Road Tips

Stompbox Brewing/Kitchen Brigade - Davenport, IA

We have a couple that we like to meet up with for craft beers and libations from time to time on some Sundays.  My wife and the wife in the couple used to work together years ago, while the husband and I just like to drink beer and laugh.  Earlier this year, we met up for beers at a microbrewery over on the Illinois side of the Quad Cities.  After a couple three beers there, we decided to head over to a newer microbrewery/brewpub in downtown Davenport called Stompbox Brewing.  We hadn't been there before and looked forward to giving it a try.  It turns out that they also had a kitchen on the premises - the Kitchen Brigade -  and while we didn't have food on that visit, we did go back there a few weeks later to meet up with the same couple to have more beers and food at Stompbox Brewing and the Kitchen Brigade.  

Stompbox Brewing grew out of the tragic circumstances that forced the original tenants of the new built-out restaurant space, Roam, to close less than a year after they opened in December of 2018.  

Brothers Dylan and Griffin Steil envisioned Roam as a combination bistro/motorcycle repair shop - something that is found in places in Europe where people on motorbikes roam the countryside and may need a little food and drink while getting their rides serviced.  It was a bold initiative for the Steil brothers and I openly questioned how a motorcycle repair shop in the back of a European-style bistro would go over with patrons trying to enjoy innovative foods and drinks.  

During the spring of 2019, the Mississippi River rose to record heights in the Quad Cities.  A series of HESCO barriers were put up along River Drive to help keep the river at bay.  However, at approximately 3:30 on the afternoon of April 30th, the rising flood waters pushed through the barriers just east of Roam causing the flood waters to rush in and inundate parts of downtown Davenport.  The video below is from Roam's security camera and shows the moment the barrier was breached with people inside Roam running out to move their vehicles out of the parking lot.  

Businesses in a wide area of downtown Davenport were impacted for weeks that turned into months.  It was a tragic turn of events for the Steil brothers who put just about every penny they had between them into Roam.  It became apparent that financial relief would not be coming quickly enough - nor would it be enough to recoup their investment in the bistro/motorbike repair shop - and the brothers announced in September of 2019 that they would not reopen.  They were forced to sell off equipment and fixtures to help pay for the losses incurred from the flood.  

In December of 2019, a group of investors announced that they would be taking over the space that housed Roam and put in a brewery.  When I first heard that a brewery was going into the old Roam building, I was sort of taken aback as it was right next to arguably the most established brewpub in the Quad Cities - Front Street Brewery.  But, so far, they seem to cohabitate pretty well.   

The group of investors - which include local music enthusiast/photographer Matt Erickson and James Prickett, a cost analyst at the Rock Island Arsenal who is also a musician and homebrewer - took over 6 months to renovate the space putting in a micro-brewery in the back where the motorbike repair shop was, and put in a kitchen area for food to be served in the space.  They started to brew and can beer in June of 2020 and officially opened their doors in early July of last year.  They called their new brewery "Stompbox" after a switching device a guitarist uses to control volume and tone that they step on with their feet.  

To run their kitchen, the group turned to an established food truck entrepreneur who has been around the Quad Cities food scene for a number of years.  Chad Cushman started his culinary journey at the age of 15 working in a number of restaurants over the years before becoming an executive chef, restaurant manager and consultant.  For the past 10 plus years, Cushman has been known locally as "The Crepe Guy" who would offer his services for coffee houses, outdoor markets, private parties and local events as a pop-up restaurant making sweet and savory crepes.  Cushman's distinctive red "Cushman's Food & Engine" box van is a staple at the Freight House Farmers Market in downtown Davenport from May to October.  

(Pictured left - Chad Cushman.  Photo courtesy Quad City Times)

When he's not doing the food truck thing, Cushman runs Kitchen Brigade with a European-inspired menu of snacks and shared plates, as well as a short list of main entree items such as a burger, chicken and green chile grits, a pork tomahawk schnitzel chop, and mussels that are steamed with a Stompbox beer and served in a unami broth.  You can find Cushman and his Kitchen Brigade staff at Stompbox Wednesday and Thursday from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m., on Friday from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m., on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., and on Sunday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.

We got to Stompbox not long after noon on a recent Sunday.  There is ample parking in the area including a parking lot in front of Stompbox that is open for public use after 5 p.m. through the week and all day on Saturday and Sunday.  (see map)  The long bar sits in the middle of the space with a number of tables that are spaced throughout the place with a couple community-style tables near the bar.  I would call the decor with dark walls, exposed duct work and a polished concrete floor as contemporary industrial.  They also have a patio in front of Stompbox, but very few people were out there as it was sunny, but a bit cool.  

The bar area features seating on one side. The beer tap spigots all have "stomp boxes" as their handle tops.  A flat-screen television on the south end of the bar lists the beers currently on tap at Stompbox.  Another flat-screen on the opposite end of the bar usually has a sporting event being shown on it.  Just past the bar area are more tables and some booths with half-circle bench seating.  On the wall behind the booths was a large 3-piece colorful medieval-style mural. 

