Fish Type: Cod (AYCE) Price: $14.00
Overall, I would not recommend this Fish Fry.
| Fish Score: Fair Potato Score: Fair Tartar Score: Good Bread Score: Good Miscellaneous Score: Good |
Comment: Sometimes when I haven't been to a place for a while I start to doubt my own reviews. I think - "well, it couldn't have been that bad, could it?" Sometimes second guessing myself pays off...most of the time it doesn't...
Prairie Lanes has a few different levels of fish including a 6-piece "nuggets" (which sounded like Mrs Paul's pre-battered junk), so I went for the full-on AYCE since I didn't have much to eat earlier in the day. Before the fish, diners are treated to a full-fledged salad bar which was loaded with the finest Sysco has to offer. In all honesty, this Sysco-bar was probably the highlight of the meal. It featured some clam-less chowder (that had the right thickness but the wrong amount of clam), and salad ingredients that were as standard as they come, but at least there for the taking.
The fish came about 10 minutes after we'd had out fill of iceberg lettuce and cream of "_____" and looked uninspired to say the least. The first round came with a duo of cod and a smattering of fries. The first inspection had me worried since it looked like the cod would be greasy, but by some miracle of science it actually wasn't. The problem here was not the grease, but the taste. It basically just tasted of the oil it was fried in which, as you can probably guess, wasn't great. Sure, there was lots of fish to eat (I did get two more pieces on the second round), but when it's basically tasteless how much do you want to eat? The four I did have were mostly just to fill up - which any good Wisconsonite in my position would do...DON'T JUDGE ME!!!
Unlike the fish, the fries aren't AYCE and the round we got were lukewarm at best. Our kid's portion were scalding hot so you can try to figure that out what happened there. Our handful was also woefully small which had us distracting Junior and picking away at his when he looked the other way.
The tartar comes in a big squeeze bottle and welcomes you to the table with a - "Hey, I'm lukewarm, but probably okay to eat" attitude. It was surprisingly palatable and since the cod begged for it plenty got used. It was thick and creamy and very very necessary.
A split-top football roll was filled things out and was decent, but little else. In all honesty no bread could salvage this one, but this stinker did all it could.
Sometimes things change and my reviews get outdated, but in this case what I had down on paper was spot on. This was not a great Fish Fry, but the strangest part wasn't even the Sysco salad or the puny portion of fries. The strangest part was that we had to wait a good 15-20 minutes for a table despite there being like 5 open. Unfortunately, those 5 were set for parties of 6 or more (of which there were none) so anyone with 3 or less was stuck waiting. It was an odd arrangement to say the least and just left us scratching our heads. Overall, we wouldn't have recommended this Fish Fry regardless and will have to trust our own review next time.
prairielanes.com
430 Clarmar Drive
Sun Prairie, WI 53590
(608) 837-2586
