Seafood Streak

Pumpkin was in Atlanta recently! And the only reason I was excited about that was because she had said she would go eat crawfish with me ;) I had restaurant.com coupons for both Crawfish Shack and Fontaine's Oyster House, so we made a seafood weekend out of it. We went to Fontaine's on Friday and Crawfish Shack on Saturday.

I've been to Fontaine's several times, but every single time I order the Hot combo platter. You get one pound of shrimp, one pound of snow crab legs, mussels and clams, and one dozen steamed Gulf oysters. Well, we always ask if we can get the oysters raw rather than steamed. Every time they say, Let me check with the kitchen. They have been able to accommodate our request every time :) But now to the food. My favorite thing on the platter are the shrimp because of the spices they are cooked with. Most pronounced of these is cumin (I think), and it gives them a flavor I normally associate with my mother's meatballs rather than shrimp. The crab legs are generally of great quality and taste fresh. I don't think Pumpkin enjoyed them too much because of how hard they are to crack. She needs more practice! And even though she was afraid that we didn't get enough food, we were both stuffed by the end. This platter is a perfect portion for two people.

The very next day we were ready for more food at Crawfish Shack, and Snooki tagged along as well. Of course, we got crawfish (3 lb of it!). Snooki wasn't too eager to eat the whole crawfish, so she opted for a shrimp po-boy.  The coupon I had required us to spend at least $45, and we made up the balance by loading up on sides: Cajun fries, sweet potato tots, herb-roasted red potatoes and corn nuggets. The crawfish was fresh and spicy - just the way it was supposed to be. The "Cajun" fries, though, had NO seasoning on them, not even salt, let alone Cajun spice. Well, maybe a tiny bit of salt, but you get my point. They were so plain, they were impossible to eat. But we were too lazy to return them and had plenty of other things to make up for the fries. The roasted red potatoes were also rather plain. The only seasoning they had was a little butter on the bottom of the dish and hard to get to. The sweet potato tots, though, were just what I expected from them and still retained their flavor after frying. What I was really impressed by were the corn nuggets. I LOVED them. We couldn't imaging what they would be before ordering, but I'm SO glad we got them. They remind me a little of arancini balls, but with corn instead of rice and flattened. The corn kernels are still whole inside and so sweet when you eat them. And overall, all the fried sides did help to counteract the spicy crawfish :)