King's Fish House (Southern California)

food: 4/5

experience: 3.5/5

overall: 4/5

King's Fish House is a pretty decent-sized chain in Southern California with eleven locations, with two of those in Arizona and Las Vegas. According to their sign they've been around for like sixty years or something. Must be pretty good. Figured I'd give it a try since there's one in my former neighborhood. My first visit here was with a blind date which actually went really well.

Outdoor seating due to COVID makes it hard to hear. Oh well. The food was good. Mostly. Except when they got my order abominably wrong and served me corn when I explicitly said I was allergic (I ordered zucchini and asparagus...those don't even sound like corn). So I had to wait for my whole dish to be remade. But I digress. Let's start with the appetizers.

The waiter recommended the crab cakes first so we got the crab cakes. A little pricey for only two but this is definitely real crab in here. Very delish and flavorful, served nice and crisp and warm. Tastes good with the accompanying thousand island sauce but also tastes good without.

Oh yeah I forgot the bread to start. This is some good stuff. Also served piping hot with butter and there's a decent amount of it. Soft, bready bread. It's not sourdough thankfully. Sourdough is unpleasant. Usually seafood places have sourdough so I'm glad they don't.

The crispy calamari is good and the serving size is definitely ample. The batter is crispy and flavorful, and the calamari is tender and fresh. Comes with a creamy dressing that resembles thousand island but it's actually red pepper aioli - a little less sweet and more seasoned; plus a sweet and sour sauce. Both good.

On to the entrees! They have land and sea specialties. And they have a combo of land and sea, namely surf and turf. Probably the priciest thing on the menu. Tried that first, natch.

Their signature steak is a prime top sirloin cut. Comes with a South African lobster if you so choose. We double checked - it is indeed from South Africa. It's frozen but still good. If you want fresh ask for Maine lobster. But I digest. It's a big, juicy, firm lobster tail with seasoning on it. Lobster is always good. The steak is good too. Tastes like steak. I'm not a steak connoisseur. We got the rice pilaf and mashed potato sides. They call it "summer grains" but it's just rice pilaf with barley. It's good though. And the mashed potatoes are nice and garlicky.

Their wild Chilean sea bass entree has miso on it so I just got the regular char-grilled. Pretty tiny piece. Not satisfying at all. Probably only six ounces. It's tasty though. I went healthy and got veggies on the side.

Next time I made sure to try the filet mignon. It's seven ounces of steak and I don't know much about steak but filet mignon is supposed to be really good so I wanted it.

It's good, because it's steak, but I don't know if it's that great. Filet mignon gets so much praise and honestly I'm not that impressed. The macaroni and cheese on the side is good though. It's got breadcrumbs on it.

Saving the best part for last: dessert!

Bread pudding, yessir. My favorite dessert probably. I got this for free on my birthday as denote by the candle. Score. Three thick slices of bread completely drenched in custard with a very noticeable whiskey flavor (Jack Daniels). Very decadent. It comes with homemade vanilla bean ice cream on top but I got it on the side (not pictured) because I don't eat ice cream. I tried a bit though and it's good, because vanilla bean ice cream is always good. Very frosty.

Though good, and the service is usually up to par, I stopped coming here because their mask rules are just ridiculous. I'm over this little gimmick of wearing the mask literally a few feet when you're walking inside the restaurant until you take it off outside. The hostess refused to let me just go around the outside. This is all just getting silly. Seeing as it's a small chain with eleven locations, I don't really feel any moral qualms about this decision.