By: Marc Kent
Nestled in the shops at Boca Grove, 21065 Powerline Road in Boca Raton (561-483-4949). The Bonefish Grill offers fresh fish and more at reasonable prices for generous portions.
The standard menu lists the “Starters + Sharing” items including wagu beef+ginger dumplings, pan seared and served with shallots, Thai peppers and soy sauce – tasty little pillows. The spicy ”Bang Bang Shrimp” in a spicy sauce has quite a bite – even without the sauce! Bonefish’s Singapore calamari- rings and strips, flash fried with peppers in a sweet/spicy Asian sauce was delicious as was the “Atii Tuna Sashimi”, sesame seared mini steaks with wasabi and ginger! Unfortunately, the mussels – while plump-had little taste though in a basil+lemon wine sauce. The Maryland crab cakes were so-so as their 80/20 mixture with fillers lost the deep jumbo crab meat flavor.
We sampled the soup offering of corn chowder with lump crab and found it sweet and smooth and fine tasting with generous portions of meat therein. This starter section also lists edamame, sea scallops, coconut shrimp and saucy shrimp for your consideration.
A section labeled “Hand Helds” includes Kobe beef burgers, Baja fish tacos (Cajon style), filet if fish burgers plus, our selection of spicy “Bang Bang Taco” with lettuce, tomato, sour cream and delicious Kettle Chips. Then our choice of a very, very fine “Fish and Chips” – Bonefish uses a lightly breaded talapia, tempura style with a rasher of excellent French fires! A must try!
The next heading ”Grilled Fish” presents a fine rainbow trout, wood grilled and tasty. We chose to have their signature sauces on the side so as to limit their influence over the fish. A light tasting of the mango salsa –then the lemon butter sauced proved our case- true trout flavor was there. Not so with the Chilean sea bass wherein the fish was quite bland and no sauce could help – Chef take note.
They have six “Grilled Specialties” – 2 chicken dishes, a pork chop, a filet mignon plus a sirloin/crab cake followed by an anglers steak special with choice of two sides from their list of seven.
“Sautéed + Baked” has rainbow trout(parmesan crusted), imperial long fin stuffed with shrimp, scallops, crab meat in lemon caper butter. Try Diaslo Shrimp Fettuccine with tomatoes, capers onions + spinach fettuccine – note the word “o????”.
The “Specials” included a white tune taco starter, their wild ????? Dory – crispy lite fish in spicy, sake infused sauce – to try another time. The spinach bacon gorgonzola Atlantic swordfish was topped with sautéed spinach, then the bacon and cheese. Robust as swordfish can be, it was smothered by its coating and fish flavor was lost. Ditto for the New Zealand orange roughy, wood grilled nicely but then oven powered with the sautéed spinach, lump crab meat and a sauce of lime, tomato and garlic!
Bonefish offers four v varieties of green salads, each with interesting ingredients – these to try another time.
There are four desserts available, we had a very, very light crème brulee with delicate taste, a smooth key lime pie – a bit light on the lime and them – for chocoholics to savor – a macadamia nut brownie. This huge portion had a flourless base with raspberry sauce and vanilla ice cream….superb. We’ll sample the listed Jen’s Jamaican coconut pie on our next visit.
Turn the single page standard menu over and find libation listings that abound! Chose from 12 martinis, 3 “on the rocks”, 20 white and 17 red wines plus 2 sparkling – by glass or bottle. There are 4 domestic draft beers, both light and full bodied beer – 16 in number – domestic and imported plus 3 listed for sharing.
This 4 year old restaurant, seating just over 200 inside, is open 7 days – Wednesdays from 4PM to 10:30, Fridays and Saturdays until 11PM. The Chef’s specials change every two weeks, the main menu every six months. There is a gluten free menu and a kid’s menu of somewhat limited selections. This is a bustling food emporium with efficient wait staff. Pricing, as we noted, was quite reasonable – Go and Enjoy!