Nuggie N.'s Profile

I've been here a few times and each experience has been good.

Cindy P. , Sean P., and a few other friends came out on Tuesday night for some good food and drinks. I don't know if it was just a Tuesday thing or they do it every night, but there was a special 4 course tasting menu that included wine pairings for $45. I think that was a decent deal considering that most items on the menu are $20+.

A few of the standout dishes that we ordered included the 'Kiss my bass' which was a very well prepared Chilean Seabass (my fave) and the 'Magnificent 8' (diced ahi tuna tacos). The apple smoked bacon fried rice, mac n cheese, and blistered shishito peppers were also good as well.

Other reviews have mentioned that the drinks here are a bit expensive. That much is true, but they are damn tasty and you get a good amount of booze for the money. I can get a little buzz off a couple drinks here vs 4+ drinks at some other place that waters it down.

On certain weekends, they host a wine and cheese event. I haven't been yet, but it sounds fun.

I've heard about this place from several LA friends so I decided to go check it out with a friend.

Their menu offered 6 different varieties of oysters, so we decided to order a dozen of them as a sampler plate. So frickin good! I highly recommend going this route so that you can taste the differences between the species.

We chose the tuna tartare for our appetizer. Awesome! I was happy that the tuna was coursely cubed and not finely chopped up. The presentation was great and there was a lot of different layers of flavor and texture that went really well together.

Unfortunately, our entrees were a little bit of a let down after the oysters and appetizer. They were beautifully plated, but the flavors didn't really work for me.

Overall, I'm glad that I went but it was a bit on the expensive side. If I do ever go back I'll probably order a bunch of appetizers and skip the entrees.

I'm glad to see that some  Vietnamese restaurants are beginning to adopt cleaner and higher class venues for their dining experience.

I decided to order a claypot dish along with their canh cua soup.

The claypot was great! Good flavors with decent portions. The soup was a little sweeter than I would have expected. It was due to the pineapple that was included. I've never had that soup with pineapple before, but I've been told that it is a pretty traditional ingredient so I guess I just wasn't used to it.

I'll probably head back to try other stuff on their menu and see how their Pho is.

This was my first visit to Rockin Crawfish and my second experience with this type of dining. My previous experience was at Cajun Corner.

I enjoyed the atmosphere at Rockin Crawfish more than CC. Unfortunately, they don't have a liquor license so we had to walk to the supermarket to buy some beer and bring it in with us.

The crawfish seemed to be bigger at Rockin Crawfish compared to Cajun Corner, so the work/reward ratio was a little better. We didn't get any extra goodies like corn on the cob, sausage, etc. It turned out that they were separate items that needed to be ordered along with the meal, unlike Cajun Corner which just included it.

Overall, it was another fun experience with tasty food. The parking can be rough since its located in a busy shopping area. Otherwise, I'd recommend it.

I went for my friend's birthday party and didn't know what to expect. Although I had a fun experience, this is probably not one of those places that you should take a first date to.

The first thing that I noticed was the large bench covered with a brown paper dropcloth. The next thing I noticed was the absence of a liquor license. Fortunately, that was quickly remedied by the plentiful amount of booze that somebody had the forethought to bring in. And of course, the last thing I noticed was the plastic bib sitting in front of me. I was in for a messy night.

The menu is pretty basic. You get to choose between shrimp, crawfish, dungeness crab, clams, and oysters. And then you just have to specify how many pounds of each you want. That's right, you order food here by the pound!

Everything except the oysters come out in large steaming plastic bags. You basically just reach in and start cracking exoskeletons to extract seafood goodness within.

At the end of the night, there were two large piles in front of me....one was composed of discarded shells of devoured sea life inhabitants and the other was a bunch of wetnaps, paper towels, and whatever else I could wipe my grubby hands on to get clean.

This turned out to be a fairly long review for me, so in case you got bored reading and wanted a quick summary:

* Fun place to eat with bunch of friends
* Bring your own booze!
* Prepare to get really messy
* Don't bring a date here unless you are used to seeing each other covered with seafood bits.

Pretty good authentic Taiwanese food for a damn good price. I don't recall seeing anything on the menu for over $6.

They have a ton of little appetizer dishes available on the menu. I really like the Chinese scallion pancakes.

The other reviews mention something about their employees having attitudes. I can't really disagree. I think that if you spoke Chinese you'd probably get better service, but I don't...so I didn't.

For a restaurant that is supposed to be really shi shi, it actually ended up reminding me of a bad themed restaurant.

First of all, they kept playing "Puttin' on the Ritz" over and over again. It's like 'Gee...I've forgotton where I'm at. Thanks for reminding me...again.' It was pretty cheesy.

The service here is pretty bad. Even after making reservations, it took about 25 minutes to clear our table and make it ready for us. After being seated, we didn't even get our menus for an additional 15 to 20 minutes!

On the plus side, the drinks were tasty and the martinis were shaken and poured tableside which was a nice touch.

The food was alright. It wasn't bad, but it also didn't stand out as being great. My overall experience with this place can be summed up in one word....disappointing.

I'm a little surprised that I'm the first to review this place. As far as I know, there are about 5 locations. This review is for the one in Newport Beach which is basically in the heart of Fashion Island where San Miguel dead ends.

The decor sorta reminds me of an old school French Jazz place where old French posters adorn the walls. Being Newport Beach, I was a little disappointed with the lack of eye candy present. It seemed to be catered towards an older crowd.

I went during Newport Beach Restaurant Week, so a lot of places were offering a Prix-Fixe menu for $26.95. Not too bad of a deal to explore some new places.

For my starter, I chose the Field Greens Salad with Goat Cheese Beignet, Raspberry Hazelnut Vinaigrette.

My entre was Prime Shortribs a la Bourguignon, Pommes Puree, Horseradish Cream.

Last was dessert, Strawberries with Graham Cracker Tuile.

The food and service was great and the price was right. I forgot to take a peak at the real menu to see how much the food would have been without the special Prix-Fixe price. For my experience, I'll give it 5 stars but I can potentially see follow up reviews with a star taken off if the price is too expensive.

This is a pretty decent place to go if you're craving some Japanese curry. It's sweeter than Indian curry but unfortunately lacks the extra spicy kick that I always enjoy. One exception to this is their spicy Curry-Pan which totally rocks. My co-workers refer to it as crack.

I usually order one of the various katsu (cutlets) dishes with curry. I just wished that they gave me more curry sauce to go with the last bit of naked rice that always seems to be left over on my dish. Or maybe I just need to improve my curry management skills.

I also like ordering the iced tea there because it comes with a liquid sugar syrup which is probably a diabetic's worst nightmare.

This seems to be the place where older men take their younger and much more beautiful ... ahem ... "nieces" out to dinner.

It's part of the Patina Group's stable of shi-shi restaurants located in the Westin Hotel. They have their own entrance accessible from the side that borders with Scott's Seafood.

Their menu has an "Odd Things" section that includes escargot, frog legs, and other Frenchy type stuff.

My favorite dish was the duck breast with gnocchi and a balsalmic reduction sauce. I use the operative word "was" because they took it off the menu the last time I went! Since they took away my duck, I'm going to be petty and take a star off this review.

I ended up settling for some frites and filet mignon which was good, but not what I came for.