the fish is easily as big...