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Captain Fishbones
How to eat pretty well for not a lot of money
BY ROBERT NADEAU
Captain Fishbones
(617) 783-2300
353 Cambridge Street, Allston
Open daily, 11:30 a.m.–12:30 a.m.
AE, Di, MC, Vi
Full bar
No valet parking; free parking lot
Street-level access

Captain Fishbones began at Quincy’s Marina Bay and has now taken over the H.H. Richardson–style railroad station that used to be the Sports Depot. I think the new management put the Christmas lights along the giant beams, and I’m pretty sure they put up the fish decorations, the coastal maps, and the plywood waves along the tops of the walls. They certainly turned on a tape of dismal ’70s pop songs as we walked in and faced an overlong menu of familiar dishes: seafood, steaks, burgers, ribs, Mexican, Italian, and bar snacks. Of course, there’s no such person as Captain Fishbones, either. What’s that, about six bad signs? One good sign: the parking lot is almost always full, but this is qualified by the parking shortage in Allston. As it turns out, the bad signs were right, and most of what we tried was mediocre, with some service problems on a quarter-full weeknight.

So why write about this place at all? Well, somewhat to warn you, somewhat to encourage a bit of improvement, and somewhat because you can eat pretty well at Captain Fishbones if you know what to have, and you can certainly get a lot of food for not that much money with only a modest effort. Since two of the standouts are boiled lobster and fried scallops, you will not always combine gastronomy and economy here, but sometimes you can, as with the mussels marinara, the French fries, and the "chocolate lovin’ spoonful cake." Captain Fishbones also has a good list of draught beers, and keeps a few of the old TVs tuned to sports. It also has really cute flatware with fishtails.

To start with, clam chowder ($4.50) is not "the best in New England," and wouldn’t be without more clams and a much less starchy base. What you have is a shallow bowl of gluey potatoes, with a pleasant taste not especially focused on clams, and an uncuttable fish-shaped cracker floating in the middle. Among the "Titanic Appetizers," the fried calamari ($8.99) are nicely fried, a little over-breaded, but saved by the generous portion and a surprisingly good marinara sauce as a dip. The crab-cakes appetizer ($7.99) is pan-seared, to somewhat better effect, but doesn’t have a lot of crab flavor, although the mango salsa with it is nice enough. The "BBQ ribs" ($9.99) are not smoked as described, but were meaty and falling-off-the-bone tender in a sauce with an odd but effective hint of allspice. There are also hot-pepper-vinegar and tomato-smoke dipping sauces. Does anyone dip ribs?

Shrimp cocktail ($8.99) is six large shrimp on an iceberg salad. If you can, get the seafood cocktail ($14.99), which has only four of the shrimp, but a nice heap of fresh lobster meat.

A shrimp caesar salad ($12.99) featured lots of large uncooked shrimp on both my visits. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it came once with romaine lettuce and too much salty dressing, and the other time with conventional lettuce (and the dressing on the side), both times with three anchovies on the side and small, salty croutons. A Greek salad ($5.99) was about what you might expect; a chopped salad ($9.99) had lots of tired cubes of chicken and better cubes of avocado.

Remembering that good marinara sauce with the calamari will help you hook up with the mussels marinara ($11.99), served over your choice of angel hair, fettuccine, or ziti. We had the angel hair, which was probably precooked. It certainly was overdone and broke into pieces every time we tried to twirl it on the fork. But the sauce was again very good, and there were plenty of fat mussels, so this one rates a "best buy." The other really good entrée we had was boiled lobster (market price; recently $20.99 for 1.25-pounder). Lobster has been expensive for a couple of years, but you won’t feel cheated by a good one done properly and served with plenty of melted butter and your choice of starch.

The starch choices include French fries (limp at a lunch, very good at a dinner), "wild rice" (actually a pilaf of white rice and pine nuts), garlic mashed potato (mashed, yes; garlic, not really), and baked potato. There’s an alleged vegetable alternative as well, but we tried two à la carte vegetable sides instead: asparagus ($2.99), a fine dish, probably all the better because it wasn’t bathed in butter as the menu promised it would be, and a similar dish of spinach ($2.99), which was blanketed with rubbery cheese.

Fresh salmon ($15.95) was mildly baked like scrod with buttered crumbs, not a bad treatment at all. The deluxe fisherman’s platter ($19.99) was how I found out about the scallops ($11.99 on their own), which were the tastiest seafood here. The frying was a bit below average, not up to the calamari at lunch, but acceptable. (Fried seafood tends to run inverse to French fries, with the usual rule being good fish/limp chips.) Again, heavy breading obscured the fried oysters, as well as the clams, sole, and shrimp on the regular fisherman’s platter ($14.99). Next time, just the scallops. Blackened swordfish ($15.99) isn’t a good idea to begin with. The good news is that it was barely blackened, just enough to overcook the thin steak. The bad news is that there wasn’t enough of Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Blackened Magic seasoning on it to register. If this diner hadn’t been lucky enough to order the French fries ...

The best of the beverages was Sierra Nevada pale ale on draught ($4.52). Glasses of Kendall-Jackson merlot and chardonnay ($7.95) are expensive for what they are. Decaf ($1.50) was slightly burnt. Tea ($1.50) is hot water in a glass with a handle, and a presentation of a box of assorted tea bags. Okay, that’s the system the restaurant uses. You’re a waiter and the customer actually likes tea. Here’s what you do: you offer the bag first, then run from the kitchen with the glass of water, under a saucer so it stays hot enough to drink. Gratuities will improve.

Desserts are attractively priced, and some are quite good. My favorite is the "chocolate lovin’ spoonful cake" ($4.99), which is actually more flourless and fudge-y than described. The "double-fudge frenzy" ($4.99) is an odd mix of pulverized brownie and chocolate ice cream. The Key-lime pie ($3.99) has the real taste of Key limes and a coconut crust. "Crème brûlée cheesecake" ($4.99) is caramel-flavored cheesecake, no layer of burnt sugar. The "rustic apple galette ($4.99) has flaky pastry, but it’s tough to cut. There are, of course, no truly "fresh ripe apples" in March or April, but the kitchen does use fine ice cream. Ice-cream sundaes ($3.99) are actually rather good desserts, especially if you opt for the strawberries instead of the fudge.

Captain Fishbones has little discernible atmosphere; something of the solidity of the red-stone railroad depot and the old globe lamps persists. Our server was pretty good at getting answers to our many questions, not so good at clearing our used platters before bringing us the new ones, and came up with the valuable tip on the sundaes.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com .


Issue Date: April 2 - 8, 2004
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