Our friends showed up not long after we got there.  My wife and I had settled in at a high-top table near the seating side of the bar.  Just off the bar was the open window with a "Kitchen Brigade" neon sign above it.  

Beers can be ordered at the bar, but they also have servers who can take beer and food orders at Stompbox.  Alexa was our server that day and I was dismayed to find that they don't have a full bar at Stompbox - just beer only.  "For now," one of the bartenders told me when I asked if they had bloody mary's.  "We may do a full bar sometime later on."

Since this was just our second visit, I remembered a beer that I had on my previous stop into Stompbox - a wonderful hazy IPA that they called "Chilly Nelson".  I ordered up one of those and my wife got the same.  But in talking with James Prickett who came out to our table later during our visit, he said that the Chilly Nelson was going away as they're trying a number of different types of beers from recipes they've garnered over the years.  I was sad to hear the Chilly Nelson was going away.  "We may bring it back at some point," Prickett said.  "In fact, we probably will and make it a seasonal beer."   I hope they do bring it back - it's excellent.  

As we were talking for awhile, my wife said that she was a little peckish and wanted to get something to piece on.  Our friends suggested the cheese curd plate, but my wife isn't big on fried cheese all that much as it gives her indigestion.  While our friends got the cheese curd plate to munch on, my wife got a bowl of the roasted olives.  "That's perfect," the wife of our friends said. "You can't handle fried cheese and we don't like olives all that much."  The olives were a mixture of green and black slightly roasted olives served in a bowl topped with a citrus oil and whipped feta cheese.  Some toasted country bread came with the bowl of roasted olives.  

I was looking for something a little extra.  The chicken and green chile grits were intriguing to me, but I didn't want that big of a meal.  At one of the booths near where we were seated, a couple of the Kitchen Brigade burgers were placed in front of the people seated there.  I told my wife, "That looks good.  But if I get one of those, I probably won't have dinner tonight."  She assured me that she could rustle something up on her own if I wasn't hungry later on.  

The burger featured a 1/2-pound beef patty from cattle that were initially grass-fed, but were fed corn before they were processed.  It was topped with butterkäse cheese - a German/Austrian butter cheese that is rich and creamy - and a house-made sauce.  The burger was served on a bun topped with black and white sesame seeds.  The burger came with julienne-chopped romaine lettuce, butter-pickle slices and an onion spread.  And a generous portion of their thin cut fries came with the burger on the side.  

The burger was very good.  The burger patty was cooked to a pink center and maintained its juicy taste throughout.  The butterkäse cheese didn't overpower the taste of the beef patty and helped enhance the overall taste of the burger.  The bun was spongy and there may have been a little too much of it as I was peeling off parts of the bun as I ate.  But the bun stayed together very well with all the toppings on the burger coupled with its juiciness.  It was a big burger and I was definitely full after I finished what I could.

The fries became community fries for the table as there was going to be no way that I was going to be able to finish them.  My wife especially liked the fries that gave her some salty flavor to counteract the tart and sharp taste of the olives.  We still had some left over by the time Alexa came to clean our plates and she wanted to know if I wanted to take them home.  I declined because I knew there would be no way they would be better heated up later on.  But my wife did end up taking more than half of her roasted olives home.  Shared among two or more people, there would have been enough.  But for one person, well, it was a lot of olives.  

My wife and I like to go out to brewpubs around the area from time to time and Stompbox has entered our rotation. And coupled with having a good burger from the Kitchen Brigade, we'll probably be there sometime in the near future for our semi-regular Sunday afternoon burger and beer.  The only problem is that I can't get a bloody mary to go along with the beer and burger at Stompbox/Kitchen Brigade.  It's a nice, laid-back atmosphere there, the staff is friendly, and the beer we've had in our visits there is very good.  I used to think we were getting too many brewpubs/microbreweries around the Quad Cities.  But if they all offer something a little different - and many of them do, like Stompbox - then I have no problem with more of them popping up.  Stompbox is a very good choice if you're looking for a tasty craft beer with some interesting food.  

Captain's Table - Moline, IL

When I first moved to the Quad Cities nearly 30 years ago, I had a friend and his wife coming into town and I wanted to take them out for a nice meal.  Not fully knowing the landscape of restaurants in the area at the time, I asked a handful of locals who were in the know with the local dining scene to give me recommendations.  Nearly everyone mentioned the Captain's Table along the Mississippi River in Moline.  We went there that evening, the food was wonderful, the service was great and it was tough to beat the views of the Mississippi River.  It became my go-to place to take people who were in town or for special occasion dinners.  However, changes in ownership over the years meant changes in the quality of the food and service, and in January of 2018 a massive fire destroyed the Captain's Table.  We didn't know if it would be back in business, but the group who own the restaurant worked with the City of Moline on getting a new building built.  Last summer, the restaurant reopened and on a recent Friday evening where my wife and I were out and about, she suggested heading over to the "new" Captain's Table to give it a try.  

Now, I have previously written about the Captain's Table (you can click here to see that entry), but a lot of things have changed over the last 11 years since I wrote about the place.   The Captain's Table had ceased to be our restaurant of choice for special occasion meals, but they had a great Bloody Mary bar and $3 off their gourmet burgers on Sundays.  We found ourselves over there a number of times meeting or running into friends who we had turned on to the Sunday specials at the Captain's Table.  

