Fish Fry Friday

Yes, it’s Fish Fry Friday by Fire Fly Fifty Five. Cough cough. I’ve probably written this before but for many people Friday’s equals Fish Fry Friday. For the uncouth, it means the restaurant TGIFridays. But not today! Back in the “old country” you could find a tasty fish fry at any corner bar and all but the worst restaurants. Deep-fried Haddock typically - sometimes served up family style all-you-can-eat. Yum. Deep-fried fish, potato salad and fries – this could be the death of us all yet! But you also will get slaw and buttered rye bread, neither of which is deep-fried.

Once upon a time I even had a hard-boiled egg that was wrapped in bacon, battered up and deep-fried. When I woke up in the hospital I had a special diet to go on. That was fun.

Oggi’s
First up on the Friday fish fry tour is Oggi’s. I think this is pronounced, OH JEEZ, as in “Oh, jeez, I’m so f’ing fat.” It’s been voted at least some years in row as the best pizza. I’m not sure about that, it looked a little doughy to me. But we’ve hit this brewpub (with enough San Diego locations) a few times over the years for hot wings and beer or something similar.

They do fish and chips for $10.95, with their own beer batter anonymous white fish served up with potato wedges. It seemed to be a pretty light batter – with maybe even some breadcrumbs. The whole meal was made better with a starter of artichoke dip with tortilla chips – but even better by a trying out their beer sampler: 7 samples of their beer, each in it’s own 5 oz. glass. What a sight to see our waitress bringing that platter of beer (the sampler is $7) and it was all for me.

Thumbs up big time to Oggi’s – especially after the sampler.

Brigantine
Yes, what about the Brigantine family of restaurants, another local chain? Surprisingly, we’ve never been to one. Now, after a remodel (the place looks great!), the Poway location has been renamed The Brig. We probably overloaded on deep fried fish on that Friday night as my better half ordered the fish tacos (a total of 2) for $9 and I had the fish and chips (3 pieces of fish) for $15. The tacos come with a few hushpuppies and the fish comes with (ta-da, surprise!) homemade potato chips. Each also comes with a choice of slaw or bleu cheese potato salad. These are fairly heavily battered pieces of fish. My wife thought the tacos were a little dry – I thought they were fine and would order those again.

The rest of the menu looked pretty good – we may find ourselves there again if only for drinks (a full bar!) and appetizers. Yet, I get the feeling that everything on the menu was on the Sysco truck earlier that day – I’m sure that chocolate pie was Sysco Chocolate Pie #3.

Next up
Even though I wrote “deep-fried” about 20 times here, I actually don’t really care for deep fried food very much. First off, in my mind it seems unhealthy, plus it all tastes like that who knows how old fry oil. My next post will be totally in a different direction: Cavaillon. By writing it here, I might actually get around to writing the post.