Restaurant review: A crazy seafood place...

If you have seen the film Forrest Gump, which is worth seeing, you might remember some scenes in the film where they buy a shrimp trawler and start catching shrimp in the Southern United States. This inspired some people, and they started a restaurant chain, probably the first to be influenced by a film. So here it is, Bubba Gump Shrimp company, started in 1994, and with restaurants all over the US. Each restaurant looks like a rustic shack filled with memorabilia, nostalgia, and hot sauces. I visisted the one in Chicago this summer with a friend of mine from Germany.

On each table are license plates, one that says RUN FORREST RUN, and you let that one show when you want something from the waiter. When you don't need anything, flip it over to STOP FORREST STOP. The menu is seafood of course, a lot of traditional Southern US food, which means deepfried, greens, french fries, cajun spices (spicy), and large amounts of food.

Here is a mixed appetizer plate - BBQ chicken wings with dip sauce, fried clams, fried scallops, fried coconut shrimp, onion rings, and coleslaw salad (cabbage in vinegar and mayonnaise dressing). Everything is served in small baskets and you eat most food with your hands. It was good!!! Very greasy though.

Next dish was the weird and fancy. Whole crawfish tails with the shell on, deep fried in batter with cajun seasoning. We assumed you were supposed to eat the shell, so we did. It wasn't as hard as Swedish crawfish shells, but still very crunchy with soft and GOOD crawfish meat inside. Peeling them would have been impossible.

The newspaper in the basket isn't recycled newspaper, it is especially printed for the restaurant. Kind of a waste.

Right behind us was an enormous shelf with hot sauces, here is just a small sample. In Sweden in the 80s I remember hot sauce as Tabasco, and that was it. Times have changed. Here you have Nuclear Waste, Pyromania, Red Lightning, Lethal Weapon, and Jump Up and Kiss Me.

Of course the restaurant has a whole store you have to pass through when you leave, with the necessities such as T-shirts, hats, hot sauces, mugs, and key chains - all with the Bubba Gump logo on it. Ah, commercialism. But the food was good, I'll come back for more. I forgot, they served beer in real ice cold glasses too!