- Restaurants |
- Nightlife |
- Shopping |
- Movies |
- All
Kemp's Seafood House
- Accepts Credit Cards:
- Yes
- Attire:
- Casual
- Delivery:
- No
- Take-out:
- Yes
- Alcohol:
- None
3 reviews for Kemp's Seafood House
This is a great calabash style seafood house. For those not familiar with calabash style; it's basically: take some seafood, dip it in batter and deep fry it. Wether that's what it "really" means or not, that's the "important" part. :)
This place is HUGE, and being pretty centered between Raleigh and Durham it has become "the" place to go for calabash.
Don't be intimidated by the HUGE crowd of cars outside. Since they've added the new expansion, the longest I've waited on a Friday or Saturday night is 15 minutes.
The food is good and plentiful! Over the last few years they have increased the price a few times, but the portions are so huge it's still worth the money. Expect to have left overs. If leftovers aren't your thing, the price might be a factor. I go expecting to have dinner and have enough left over for lunch the next day.
I highly recommend the Buffalo Shimp Sandwich. It's my favorite and an absolute bargain. It's basically friend shrimp that is then dipped in spice buffalo wing sauce and served on a toasted bun (with shrimp piled on and spilling over into the plate).
The "pre-meal" hush puppies are awesome, but don't overstuff yourself on them or you'll not make a dent in your meal.
My only two "thumbs down" are:
1) For the size of the place and their kitchen's capacity to handle volume, the management handles groups REALLY badly. They don't take group reservations, and can only handle groups of 20. Any more and you have to break your group up into multiple groups. The resturant breaks up into cavernous "sections" so I don't understand why they can't cater to large groups given enough notice.
2) Be warned: they engage in predatory towing. We had a group that was going to a movie after dinner, so we left a car and carpooled. When we got back at about 1am, the tow truck was just leaving with the car. I've never understood this, ANY place that sells alcohol should expect the occasion car left over night. Predatory towing for a resturant that is somewhat remote and has plenty of capacity seems a bit unforgiving.
-Zac Morris
I'm calling Shenanigans on the reviews for this restaurant.
This restaurant used have at least 2 pages of bad reviews and now it only has 2 reviews total, and those are YEARS old. I personally reviewed the restaurant before and gave it a bad review, but now there are only a couple of good reviews left. Pardon the pun, but something fishy is going on.
At any rate, I live down the road from this place and have eaten there 3 times. I have a general rule that I'll try a place twice, once to see how it is and if it's bad I'll visit a second time in case I just visited on an off night. I made an exception here, but won't do it again. This place has a pretty extensive menu, but most patrons seem to opt for fried fish, calabash style.
I've always gotten baked/broiled items, while my dining companions have done fried food, none of which they do well. If you're looking for very large portions of mediocre food this is the place for you. If you're into calabash style just go to Mayflower seafood instead.
The seafood selection is not awesome in the Raleigh area, which is why my family and I keep returning to this place.
That being said, the calabash here is generally really good. It's generally very busy (even on a Sunday night, you might wait for a table and at peak weekend days - expect to wait over an hour), so the turnover of food is quick, ensuring always hot and fresh calabash seafood. They have other good offerings on the menu, but it's like going to Angus Barn and ordering chicken - you just don't do it.
Portions come in regular or large and any of those is enough to feed an army. When I go with my family, we order one large platter and split it between me and my parents, while my brother orders a plate of Cajun broiled. Each entree comes with cole slaw, a baked potato and hush puppies. A large side salad is an extra $1.50 and is great to counter all the brown. And all this is more than enough for an extremely filling meal for all of us. And to give you an idea of how much food it is, all of us have normal-to-small appetites, except for my brother, who is a growing teenage boy.
Also, as a side note, the clam chowder is very clammy and creamy. It's yummy good.
I do really like this place.
