Captain’s Tavern

9612 S. Dixie Hwy, 33156.

And off to Florida we go! This is the first of a batch of 3 for restaurants in Miami. Me and the girls went on a little vacay in the MIA during mid March. When you go on vacation, you have fun and you eat. A lot. In Miami there is seafood and there is Cuban cuisine, that is what the sunny paradise is known for.

I found out about this place through online searches, it has gotten high rating by several review sites so I decided that we should give it a try. Because, I was given the daunting task of finding places to feed the crew, a fellow foodie will never turn such a task down! This place was not the easiest to find, it was located in a dark shopping center where majority of the stores were closed.

Once inside, you can see the decoration they have along the walls: reviews, articles, awards, etc. You can also tell that they tried to stick to their theme and decorated accordingly. We waited for about 20 minutes on a Thursday night. There was a good crowd and they seemed understaffed, which I will get to later on.

Salmon tartare with caviar, avocado, tomato, and a cucumber chili salad $10.95. We were so hungry by the time our waitress brought us the appetizer, we just scarfed it down without much thought. It was good, I think tartares are heavenly and as long as you put in fresh ingredients, it can do no harm. I did however, take the time to eat the caviar by themselves… pop pop pop, it was fun but I can’t describe too much about the difference between the two. I think the red roe was juicier/fattier than the black roe. Next time, I will make sure I evaluate accordingly.

Our main dish appeared about 45 minutes after the appetizer. Absurd! Result of under-staffing number one. There was almost a point were we didn’t want our main dish anymore and just wanted to leave. It was well after 9 before we got our dishes. This one is scrod with imperial topping, a cream and dill based sauce $24.95.

I ordered the Admiral’s Platter in attempt to try a variety of seafood. It comes with broiled lobster, stuffed shrimp, shrimp scampi, scallops, and oyster Rockefeller $26.95. The broiled lobster was dry, too over done to enjoy fully… disappointing. And to be honest, It seemed more like a giant prawn to me than a lobster. The fish was cooked nicely and tasted pretty good. The shrimp was alright, the oyster was… not memorable and scallop was scallop. For the price they charged, it wasn’t really worth it… I mean, if it tasted good, thats a different story.

Oregano Salmon, oregano, parmesan, wine $2o.98. A lonely thing all by itself… tee hee. I didn’t really take the time to taste this… but I honestly can say that if you really wanted to make this dish, it was dang possible! Nothing special about herbed salmon.

Flounder Imperial comes with cream and dill sauce with crabmeat, onion, and shallots $19.95. The cream sauce was delicious, cream is delicious period. Flounder was fresh and moist, cooked to the right done-ness.

Okay, one positive thing I have to mention first is the seafood was indeed fresh and it came out to me hot. They rotate fresh seafood on the chalkboard for all to see. If I wasn’t so hungry and didn’t have to wait so long for my meal, I would have savored the freshness too… but that was not the case.

Bad notes, service and staff. It does not and shouldn’t take 45 minutes to get my dish out, unless you messed up during cook, which then you make sure your servers bring your customers plenty of bread. The restaurant was busy, but not full, no excuses. A nice restaurant charging $20+ per entree should find servers of equal latitude. Do not staff your restaurant with people who barely know how to speak English, trust me. I had gripes about it the last time I went to a certain restaurant and it hasn’t gone away yet. You can tell that they cut major corners hiring barely legal workers here… I mean hate to say it but it is true, you think I am mean that I believe these workers need to stay in the back of the restaurant? Nay. If you want to charge high dollar, your customers better get high dollar service. I do not want to have this encounter again mid meal (under-staffing sign number 2);

our waitress came up to us and started talking to us, since we were all Asian, she asked if we lived in Miami. We dont, you can tell by our touristy attire and camera gears all strapped around us. She said that the restaurant was looking to hire Asians like us, but they can’t seem to find good one. I said why? She gave me a wink and said that they are hard workers. As I looked around, I noticed that 90% of the wait staff were Asian.

Frankly, I was a little agitated after this approach and comment. Underlying racism all around… Just because we are Asian does not mean that we have to work harder for less pay. Blasphemy, I hate how the society treats it as so… and just for the record, our waitress sucked. We constantly had to ask her for drink refill and she barely checked up on us while we waited 45 minutes… this was probably not all her fault due to the fact that they were understaffed and she had to wait too many tables.

I digress, I should have saved that whole section for my personal vent blog… grrr. I would not go back, period. Don’t really like the atmosphere and hate to see fellow Asians get degraded. I don’t care how good the food is, and it wasn’t great. The end.