Coast Fish Company
9543 Irvine Center Dr.
Irvine, CA 92618
It seems you can't turn around without hearing about a new seafood concept opening up. My Instagram feed is filled with new fish restaurant concepts almost daily. It almost seems like seafood is the new obsession, just like the burger explosion we had about two or three years ago, and the bacon mania we had at the start of this decade. Yes, a seafood option can now be found in almost every retail center throughout our great county.
One of the great parts of this is that seafood is now available at any price point. Food from the sea is affordable to everyone, instead of just from fancy restaurants, as it once was. It used to be that you had to dine at one of the overpriced restaurants with a view of the ocean or get a table in a fancy steakhouse to enjoy some seafood. Sure, there was H. Salt or if you were like my family some frozen fish sticks when my parents were going out for the night and did not want to dirty up the kitchen.
Nowadays we have a wide selection of seafood options available. There are the fast-casual options, lead by my favorite Slapfish, there are oyster bars, raw fish bars, sushi restaurants, fish taco joints, Mexican restaurants that specialize in shrimp and ceviche, and you can't drive more than a block without finding a new poke spot to try. Those things have multiplied like rabbits in the springtime.
Coast Fish Company opened in the Los Olivos shopping center last year. This fast-casual restaurant comes to us from the owners of the legendary Cannery Restaurant in Newport, who also happen to own the El Cholo chain of Mexican restaurants. With a pedigree like that, we were pretty excited to see what Coast Fish Company had in store for us on this early Monday evening.
Sandwiched between a Starbuck's and one of my favorites, Burnt Crumbs, Coast Fish Company had a larger than I had anticipated dining area. It was light and open, with plenty of booth and table options for their guests. The nautical theme was apparent with the fish stenciled on the ceiling, lighting fixtures that resemble lobster baskets, and decorative ropes that you can easily imagine being used on a fishing boat.
Ordering is done at the counter, which has the menu located behind the cashier. The menu includes seven appetizers, taco options, nine entrees, and side items. With most items, you have the option to choose what kind of fish you want your meal to be made from with their seasonal fish offerings. Prices range between $9 to $14 for their entrees, while appetizers will set you back under the ten dollar mark. We made our selections, grabbed our number and waited for our food to arrive.
Even though it has been one of the hottest summers recorded, I could not resist trying a bowl of their Clam Chowder ($6.30). Not sure why I thought this chowder was going to be the exact same as the much better one I had at The Cannery last year, but I was not totally disappointed about this version. It had more potato and crab than its cousin at The Cannery but was not nearly as creamy and flavorful as that one. There was no grittiness to the clams and this one came in nice and hot. Not bad clam chowder, but nothing earth-shattering either, it just needed a little more depth to the chowder portion of this.
Poke and Chips($9) is one of Katie's guilty pleasures when she spies it on restaurant menus, so it was no surprise that she gave it a try here. At Coast Fish Company they have either salmon or tuna poke to choose from, and Katie went with the tuna version. This was not the most tender of pokes she has had, but she liked it well enough. We were not sure what the yellow item was under the ginger, but Katie discarded it after a few bites. The tuna was dressed simply but lacked that spark which made it pop. Maybe some diced avocado would have helped this out a bit. The chips were run of the mill tortilla chips, which were okay to go alongside this. Katie ditched the chips after a few bites and finished this starter with a fork.
Fish and Chips ($9.79) a lot of the time is hit and miss, and a lot can go wrong with them. It's difficult to get them perfect. These at Coast Fish Company were good, but not perfect. To be honest, I have no idea what the fish was that they used here, but it was flaky and good. The breading was not greasy and had a good crunch to it, but was light on flavor. I thought the serving size of this was more than generous for the price. I alternated between both sauces and liked the slightly spicy aioli a bit more. Both sauces were a bit on the thin side, especially if the white one was supposed to be tartar sauce. The fries, or chips, in this case, were well-seasoned fries that reminded me of a straighter curly fry from Jack in the Box. Not too bad.
Katie came in here knowing she was going to be getting one thing and then ended up changing her mind by getting this 2 Taco Plate ($10.95). She got one of her fish tacos made with mahi-mahi which was blackened and the other was fried white fish, which was topped simply with both shredded cabbage and pico de gallo. She felt both tacos were not earth-shattering, but she liked them well enough. There was nothing here that made them stand out from other fish tacos she has encountered. This plate also came with black beans and rice as side items. Not sure if you get to pick your sides or not, but Katie liked the rice here, but left her black beans pretty much untouched.
I left Coast Fish Company feeling like it was fine, but not anything here would make me return. Maybe if I was in the Los Olivos Shopping Center, and did not want to drive somewhere else, I'd come back and try something else. The prices were not so bad, especially for this area, but nothing really popped for me on this visit. Slapfish still reigns in the fast-casual fish game, but as is the new norm, there's always a new seafood-centric place opening up somewhere.
Out of five mushrooms, (because the city of Irvine, Kentucky hosts a mushroom festival every April), five being best to zero being worst, Coast Fish Company gets 2.5 mushrooms.
Amazingly, Coast Fish Company does not have a website. They have one, but it has no information on it. So instead head to their Yelp page for more information: https://www.yelp.com/biz/coast-fish-company-irvine
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