Tugboat Fish and Chips — Restaurant in San Jose

Fish & chips are comfort food for me. As a boy growing up in a Catholic family in Southern California, my parents frequently indulged in Fish & Chips from the local Fish & Chips place near our home. For many years, it was H. Salt Fish & Chips. Then when H. Salt had to shut down to make room for a bigger supermarket, another privately owned place quickly sprung up in its place. They were always pleasant, enjoyable meals for a quick family night out. Slowly, over the years, it was sad to see places like that deteriorate in quality. They often changed ownership and drifted into strange, horrible little hybrid restaurants like "Fish & Chips and Chinese Food" or "Fish and Chips and Donuts". I guess it wasn't a big market, so it just went downhill. When I moved to the Bay Area, I was excited to discover an H. Salt on Blossom Hill near Costco. My wife and I went there full of optimism. The owner was incredibly nice to us and the service was excellent, but the food certainly didn't live up to my memories of H. Salt from my childhood. It was heavy with grease and had a nasty fishy taste to it. We were the only customers in there the whole time we were there.

I had somewhat given up hope for finding a decent Fish & Chips place until I came up Tugboat Fish & Chips on Blossom Hill near Cahalan Ave (near Outback Steakhouse). This place is great! The batter is light and the fish is high quality throughout without any nasty spoiled fish flavor. They serve nice, big pieces of fish too. A 1-piece with chips makes a full meal for me. I now frequent Tugboat on weekends whenever I drive by that strip mall near lunchtime. Everytime I've been in there, they've always got a healthy-sized crowd seated at the tables and a good take-out business going as well, so you know the fish is getting good throughput without sitting around to spoil. The cook the food right as you order too. It doesn't sit around under any heatlamps. They also serve a variety of other fried seafoods, chicken strips, corn dogs, and hush puppies. The restaurant is tastefully decorated and always clean...

I just ordered fish and Chips w oysters for my family and 1 order 1 fish and chips. The orders each came with only 1 regular fish and a small piece for the 2nd piece, but either way each order had 1 regular size fish and the other was skimpy. I called back and the Lady couldn't speak very good English and was telling me she didn't understand. I started speaking to her in Spanish and she still didn't understand or was playing it off. I told her I took pictures of exactly what we received. Still no response. Do not come here because something is going on with not giving the 2 regular size fish w my orders. I do not recommend this place can't even solve the problem a paying customer has. Don't order to go if you eat here you should eat inside so you can see what you are getting. Buyer Beware..it's upsetting w the price of eating out these day and when we can scape up enough money to eat out...this is the end result (Absolutely...

WOW!!! Crispy crust on both the fish (Alaskan Pollock) and the prawns (Black Tiger), great chips (french fries) and the best fried zucchini I've had in years. The fish tasted fresh as did the prawns, french fries and zucchini. My better half loved the fish and coleslaw. She commented on the lightness of the batter which was not dripping with oil, it was light and crispy. All three of the deep fried items we had were light and not greasy or oily. The coleslaw had just the right amount of dressing not too little not too much. Most places drench the coleslaw in dressing which makes it inedible. We got our order to go, it was neatly packed in a box and was still hot when we arrived home. Tugboat Fish and Chips serves generous portions, fast efficient service and has reasonable prices to boot. We'll be returning soon to try the Lumpia, crab cakes and...