In the very first restaurant post, I confessed my great and overflowing love for fried calamari. I've never been able to quite nail down why I have such a steamy love for this crispy appetizer, but I've floated a few theories by James when he wants to know why I haven't tired of it after the umpteenth order.
Maybe it's because calamari is one of few widely available indulgences I can allow myself as a pescatarian in the meat-loving South. Or perhaps it's my devil-may-care love for all things fried. Either way, when I see it on a menu, I don't even stop to think about it. It's an automatic order. Because that, plus an ice cold beer, never fails to feel like sunshine after a rainy day.
Knowing all this, James went on a secret hunt for the best calamari in town where we could celebrate my last week of school.
And, boy, did he come through.
Ben's Crab & Seafood Bar is a Cajun style seafood-boil style restaurant whose roots actually lie in James' hometown of Long Island. Ben's Crab, the original New York restaurant, found such success in the area that after several local expansions, the lead owner teamed up with a Georgia-based restaurant group to finally share their seafood prowess with Southerners.
Now it's here that I feel the need to confess something that might raise some hackles. Are you ready?
I'm not a fan of Cajun flavoring.
WAIT! Before you hurl mockeries and hisses my way, hear me out. I'm a total fan of Cajun Creole food. I'll yam the jambalaya and rock it with the crawfish étouffée any day. Po' boys never fail to make me instantly think of slow, summer days, even if I'm enjoying one in the dead of winter.
So I love it as a cuisine. I just don't prefer the way so many restaurants seem to assail ingredients with the flavoring powder labeled 'Cajun seasoning'. Most of the time, anything that reads 'Cajun-flavored' on a menu tends to leaving my tongue zinging from the salt bath rather than imbuing Nawleansian flavor. So when we opened our menus and I learned that Ben's Crab & Seafood Bar was Cajun-forward, I wondered whether I'd have to pay for it with morning-after bloating.
Boy was I glad to be wrong.
The calamari that we came for lived up to its online praise, with a flavorsome, crispy batter. It wasn't so thick that you couldn't taste the squid, or so thin that it would shatter from a single fork prod. Most importantly - someone in the kitchen had a deft and restrained hand with the Cajun seasoning. It was just there to provide a tingle and spice, but not so much that we'd need to lap at the fire hydrant after dinner. In essence, it was - without exaggeration - one of the best fried calamari we'd ever encountered. The only thing that would've pushed this over the top would have been Thai sweet chili sauce at the table (arguably the best condiment for fried calamari. I'll fight you on that.) I was initially disappointed that the serving size was smaller than I would've liked, but I've also never met a serving size big enough to satisfy me, so take that as you will.
While I would've happily made a dinner out of six baskets of fried calamari, James has a far better mind about eating healthy stuff and being nutritious and all that. We ordered a few other things, including clam chowder. Since our San Francisco trip, daily longings for chowder have hit hard, so we were delighted to find that the serving size here is pretty generous. It wasn't Golden Gate good, but with meaty clam chunks and tender chunks of potatoes throughout, it scratched the itch beautifully (if you order it, you'll almost definitely have to salt it yourself because it was bland when it got to the table. James appreciated the opportunity to control his sodium intake.)
The shrimp 'po boy was also fantastic. This was the only part of our meal that ventured into over-salted territory, but neither did that stop us from resorting to negotiations and bribery for last bites.
I'm going to avoid waving the serving size flag again and just wrap this feedback with a compliment. It was so good that I wished there were more.
Finally, our appetites were aroused by a posted specials for white wine mussels. White wine mussels with warm bread and spicy pasta are one of the Chois favorite dinner rotations, so we were thrilled to see it on a menu.
When it got to the table, we were a little surprised to see this was in a cream-based sauce, which was actually quite delicious - thick, rich, and garlicky. It was also a little heavier than what we tend to have them at home, so the postprandial sleepies really started to set in once we reached the bottom of the bowl.
On a random Tuesday night, the place was surprisingly full but the atmosphere was expectedly quiet and even demure. When James and I went exploring around the restaurant, we discovered a spacious rooftop patio that at least suggests adequate space for a livelier weekend crowd.
But in our tired late-thirties, neither of us homebodies are likely to go and check out the nightlife. If you do, by all means, please report back!
1061 Concord Rd SE
Smyrna, GA
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