Every once in a while, we like to get a little fishy around here. Just helps keep us on our feet.
To achieve this, we set out last week to find something from the ocean to eat. Since we’re always grazing on grazers, we decided to spread the love and dig into something that once roamed the depths of the sea instead. We don’t discriminate against any food group over here (although we have a strained relationship with kale, gluten-free products and tofu, among other things).
Seafood is also great summer food. The smell alone reminds you of being on the beach or at a neighborhood fish fry. Plus, we hadn’t sampled a seafood offering in quite a while, so it all made sense.
Our destination for this deep-sea excursion was Tandy’s, tucked away in Eagle Square.
There are plenty of aquatic options on the menu – crab and scallop fritters, fried haddock sandwich, fish tacos, fish and chips – but we really wanted something that spent its life in a hard shell.
That led us to the scallop basket, featuring hand-breaded, deep-fried scallop pieces, French fries and coleslaw. The dish comes with some lemon wedges and tartar sauce for extra flavor.
Scallops have always been interesting and perplexing animals. Do they have brains? Heads? Tails? Who knows, but they sure are tasty.
The plate arrived about 10 minutes after ordering, and it smelled fantastic. Everything was nice and hot, and looked good on the plate.
The first bite was into one of the 11 good-sized scallops we got. It was a tad on the soft side, but still very good. These scallops weren’t soggy by any means, just didn’t have a super-crispy coating. It’s probably tough to get a true crunchy coating on something as soft as a scallop.
The scallops themselves were about medium-sized. Not jumbos but not babies, these were the perfect size to eat in one bite or two (we opted for one pretty much every time).
For the first couple, we ate them straight – no tartar, no lemon, no ketchup, no salt and pepper even.
They were good enough to hold their own, for sure, but why leave all the tasty condiments on the plate to go to waste? Condiments, they say, are the salt of life. Or maybe we have that wrong, but it sounds good so we’re going with it.
The tartar sauce was weighted toward the relish side rather than the mayonnaise side, which we appreciated. Nothing worse than so-called tartar sauce that’s really just a heap of mayo with some green flecks thrown in. The lemons seemed fresh and, paired with the tartar, added excellent dimensions to the taste of the scallops.
Up next was the fries. These were pretty standard – and we don’t mean that in a bad way. Bad fries can ruin a whole meal, and you don’t have to worry about these ones. They’re crispy and tasty – nothing crazy, but good.
Finally, it was on to the coleslaw. We love slaw, but know that the stuff can be dramatically different from place to place – some places use things like raisins or cranberries in theirs. Tandy’s, luckily, doesn’t mess around with fruit. It’s a straight-up cabbage-based coleslaw, and it got the job done very well.
A very good summer meal, and all for $12.99!
