I have two complaints when it comes to Red Lobster. First, the wait. I have never once walked into this restaurant and gotten a table right away. It could be three o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon and you could walk in to find a forty minute wait. Second, the service. I'm sure it stems from the really long wait and all the people wanting to sit down and eat, but the service you get is more along the lines of - sit down, eat your food and get out. Red Lobster isn't the European, sit as long as you'd like, linger over a cup of coffee and dessert, kind of place. Don't take your time, eat your food and give up that table!
The reason we come to RL? The cheddar bay biscuits of course. Isn't that why everyone goes there? That and I don't cook a lot of fish at home because someone won't eat it. Eating out is the best way for me to get my lobster, fish and shellfish fix. When ordering out, I get to order the shmorgasboard of shrimp, lobster and fish meal!
So after waiting almost fifty minutes for our table, Boyfriend and I ordered. He got his favorite chicken linguine dish and I loaded up on broiled fish and shellfish. I was trying to order something that wasn't super greasy, apparently broiling also requires heaps of butter, because my dinner was still floating in oil. To was Boyfriends pasta, but that's just the way he likes it. We ate lots of cheesey biscuits and had almost all of our dinners to take home.
For our Red Lobster dinner at home, I had to split it into two nights. There was no way that I could make a pasta dinner and a fish and shrimp dinner at the same time. As much as I would like to tell you that Boyfriend helps out in the kitchen, his kitchen skills begin and end at heating. He's had a few culinary masterpieces, but for the most part he's a prepared food preparer.
Sunday night we had spicy chicken linguine with my own take on cheddar bay biscuits. Monday night I threw some chicken in the fridge for Boyfriend while I prepared myself some lemon tilapia and shrimp scampi. I'm in love with the way the chicken and pasta turned out. It was much lighter than the restaurant meal, but so full of flavor. It's perhaps because I used an aged parmesan cheese that was amazing. I wanted to eat it by the chunk.
Monday nights fish dinner was a little tricky to pull together, mostly because fish cooks so fast. The fish was ready to go much faster than the shrimp and I wasn't ready to juggle all these things (I was also preparing broccoli, stuffing and Boyfriends chicken!). The shrimp scampi was much lighter than what I got at the restaurant, mostly because I cooked the shrimp in half butter/half olive oil. My tilapia was simply cooked in a little butter and spritzed with some lemon. Simple and delicious.
If you only make one thing from this post, make the biscuits! Oh man, I think I ate four or five of these Sunday night. I totally deserved it after that long, four-mile run. There are many recipes for these biscuits online, but they almost all utilize Bisquick. I was looking to make them entirely from scratch. With a little tweaking, I think what I came out with was amazing. If you aren't a salt freak like I am, maybe cut the garlic salt in half.
