McCormick & Schmick's Seafood Restaurant: Good Food; Value, Not So Much.

We were going out for our 9th wedding anniversary, and a friend had very thoughtfully given us a sizable gift card to Oceanaire Restaurant, but we had eaten there several years ago and been sorta underwhelmed by the seafood and overwhelmed by the price tag, over $150 for the two of us. So when we saw on the back of the gift card that it was good for any Landry's-owned establishment, I checked out McCormick & Schmick's, 110 N. Illinois Street.  It's part of a chain, but there's only one in Indy, so I feel comfortable reviewing it.  The menu appeared a somewhat less expensive $$$ than Oceanaire's, and had much the same kind of food.  

I'm a $$ kind of guy, remember, so if you want me to fork over that additional $ ya better WOW me, and sadly, M&S did not.  It was good, mind you, it just wasn't $$$ good, especially since we had to come downtown and pay to park (although I think they do have valet parking available, so never mind the paying part).  I had the Ultimate Mixed Grill- grilled shrimp, stuffed shrimp, seared scallops, and a chunk of grilled salmon, with roasted red pepper mashed potatoes and green beans for $32.99.  Little Mama had the Shrimp Trilogy: fried shrimp, stuffed shrimp, and shrimp scampi with butternut squash orzo serving as the pasta for $26.99, and we split a $7.99 chopped side salad with blue cheese. 

The huge cup of blue cheese dressing that came with the salad and the orzo were the real highlights of the meal, not the seafood.  The orzo was freaking awesome, very plump and tasty, and the little cubes of squash made me thankfully forget I was eating squash.   The light buttermilk breading of the fried shrimp made it very tasty, too.  The grilled shrimp was overcooked, dry and tough, while the scallops and stuffed shrimp seemed underdone but tasted okay.  I know it's better to under cook than overcook scallops, but the very concept of "seared" implies that the top and bottom of the scallop ought to be browned just a bit, and these things were not browned at all-- they looked like they'd been broiled or baked.  Finally, the salmon, mashed potatoes, and green beans were decent but uninspiring.  With two glasses of wine our bill came in just under $100, and to me the bottom line is that Red Lobster is almost as good and a heck of a better value.  Oh yeah-- Mama always said to try to say something nice about everyone, so I will say the service was impeccable, not $$$ impeccable but DANGIT THERE I GO AGAIN, SORRY!