The Ancient Mariner — Restaurant in Ridgefield

Low expectations. Pleasantly shocked!!

This place is hidden in the strip mall behind Prime Burger. It’s hard to see from the road or even from the parking lot. The decor is old school so I wasn’t expecting much.

Ordered the Marriner Burger with potato salad and guacamole and chips. The burger was huge and perfectly cooked - actual medium rare! The bun had great texture and was lightly toasted. It was served with some sort of blue cheese sauce plus bacon and tomato. I am a burger aficionado and think this burger was delicious! It is way better than I expected, coming from a unassuming looking restaurant hidden at the back of a strip mall. The potato salad and guacamole and chips were yummy too.

I can’t wait to go back and sample the seafood. After all, this is billed as a “seafood restaurant”.

By the way, this is worlds better than the generic “mass-produced” but fancier-looking Prime Burger place in the same strip mall. This burger is homemade and made with care. I like it almost as much as the Mark Burger at the Mark Hotel in Manhattan (which is dressed with truffle sauce).

The only thing that I missed was french fries. It wasn’t one of the options I was offered. Not sure if it’s on the menu

“Never judge a book by its cover”...

Nice manager and staff, good burger, not for families. We chose this place as it was listed as kid friendly despite my concern about it being more of a bar. From the second we opened the door and were greeted by a strong smell and many bar patron stares I knew we had made a mistake. But we were in a hurry and the manager was extremely nice and accommodating so we decided to stay. The table by the window had a view of people smoking and was literally sticky. There were about 5 choices for kids which was the usual burger, hot dog type of choices. Hot dog came back with a hair on it and the chicken fingers came out as fish and chips. My burger was very good and the steak salad was not bad at all. Again, Great staff and if you're looking for a drink and a burger this place is OK but...

AVOID. 3 of us went for dinner and we each ordered the seafood platter (shrimp, clam strips, cod, fries). Service was good, food quality was not bad, but this "establishment should have been completely embarrassed" putting the platters in front of us with such small portions, I counted there were literally 2-3 fork fulls of clam strips, the entire piece of cod was consumed in 3 bite sized portions, 2 shrimp, and a total of 7-8 french fries. I literally thought they made an error and were bringing us an appetizer, it looked like the remnants of someone that could not finish their entree vs. a complete dinner. Simply, we were all too hungry to complain, so we ate paid and left. Never...