Legal Sea Foods
100 East Pratt Street
Phone: 410-332-7360
Price: $7.95-$15.50
Hours: Mon.-Thu.: 11:00 a.m.-10:00 p.m.
Fri.-Sat.: 11:00 a.m.-10:30 p.m.
Sun.: 12:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m.
Legal Sea Foods prides itself on being one of the best seafood chains in America, and with good reason. With 26 locations spanning most of the East Coast, they're surely doing something right. Legal Sea Foods claims to offer the freshest fish in the restaurant industry, and they surely seem to deliver.
Legal Sea Foods' Baltimore location is an upscale eatery found in the Inner Harbor, at the intersection of Calvert and Pratt streets. The restaurant's location is perfect, with a mall and parking garage situated only a few steps away.
The menu at Legal Sea Foods changes on a weekly basis, but always offers a nearly-overwhelming array of mouth-watering choices. The service is excellent and the atmosphere is moderately posh.
During warmer months, outdoor seating is also available, allowing diners to enjoy the pleasant harbor air.
On busy nights, the wait for a table can be long, but the wait isn't so bad if you spend it sitting at the restaurant's bar. Besides offering the usual array of alcoholic drinks, the bar also sells raw clams and oysters.
Be sure to start your meal off right with an appetizer (or two, or three -- they're all scrumptious). The restaurant offers shrimp, clams, mussels, oysters and more, prepared in a variety of fashions. Shrimp fans will be especially delighted, since there are as many as five different shrimp-based appetizers, including the "Baltimore Peel "n' Eat Shrimp" which are steamed in beer!
Another unusual, yet delicious appetizer is the crap dip with seafood chips -- although the seafood chips have an unusual texture and are few in number, the crap dip is absolutely divine. Fried food fanatics should check out the Fried Smelts, which taste a lot better than they sound.
There are so many amazing entrees at Legal Sea Foods that it's extremely difficult to decide on what to order. Don't be afraid to splurge; the lobster and crab dishes are incredible, and the high cost is certainly justified. The lobsters range in size from 1.25 lb to 2.50 lb, and are available either steamed or baked and stuffed. A special "lobster bake" entrZe is also available, which includes steamers, mussels, clam chowder and more.
The menu also has a number of wood-grilled entrees (mostly fish, but some steak and chicken as well), plus a multitude of fried seafood options. Everything that the restaurant has to offer is a safe bet; even the simple entrees like seafood ravioli are brimming with flavor. And since the menu changes so frequently, be sure to look out for new, exotic entrees.
The portions at this restaurant are large, so take care to save enough room for desert! Legal Sea Foods offers quite possibly the most perfect Boston Cream Pie known to man. If creamy, chocolaty goodness isn't your thing for some reason, try the Key Lime Pie instead, which is also quite impressive.
A full dinner at Legal Sea Foods can be very expensive, so you may want to consider going to the restaurant for lunch instead, which is much more affordably priced.
But a better plan may be to wait for a weekend when your parents are visiting, and have them treat you to dinner at this fine restaurant. After enjoying a massive seafood feast (along with a few beers on the side), they'll have no complaints about the bill, your grades or anything else for that matter.
In any case, be prepared to wobble out of Legal Sea Foods with a bulging belly and a contrastingly empty wallet. But it's definitely worth the trip.
