Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. CC Gallagher was the worst and possibly weirdest restaurant I've EVER been too, and that probably includes fast food. Please, if you go to Catalina, do not eat here.
I love Sushi. The freshness, the sauces, the healthy ingredients. We saw one sushi place on our short walk along the island, and we decided we should try it.
We should have known better though. CC Gallagher is not only a sushi cafe, but also a Mediterranean cafe, a saki bar, a dessert bar with gelato, a coffee bar, a wine bar, a gallery, and a souvenir shop. To many good things is never a good thing.
We walked into the confused restaurant...well...very confused. On the storefront is a huge sign that says SUSHI, and yet you enter and it looks like an Italian restaurant. Baffling. Mind boggling. Just plain weird.
A woman came over to us and we asked about the sushi, she gave us a specific menu and said that the chefs were special, flown in from Japan. Uh huh....sure...
We glanced over the menu which was only about a page long. I ordered a spicy tuna roll (which is my favorite roll) and "3 roe boats," which had salmon roe, masago, and tobikko. I've had the latter 2 before, but this would be my first time trying salmon roe. I assumed since it said roe boats, that there would be several.
My partner in CC Gallagher crime ordered the chef's special (so that has to be good right?) and a spicy salmon roll. We also got green tea, edamame, and miso soup.
The edamame and miso soup were fine. It's hard to screw either of those two food items up. My green tea was from a tea-bag, which some Japanese restaurants have, but not the good ones.
When we got the sushi, I already knew something was fishy (yes! pun INTENDED!). First my spicy tuna roll, was a handroll - never seen that before. It also was basically chunks of raw tuna and then some weird red bell pepper type sauce inside the handroll. Typically spicy tuna comes pre-mashed: the tuna is mixed with the spicy sauce and put into the roll. It also smelled super fishy.
My roe boat dish only came with three inividual rolls. One with the salmon roe, one with the masago roll, and one with the tobikko. Usually when I've had tobikko it's a bright red...this was green.
I then asked for some Ponzu sauce, which is a mixture of citrus (can be orange, lemon, etc.), soy sauce, and fish stock (I learned this from a master sushi chef). The waitress seemed stoned and also unsure of what Ponzu sauce was. When she returned, after several times asking, she came back with a dish of white sauce with some weird brown flakes resting at the bottom. I'd never seen white ponzu sauce before. Ever. (Sidenote: When I returned to LA and went to my favorite sushi place and asked the waitress if she'd ever seen white or clear ponzu sauce, she started laughing and said Ponzu sauce must always be brown...that's when I knew for sure, this place was so un-legit).
Now came the eating part. I ate the masago roll, and it was not good, but not terrible. Then I attempted to take a bite of my spicy tuna roll, and I had to spit it out. It was that bad. The texture was slimy, and it just tasted really fishy and with some red pepper to mask the poor quality, freshness, and taste. I tried scraping out the fish, so I could just eat the rice and seaweed, but the rice was tainted by the strange red flakey sauce. So I couldn't eat the dish at all.
Then my PIC (partner in crime) tried eating his food. Now, this man has the toughest of stomachs. He can eat anything, and be okay with it. When I've seen him eat mediocre food, he'll finish his plate and say it was "okay". This was not the case here, which is how I know this place is B-A-D.
He first tried my salmon roe. As he was eating, he told me to look away, because he thought he was going to throw up. He explained that eating the salmon roe roll was like bitting into a fish oil pill. He also ate the tobikko roll and said it had a strange pepper taste. Do they just put bell peppers in everything here?
For his chef special, he had a california roll, a vegetable roll, and a spicy tuna roll. Most chef specials consist of sashimi or at least some fresh, raw fish. But their tour de force was a vegetable roll? The only one he consumed entirely was the california roll, which he said was mediocre. The vegetable roll tasted like chemicals and the spicy tuna roll was just gross. He tried to eat his spicy salmon hand roll, which was essentially the same design as my spicy tuna hand roll, but with a different fish.
At the end of the night we paid, begrudgingly. I should also say that the service was poor. No one refilled my tea or my water. The woman who worked there seemed very unaware of what sushi even was. When the waitress switched with a waiter towards the end of the night, he asked with an Italian accent if I liked the food (since all of mine was still on my plate). I told him that I didn't really like it, and he told me to speak with the chef. But...what for? He wasn't offering to comp anything on the check. He just wanted me to tell the chef that I didn't like the food. He said "They should know". So bizarre.
The bill was really high, which of course, was disappointing. And the rest of the evening we both felt dizzy, light-headed, and just plain awful. Luckily we went to an ice cream shop on the dock and got one scoop of chocolate in a sugar cone, each, and it seemed to soothe our poor tummies a bit. On the ferry ride back, I tried to cure my sick stomach with chamomile tea, while my PIC chose a couple rum and cokes.
By the time we arrived back on LA land we were feeling better, but needless to say CC Gallagher was the worst. The only positive aspect of the evening, was how much we bonded over the terrible food and laughed at the miserable experience.
If you're curious about CC Gallagher click here: http://www.ccgallagher.com/
But please...don't go!
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