Ate at Macca last night. While this was their first week – and there was enough decent to possibly warrant another trip after all is shaken down – we likely will not be making it.
First, the best thing was the service. The host(esses) and wait staff were charming, friendly without being obnoxious, and helpful. When they didn’t know an answer (not uncommon for the first week) they found out, and had what appeared to be a real desire that guests have a good experience.
The second best thing was the price. Our main dishes were in the low teens, and (given the huge portion sizes) it is easy to split a dinner, have an appetizer or desert, and get away for about $20/couple.
The restaurant is surrounded by big screen tv’s tuned to various basketball games. It’s loud, noisy, and (if you like that sort of thing) fun. You will like dinner better if you compare it to sports bar dinners, rather than to seafood restaurants!
We had two appetizers. The clam chowder tasted good, but was so thick we stood spoons upright in the bowls! Given the price (inexpensive), most likely they didn’t properly dilute the mix they bought. I had the fried alligator. It is whole chunks of alligator (other restaurants use ground, or pressed & formed), but very small pieces with a huge amount of batter, and over-fried to the point where one could almost break a tooth biting into it, with the gator chewy and stringy (rather than tender, almost like frog-legs). It was quite salty.
The table had four main dishes.
My wife’s broiled combo had beans & rice (uniformly good), surrounded by healthy portions of shrimp broiled in scampi “sauce” (fine), scallops (small, so salty as to be almost inedible, and so overcooked that they were very tough), and mahi (to continue the theme, totally overcooked and dry).
One party member had the South Beach Bucket, with cole slaw, fries (dry and inedible), and fried cocoanut shrimp, clam strips (overcooked), and whitefish (best of the options, but slightly overbreaded and overfried). The presentation was fun, with a pail on its side and the food pouring out of the pail, but the guest left about half of his food (and he is a hearty eater). He would not take it home!
Another had the teriyaki salmon, served over black beans & rice. She thought hers slightly overdone, but as a whole liked it, couldn’t finish due to portion size, and took all that was left to go.
I had the “Untamed Plaintain”, the ubiquitous black beans and rice, with six nice pan-fried plantains surrounding your choice of meat or fish. I ordered tuna very rare, which came medium (some pink, but I chose not to send it back) and covered with a pineapple salsa (decent). I thought my dish – other than the slightly overcooked tuna – the most successful.
We wondered if the “chef” was reared in this area – or anywhere other than the coasts. To have overcooked every single item of seafood would lead to someone who either didn’t like seafood, or someone who had never experienced that fish and seafood could have flavor!
Anyways, perhaps it was unfair of us to judge based on a Saturday visit after they had just opened on Monday, but there was such consistency of over-salting and over-cooking that we think this must be the desired results!
Perhaps I shouldn’t be criticizing food that cost less than Shoney’s seafood nights, but with some care with the fryer and grill, and letting customers use the sea-salt grinders on every table, you could have a wonderful place!
Hope others have a better experience – or at least emphasize when ordering how you want the fish prepared.