California Fish Market

California Fish Market is a seafood restaurant in San Francisco.  It is not, however, a market, as in, a place to purchase raw seafood (unless you are counting the crudos I suppose) as the name somewhat implies.  It is a full service restaurant, located in North Beach, right next to another well known seafood restaurant, Sotto Mare (which I've reviewed before).  Both have indoor and outdoor seating, and feature seafood heavy menus.  I think they tend to get a fair number of guests who spill over from one to the other, depending on how long the waits are.

"Eating seafood is a great way to boost your immune system while supporting many of fishermen and seafood farmers during this challenging time. We only use sustainable seafood that is either caught or farmed in a way that has less impact on the environment."

I don't know much about the restaurant itself, as they don't proclaim any real history, no well known chef, etc.  They do ensure sustainable seafood practices.

The menu at California Fish Market is entirely seafood focused, with a dominant focus on pastas, all served family style.  After all, it is a seafood restaurant right in the heart of North Beach.  Whenever I've walked by, tables are always covered in pastas.  The other crowd favorites are the calabrese style crudo, available with several kinds of seafood, classic shrimp or crab cocktail or louie salad, and of course, oysters.  They also feature a crab, not clam, chowder, and a few grilled, roasted, or seared seafoods.  The only sides available are french fries, pasta (with your choice of sauce: tomato, cream, or pesto), and, broccolini.  No other vegetables, no seasonal items.  For those who don't eat seafood, there are no token options for them either.  A non-seafood eater could have simple pasta and sauce, and that is it.  There isn't even a salad without seafood, as the ceasar (rightly!) has anchovies.

Although I've walked by many times, I've never actually dined at California Fish Market.  I did however, order takeout, on DoorDash, for delivery.  My ordering experience was ... ok.  They didn't allow any custom notes, e.g. "dressing on the side", and my order took considerably longer than expected, arriving 45 minutes after my already lengthy delivery slot.  And, as you could guess, the food was not warm when it arrived.

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Bread & Butter (Complimentary).

My order came with a box of bread, which was a nice touch, even if I'm not much of a bread eater with meals.  In the days of being charged for bread even when dining in, this was appreciated.

The bread was fairly average, but fresh, sourdough.  Nice crust to it, good chew.  I believe it was served at room temperature, as the butter (generic brand) packaged in with it wasn't melted at all (usually a tell tail sign that bread was packaged hot).  Likely nice if you ordered pasta or something with sauce to lap it all up.

**+.

Housemade Crab Cakes. $19.

I was really craving crab.  Crab cakes, in particular.

The menu does not give any indication of what the crab cakes are served with, not a mention of aioli or remoulade or other dipping sauce, nor details on if it is a pair or single jumbo crab cake, nor details if it is local Dungeness, nor details on if its lumb crab or shredded ... and yet, I still ordered it.  The menu just said "housemade crab cakes", and I took a gamble.  I was just really craving a good crab cake, after being fairly let down by the expensive ones from Ocean Prime in Orlando.  I also couldn't really find many mentions of the crab cakes on Yelp, despite the ridiculous number of reviews.  They just don't seem to be what most people order (which probably should have made me question ordering them myself ...).

The answers?  A pair of average size crab cakes, all shredded crab, no lump meat, fair amount of filler.  Served on top of a very over-dressed, soggy, greasy, wilted arugula salad with a few grape tomatoes and a wedge of not particularly ripe lemon.  Topped with some kind of aioli. 

I think you can tell how I felt about the salad component, which perhaps would be good if fresh in the restaurant, but was really pretty bad when it arrived at my house.  Just so soggy, and so oily.  I ended up tossing it, and making my own salad to go along with the cakes.  It doesn't even get a single star.

The crab cakes actually were fine, even if I made them sound otherwise.  I don't mind the shredded crab style, and I actually do like having the filler.  They were nicely seared, were moist, good texture.  That said, they were cold when they arrived at my house, so I had to heat them up, which wasn't made easy as the aioli was already on top.  They were rather oily too, which was very obvious when I set about reheating them and the oil came pouring out. ***.

The aioli was creamy, and nice to have with the crab cakes.  I would have asked for the aioli on the side if I could, but they don't accept any custom requests on DoorDash, and they don't have an option for dressing/sauce on the side.  It was mildly zesty, but didn't have any particular flavor I could pick out (not mustard nor cocktail sauce based). ***.

Overall, this was fine, once I tossed the salad, heated up the crab cake, and dabbed away all the extra oil.  I probably wouldn't order it again for delivery, but if I was dining in, and in the mood for crab cakes, I'd consider it.

The restaurant does a fair amount of takeout and delivery, so I was surprised to see the misses that really could have been prevented by more care for takeout - specifically, not dressing the salad so it wouldn't be a soggy mess when it arrived, having the aioli on the side too, and not placing hot crab cakes on the salad.