After our first experience at Fish City Grill, we had mostly made our minds up that we were NOT going back.  However, the raving comments some of you left after our last review and the owner’s warm invitation to come back and give it another try convinced us to give this place one more shot before writing it off completely.  At the end of the day we support Tyler businesses and hope to see them all succeed and flourish.  And, we just really like places that serve good food and have excellent service.  Tyler can never have too many of those, right?

Fish City Grill
4740 South Broadway Avenue
Tyler, TX 75703-1308
(903) 266-9218

We arrived last night, a Wednesday evening, and were excited and optimistic to try Tyler’s newest seafood restaurant.  And hungry.  We were very hungry.  We arrived about 10 til 7 and waited just a few minutes for a table.  This was promising…  I thought the food must be great in order for a small seafood restaurant in Tyler to be packed on a Wednesday.  The hostess sat us at a nice corner booth, and we started browsing the menu.  We waited nearly 20 minutes for our server to take our drink orders or even greet us.  I was pleased with his draft UFO suggestion, but that’s about the only compliment I can muster up.

We ordered the oyster nachos to start with since we were both so hungry.  They arrived promptly and were just OK in my opinion.  Not bad, I just doubt I’d order them again.  After much deliberation between the crab cakes and the shrimp dinner I made up my mind that I would try the shrimp dinner with grilled shrimp.  My sister decided on the Mediterranean shrimp pasta.  One problem…  It was now 7:35 and our server had not been back since he dropped off our appetizer.  He hadn’t even asked us what entrees we had selected yet.  We thought about just getting the check and leaving, but at this point we had invested so much time in trying to eat at Fish City, we felt like we should stick around for a full meal.  When our server finally came back around, we said we would like to order dinner, but were worried it might take awhile.  He responded by saying, ‘oh, I didn’t know you were in such a hurry’…  Umm we were not in a hurry, but we had no idea we were in store for a lengthy dining ‘experience’ a la Melting Pot.  Whatever, at least he took our order.

When our food did arrive, it was mediocre at best.  My grilled shrimp was good, but no better than any other grilled shrimp I’ve tasted.  My sister’s pasta was a pretty big disappointment as well.  The menu describes the dish as sautéed veggies and feta cheese tossed with bowtie pasta…  This description is quite misleading seeing as the ‘sautéed veggies’ include nothing but an overwhelming amount of sliced black olives and tomatoes.  I decided to drown my disappointment with a second UFO, but instead of bringing me that – the beer that he had originally recommended - our server brings me a mug of dark brown porter ale of some sort.  When I asked what it was, he realized his mistake but instead of taking it back, he told me just to try it first to see if I liked it before he had to walk it all the way back to the bar.  Mind you, our booth was less than five feet from said bar.  It was clear that it was time to get our check and get the heck out of town…  errr, Fish City I mean.

We placed our credit card on the table to signal we were ready for the check.  Our server took the card, and came back once he’d scanned it.  To end the night on a good note, he attempted to strike up a conversation by inquiring about the pronunciation of my sister’s last name.  Even after she told him what it was, he mispronounced it again and since his mispronunciation involved a reference to pigs, he actually oinked and snorted several times before bidding us adieu.  Of course, after he left we realized he did not leave the itemized receipt, only the credit card slips, and we were left wondering what we were actually paying for.  Not wanting to subject ourselves to another oinkfest, we just let it go and left.

Fish City Grill certainly made an impression I am not likely to forget.  And definitely not in a good way.  I’d be curious to hear about others’ experiences at Fish City.  If any readers have eaten there please tell us your thoughts.  I’d hate to write Fish City off completely but am compelled to after the experience I had last night.  Hopefully they can turn things around and steer this ship back to safety.

Fish City Grill
4740 South Broadway Avenue
Tyler, TX 75703-1308
(903) 266-9218