One recent weekend not too long ago, Jake and I were kid free and I didn’t want to cook. I decided to pick a spot in Carmel Mountain Ranch since it had been a long time since I even went that way and discovered the Fish District Eatery on Yelp. Off we went to go check out what they had to offer.
Fish Market Eatery is in the Carmel Mountain Ranch Plaza next to the Pier One. This particular location used to be a place called Cheeburger Cheeburger that Alyssa and I both blogged about way back in the day (2008, wow!). After that it was “Joey’s Smoking BBQ” and then it was “BBQ Republic“. This spot sure has gone through a few restaurants!
It is walk-up service here at the Fish Market Eatery. You place your order and pay and then they deliver to the food to your table.
They offer Boylan soda here which is a nice change. They even had Birch Beer which excited me!
Plenty of seating here inside and out. If I had know there was outdoor seating I would have brought Maya with us.
Here’s their menu of mostly seafood offerings. There are just a few non-seafood items in case you’re bringing a seafood hatin’ friend with you. Jake says he doesn’t like seafood but I think he just doesn’t like shellfish because he loves fish n’ chips. I know that as long as a place offers fish n’ chips that Jake will be willing to go.
Beer and wine menu.
Specials board.
Sauces! We asked for all of them to try with our food.
From top left (clockwise): tarter sauce, piccata sauce, house sriracha, and ginger teriyaki.
The piccata sauce was nice and creamy with plenty of herbs. It was slightly tart. The house sriracha wasn’t super duper melt your face spicy but rather had a nice even heat to it. The tarter sauce had a lot of dill in it. My hands down “OMG-I’m-gonna-eat-all-of-this” sauce was the ginger teriyaki which Jake and I both agreed was our very very favorite. It had a nice sweetness to it and the ginger flavor was just right. I using this to dip my calamari into and it make the calamari taste just a little bit sweeter. I ended up using the ginger teriyaki on just about everything!
[fried calamari / $7]
This was quite a larger order of calamari! Since Jake won’t eat calamari it was a little too much for me to handle on my own but I ate as much as I could. The calamari is cut into rings had a nice light, crunchy batter on the outside. They were seasoned lightly and served with cocktail sauce which I didn’t use. Dipping these suckers into the ginger teriyaki sauce was amazzzzzzzzzing – it gave the calamari a wonderful sweet ginger flavor that made me want to eat this whole basket (though I did refrain). I wish they had a half size portion of this!
[asparagus / $3]
I wanted us to have something green in our gullets and I got us a side of asparagus. The asparagus is prepared simply – it tasted like it just had olive oil, salt and pepper added. Simply but delicious in my book.
[fish n’ chips / $11]
You can order a two piece fish n’ chips for $9 or pay an extra $2 for three pieces, which is what Jake opted to do. At the Fish District Eatery they use cod with a beer batter coating on the fish. The fish was nice and flaky and the batter had a nice airy crispiness to it.
[battered shrimp taco and skirt steak taco / $4 each]
I decided to try out the tacos. I got one with shrimp and one with steak. They have three different “styles” you can pick for the tacos.
“Traditional” style comes with lettuce, cabbage, tomato & sriracha. “Coastal” style comes with cabbage slaw, mango salsa, cilantro, serrano pepper, onion, and crema. The newest style is “Baja” which comes with cabbage, salsa fresca, cilantro, and tarter sauce.
I got my battered shrimp taco “coastal” style and the skirt steak taco “traditional” style. The battered shrimp taco was excellent. The shrimp were not oily or greasy and the crisp from the beer battered coating was wondering with the juicy, plump shrimp. I really liked the mango salsa on the taco as well, which gave it a little sweetness. The crema was a welcome addition for a little extra creaminess.
The skirt steak taco was also really good – Jake and I both really enjoyed the marinated skirt steak which was super flavorful and tender. I didn’t think the “traditional” style really did anything for it though and much prefered the “coastal” style. I ended up just eating the skirt steak and dipping it into the ginger teriyaki sauce instead.
The tacos are a hefty size and I found I couldn’t really finish either of them (especially after munching on calamari).
Jake spied these thin crispy little oat cookies at the register and bought them for us (along with our drinks). I thought these would be really crispy but they were only crispy on the very edgy and quite chewy in the middle. They were almost paper thin! They had almost a caramel-y flavor to them and the little bit of oats make it taste like a chewy caramel oatmeal cookie.
The Fish District Eatery also had a location in Carlsbad plus two locations in Orange County. A Solana Beach location will also be opening up shortly. They also have happy hour from 2-5PM which includes $1 off Classics, TKOs (tacos), beer and wine.
They had a good amount of offerings here at I’d really what I’d come back for is to eat EVERYTHING with that ginger teriyaki sauce. I want a gallon of that stuff!
Fish District Eatery
2002 Carmel Mountain Rd.
San Diego, CA 92128
(858) 485 1577
The fish and chips and tacos look good! I’ll have to try them for lunch sometime.
Don’t forget to try their yummy sauces, too! It’s nice they have multiple locations around town as well.
The batter on those fish and chips looks perfectly fried. Lots of good options here.
Hi CC – They do have a a lot of nice options here. I quite liked the tacos as well – I probably could have just gotten one! But it’s all in the name of science and research. 😀