I was so excited to try Extra Fancy because it's been written up in so many blogs as a great seafood joint only 15 minutes away from my apartment. When I get to the restaurant, I realize that I had been there when it was another restaurant, Sui Ren a few years back. I guess when you live in one city long enough, you start to see the same place turn over into different restaurants constantly.
Despite the name, Extra Fancy is very casual and low-key, as a seafood restaurant should be. I had read right before I left the house that they had recently changed chefs, which wasn't a good sign but it was too late to change venues now and I was still willing to give it a try. I took a look at the menu and I was a bit disappointed. I was expecting tons of great seafood options but this menu was pretty limiting to a few starters, salads, 3-4 rolls and 2 dinner entrees. I was curious about the cape cod clam bake ($37) which was mussels, clams, shrimp, corn and kelbasa for 2 people but it seemed like a bit too much food for Cicily and I so we opted to just get individual dishes. We both love shrimp and were excited to see peel and eat shrimp on the menu, but at $3 per shrimp we were a bit appalled by price. We asked how big they were and the waitress said that they were large cocktail shrimp, so we decided to try 6 of them. But when I hear peel and eat shrimp, I imagine a huge bucket of steamed shrimp with old bay seasoning for less than $20. For my main meal, I opted to try to clam belly roll ($14) which came with potato salad and a pickle and Cicily got the kelbasa roll ($14). It didn't look like any of the dishes that people mentioned on Yelp were on the menu, so I guess the chef did leave?
When the shrimp came out, I wouldn't necessarily call them "large". They were more medium and served cold on a bed of ice. They were good but 3 shrimp per person at $3 each is barely a starter in my book and I wish we had a lot more. Then the rolls came out and we took one look at them and it didn't seem like a real "dinner" sized portion. My clam roll was a few pieces of salt and peppered clams (they were nicely fried I will say) in a very buttery hot dog roll and stuffed with some red cabbage as well. It was a fine seafood roll but just not very filling. The potato salad portion was enough for a small child, not a grown adult. Cicily's roll was the same size with 2 sausages cut in half the long way and stuffed in the roll. The whole meal felt much more appropriate for lunch than a satisfying dinner. We both agreed that we needed more food and at first we were going to go to Fette Sau next door but the line was almost wrapped around the corner, so we decided to go to Spuyten Duyvil instead to gorge on some cheese and bread and wine and beer. I really love the idea of Extra Fancy but it really needs to step up its menu if it expects to not go down the same path as Sui Ren. Total bill: $45/pp with tax and tip
Photo Credit: Yelp
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