After my orlando stay, I had to head over to Chicago for a quick overnight trip. After checking into our hotel, we headed over to Catch 35, which is right on the river. We couldn’t get a regular table quickly, so we sat at the jazz bar instead. And lo and behold, jazz musicians started to play! Seafood is what we wanted, and seafood is what we got!

Here’s a crabcake appetizer. I liked this crabcake because it didn’t have all kinds of weird hunks or chunks of random stuff in it. It was pretty much just crab. And it was pretty  much delicious. The salsa that came along with it was also great. I also had a cup of the clam chowder which was very creamy but not very clammy. It was more like a potato chowder with a tiny bit of clams in it. I still liked it, but it needed more clam flavor! J got a cup of the gumbo which he quite liked.

The waiter said that the halibut and the bass were the dishes they were best known for, so J went with the halibut. The sauteed alaskan halibut was topped with maryland crabmeat, portabella mushrooms, and meuniere butter. J requested that they hold the mushrooms. This was an excellent fish dish.

Although I’m typically a scallop girl, I went with the chilean sea bass in hawaiian ginger-scallion sauce. Oh. My. Word. This was one of the best fish dishes I’ve ever had. The fish was incredibly flaky and practically melted in my mouth. The sauce was the perfect complement. I absolutely gobbled this up. The green beans were also great, as I love skinny green beans like this.

Although I was full, J wanted cheesecake. So I had to try it! It had an almond graham cracker crust, which was quite decadent! Overall, the entire Catch 35 meal was excellent. Service was good, but the food took a very long time to come out. I think this was extra noticeable because we were both extremely hungry. But yeah, the wait for the food was quite long! This place was recommended by one of the hotel employees, and we thank him for the excellent pick!

After the company event, we did need to have a proper dinner. So we walked over to the Bubba Gump at Universal CityWalk. Yes, it’s a chain. Yes, it’s based on Forrest Gump. Yes, it’s a tourist trap. It’s decorated with all types of Forrest Gump related kitsch, and they even play the movie on tv’s.

Some restaurants have a green side / red side system. Some have buzzers. Bubba Gump has these little “Run Forrest Run” and “Stop Forrest Stop” signs if you need to fetch a server for any reason. It works!

Ok, so there were a bunch of us there and we were still waiting for more, but didn’t want to wait. So we ordered up a bunch of appetizers. Shrimp cocktail! Who doesn’t love shrimp cocktail? Well, people that don’t like shrimp, I suppose. Boo to those people! Oh, and I had a strawberry lemonade, which was delicious!

A freakin tower of onion rings! Yes, I can see how this would definitely be fun, especially for kids. Lucky for Bubba Gump, they taste pretty good too! I like onion rings in general, but I prefer to eat the onion, with very little of the batter. But it was hard to remove the batter with these ones.

Cajun shrimp! These little suckers were sauteed in a spicy cajun butter sauce. These are deceptively spicy! They were very good.

This is a shrimp restaurant so we really did stick with shrimp dishes. We got 3/4 lb of the Shrimper’s Net Catch Garlic Spice peel-n-eat and another 3/4 lb in Cajun Spice. These were so good! If you don’t like peeling your own shrimp, then obviously, avoid these. But these were quite good. Both the garlic ones and the cajun ones were good. It was actually best to mix the two together. After everyone else showed up, we did also order the steamed shellfish, which was a mix of mix of steamed mussels, clams, snow crab, lobster claw, and shrimp. It was also served with jasmine rice, cole slaw, and garlic bread. I immediately absconded the rice and cole slaw. M was nice enough to peel me some random things and give them to me, so I didn’t even have to do any work! Thanks M!

So you know I avoid chains as much as possible. But there are times it’s unavoidable. I enjoyed my meal here, I know, it’s surprising. But it was fun. So now I know that I can always have Bubba Gump’s in my back pocket as a decent chain option. Thanks Forrest Thanks!

We had a little customer appreciation thingy at the Hard Rock Hotel for our lovely customers. In addition to drinks, of course, we had a little bit of food action too. One of the favorite items of the evening, grilled cheese shooters! Look how adorable these things are! It’s a little shot glass with tomato soup and a piece of grilled cheese shoved inside. Cute and freakin tasty!

They also had these vegetarian spring rolls with plum dressing. Now I typically love me some spring rolls / egg rolls with shrimp or chicken or what not in them, but these little veggie ones were great! The plum sauce was perfect, but it was extremely sticky! It was kind of hard to get it off the spoon and onto your plate.

They also had these little mini beef wellingtons with cumberland sauce. I don’t know what beef welling is so I looked it up. I don’t know if these mini ones had pate in them. I also don’t know what cumberland sauce is so I looked it up too. I don’t think this one was fruit based. However genuine or non-genuine these were, all I know is that I liked them.

They also had some people walking around with other appetizers. One of them were these adorable little mini puff pastries filled with crab and mango salsa. Delicious! For a little hotel catered evening, the food was great!