Fish Fryday at Sandlots of Salem- 08/14/21

Happy Friday Fish Fry at The Sandlots of Salem patio with my better half. Planning ahead, I get a small sausage pizza {TO GO} -crispy well done- as soon as we sit down. Gotta have something to eat back home after wrapping up the night's festivities and when cooked correctly – their pizza is some of the best around! I always ask for WELL DONE here but unfortunately, past experience dictates I got a 50/50 shot of hitting that goal. Moving on... Pork Nacho appetizer catches my wives' eye so knowing a pizza is in the wings, we concoct a plan to do a little all-around food sharing: Lovie Dovie style! It’s Friday so I get the 2-piece Cod Special, 1 fried and 1 broiled with a side of fries and a cup of Gumbo. Tots are available but no potato pancake for Pooka. No worries, I got flies...er I mean FRIES! Speaking of which, please SIT INSIDE for the LOVE of all that is HOLY! It’s NO FUN battling the winged blight of flies the very second your drinks arrive!!! We are veteran bug fighters by the time the food gets tabled. Hmmm... Fried Cod is in an impressively crunchy shell with NO GREASE! ZER0. A solid chunk indeed. One problem: the coating is heavily seasoned and prevents the tasting of the Cod. The broiled was something else altogether... The heaps of lemon garlic butter coating t’was interesting to say the least. All the layers of flavor made it again impossible to taste the fish! It's more like something you would find on Orange Roughie than Cod. Reviewer note: a KNIFE had to be deployed in order to cut thru the BROILED Cod as it was not fork tender. Missy had quite the journey too! While She loved the Pork, the most instrumental part of the ‘Nachos’ - the melted cheese - is MIA! Good news though... halfway thru the chips, she finds the MOST DELICIOUS QUESO CHEESE SAUCE she has ever had... hiding at the bottom of the plate. Better late than never. In the future, she will ask for the sauce to be on the side! We dive into the ‘well done’ Pizza but luck just isn’t in our corner tonight as it was limp and sorely under-cooked. Since it was block cut, no way it can go back into the oven. Like I said- a 50/50 shot. O well, we planned to stay for a couple more drinks but the relentless fly borage never stops so we call it a night. Cuban wraps and Andouille sausage polenta appetizers for sure the next time we visit... them indoors. PS: We got home and dropped that pizza in a frying pan for 3 minutes on high. With just a touch of love – it turned out to be one of the best pizzas we have had in a while. Raved about how good it was to each other. Seriously, they could be a respectable pizza joint, like Monocles or Anastasias’, if they just focused up their Pizza Game. C’mon. You're killing me, Smalls’!