Tony’s Seafood

When it comes to food and travel, I am always more excited to try a place based on a local’s recommendation – or rather, the place that a local actually frequents – over anything in reviews. (I admit freely that more often than not, I do not post about places I return to over and over again; either because I find them mundane and think no one is interested, or because I’m selfish. Yet when I finally do post about them, commenters come out of the woodwork to tell me how much they love that place!)

So when Jenn mentioned to me that she loves Tony’s, how great it is to go during the daytime, and how inexpensive the food is while being delicious… and it’s inside a seafood market… umm… yeah I had to.

Of course, since I wasn’t sure when I’d be able to return, I totally pulled an ‘eyes bigger than my stomach’ move and over-ordered. That’s okay.

 

My plate lunch: crawfish etouffee over rice, broccoli & rice casserole, buttered corn. This was $7.99 whaaaaaat? You can get the etouffee over a fried catfish filet for $1 more. I didn’t think that came with rice so I opted for rice – perfect. The rice was cooked to where each grain was super plump, with a rounded feel in your mouth; the rich tomato-based etouffee was deliciously savory and exactly what I wanted. Super satisfying to eat.

More rice and cheese than broccoli, I found this “vegetable” side to be really tasty. Healthy? No. But very very good and it came in handy when there was more etouffee than white rice… I just mixed this into the sauce and it was SO GOOD.

Buttered corn… which I’d panicked when it was my turn in line and ordered this when I wanted a different side that I wound up tacking on later. Garlic bread, which I didn’t touch much but was literally soaked in butter.

Fried okra! was the side I wanted. Unfortunately this was not good. Greasy, not crispy, and not really tasty at all. Boo.

Stuffed crabs, the Friday lunch special; $2.79 for one piece. I thought this was good but it didn’t knock my socks off. Happy to have tried it but probably not something I’ll order again. It was nicely seasoned, slightly peppery, but I wanted tartar sauce or some sort of moisture with it.

And finally, boudin balls; boudin (sausage) is spiced rice inside sausage casing along with a mixture of ground… pork, or crawfish, or shrimp, etc. Jenn and I split an order each of crawfish balls (the red insides) and an order of regular (pork). I thought these were a great bite size snack for eating while watching the game or something. Savory, crisp and snackable!

Finally – a true case of my eyes are just too darn big – I snagged a container of banana pudding on my way out. I did not care for this. It didn’t have time to meld together, but even so, the flavors were muted and the overall flavor was underwhelming.

Considering that my entire feast clocked in at under $17 (I also picked up a bottle of diet root beer), and this was wayyy too much food to eat in one sitting without being a total heifer (okay, as it was, I only didn’t finish all of my boudin balls, the stuffed crab and fried okra; I ate everything else!)… I think this would be a dangerous place to live near. I would totally go there often just to pick up a meal because it’s so cheap and quite honestly, there are so many things on the menu I want to try… well, it would become a habit of mine to go there. Happy AND sad that it’s not near me!

Thanks Jenn for showing me the glory of a place like this!