[Restaurant opening] Captain’s Boil on Bayview Ave.

Website: http://www.thecaptainsboil.com/
Address: 1620 Bayview Ave., Toronto, ON
When I went: May 2016
Rating: 4.5

Captain’s Boil is Toronto’s first seafood boil restaurant, and they are expanding rapidly. The Bayview and Eglinton Ave. location is their 4th location and the franchise plans to open several more restaurants in the GTA, as well as Montreal and Vancouver (see the locations on The Captain’s Boil website). The two floor Bayview location is spacious with comfy seating with a marine colour scheme.

I was invited recently to the newly opened restaurant to try out the menu items with an intimate group of Toronto food bloggers. We tried pretty much everything on the menu!

For first timers like me, it took a couple of minutes to get how the ordering works. It’s pretty easy…first pick the seafood, secondly choose the sauce which includes Cajun, lemon pepper, garlic sauce or Captain’s Boil (mix of all 3), and last, choose the spiciness level (mild, medium, spicy and fire).  I was a big fan of the Captain’s Boil sauce as it is best of all worlds. Our group added sausages and corn to some of the seafood which I recommend. The juicy corn soaks up the sauce well!

The restaurant also serves oysters…one of my favourite foods ever! I have had Fanny Bay oysters from B.C. many times, but never this big!

It was a fun experience with the bibs, plastic gloves and having the seafood come out in bags. Don’t worry, the seafood is not boiled in the bags, it makes for easy clean up and is part of the presentation.

Each table was given scissors and seafood tools to help with taking out the meat more easily. We were stuck a few times and our friendly servers happily gave us pointers. The massive king crab legs weren’t the easiest to break open.

I was surprised that none of the seafood was overcooked! That would have been a big no-no for me, even if the sauce was wicked and the eating part was fun. I was impressed that Captain’s Boil had crawfish which is not seen at many restaurants in Toronto, as well as king crab legs.

As for pricing, the crawfish, dungeness crab and lobster are seasonal price, the king crab legs were $36.95/lb, snow crab legs $18.95/lb, shrimps $12.95/lb, clams $12.95/lb, mussels $10.95/lb and chicken slices were $10.95/lb. The crawfish, dungeness crab, clams and oysters are brought in fresh daily.

My favourite was the lobster, clams and king crab legs, although the other seafood were also good in their own way. I was lazy to peel a bunch of crawfish.

The restaurant menu also offered oysters, sides, sizzling seafood plates and beer to wash it all down. Hopefully they will start selling cocktails at this location, as I’d love to have a spicy caesar with my meal.

The sizzling plates were definitely the best bang for buck…maybe in the entire city! The fish teriyaki sizzling plate comes with the fish, rice, as well as tons of seafood (2 shrimps, 2 crawfish, 2 clams and 2 mussels) and all for $10.95 (available until 4pm). The chicken teriyaki with rice has a promotional price of $8.95 before 4pm. They charge $1 more for the udon. What a deal!

Overall:

The Captain’s Boil got me “hooked”!

Captain’s Boil is a quality seafood boil restaurant that is expanding quickly across Toronto. For families with young kids (under 4 years), the sizzling plate, fried rice, fries or the sliced chicken may be a great option, unless the parents don’t mind removing all the meat from the shells for them.

I agree that eating with my hands engages all the senses, and this was a fun way to eat.

*Disclosure: The meal was complimentary but the opinions in the post are my own.