The hey-day of the restaurant stretched over a nearly 25-year period starting in 1974 when Jim Sweet founded the Marquis Harbor marina and with the help of the City of Moline built an adjoining steakhouse/seafood restaurant and called it the Captain's Table.  A gregarious guy and gracious host, Jim Sweet was larger than life.  He and his wife, JoAnn, along with their children Dave and Lori, could be found at the Captain's Table at various times of the day.  The place was cozy, had great views of the river, and the Sweet family were all so very friendly and made us feel welcome each time we went to the restaurant.  My wife fell in love with the restaurant the first time I took her there when we first started to date.  We got to know the Sweet family through our visits to the Captain's Table and at their sister restaurant over in Davenport, The Boat House.  

In 1998, the Sweet family sold the restaurant and marina to the Heart of America restaurant group, the company that oversees Johnny's Italian Steakhouse, The Machine Shed and a number of other restaurants and hotels around the Midwest.  That's when we noticed that the level and quality of the food began to suffer.  The menu had changed drastically, the welcoming feeling that we always felt with the Sweet's in charge was gone, and the Captain's Table became a soulless shell of its original self.  

After Heart of America's five-year lease on the building ended in 2003, the chef in charge of the restaurant for the Captain's Table - Mark Luciani - bought the restaurant outright.  (At the time, Heart of America also sold the marina operation to American Marine based out of LaCrosse, WI.)  Luciani tweaked the menu and made some positive changes to the restaurant.  But the tailspin the restaurant began to go into during the Heart of America period still weighed heavy on the business and coupled with two floods and an economic downturn with the Great Recession in 2008, Luciani wasn't able to make the restaurant work.  He closed the doors in February of 2009.  

It was not long after that when three friends from Blue Grass, IA - Rod Teel, Jeff Delf and Casey Dolbin - came in to resurrect the Captain's Table.  The group then contracted with Peter Harman - a.k.a. The Food Guru - to come in and help run the restaurant as a consultant.  Harman owned or managed a number of restaurants including the Davenport location of Graze.  Harman was in the midst of closing down Graze and he moved a handful of his employees across the river to the Captain's Table.  (The Iowa City Graze location is still open.)  

The partnership with the investment group and Harman didn't last long - I want to say Harman was pretty much out of the picture in a little over a year - and a number of chefs and managers revolved through the door over the years before Rob Eggers, who used to own the old Paddle Wheel restaurant/bar in Bettendorf, was brought on board in 2017 to run the Captain's Table for the group.  

Then in the late evening of January 15, 2018, disaster struck in the form of a devastating fire that fully consumed the building.  A passerby saw flames coming from the building (the restaurant was closed on Monday nights) and alerted authorities.  By the time the fire department was on the scene, the whole building was fully engulfed.  Because of the abnormal lay-out of the building due to additions that were made over the years, the fire department had no choice but to let the fire burn and employ a defensive strategy to keep the fire from spreading to the marina.  No cause was found for the fire as state fire marshals said the building sustained so much fire and water damage that there would have been no way to pinpoint what started the fire.  (Photo courtesy Todd Mizener - Rock Island Dispatch-Argus.)

The City of Moline still owned the building that housed the Captain's Table and after clearing the rubble from the fire they decided to work on putting a new building in place.  Working with an architect, the city came up with a new design that would have an upper deck bar that would allow for sweeping views of the Mississippi River with a new dining area with outdoor seating on the main level.  (That design is shown below at right.  Graphic courtesy Rock Island Disptach-Argus)

However, it turned out that particular design would be too costly for the city to bear for the replacement building.  A second design that took off the upper floor bar, but kept outdoor seating along the river front was approved.  Work began on the new Captain's Table in 2019 and it opened for business in August of last year. (Shown above left is the final design of the "new" Captain's Table.  Graphic courtesy Rock Island Dispatch-Argus)  

It was just after 7:30 when we pulled into the parking lot at the Captain's Table back at its original location at 4801 River Drive in Moline.  (see map)  One thing that they did during the construction of the new building was to add more parking.  The parking lot is probably one-third bigger than the parking lot that they had before.  Still there were a lot of cars in the parking lot and we weren't certain we were going to be able to get in right away.  

As we went inside (a distinctive porthole window was near the front door - a nod to the five porthole windows the old Captain's Table had in their bar area), we went up some steps and were greeted by Rob Eggers working the front desk that evening.  We were told that it would be probably a 15 to 20 minute wait, so we decided to stay.  The bar was full, but there were bench seats up near the front stand. On a ledge above the seats in the waiting area were four large aquariums - a nice touch for a nautical-themed restaurant.  

The bar used to be in a back corner of the Captain's Table, but with the new design in the restaurant it's in the middle between two dining areas.  The three-sided bar had high-backed chairs with an ornate back-bar area with dark wood accents.  Flat screen televisions were on the walls behind the bar.  

The two dining areas at the new Captain's Table were on opposite ends of the building.  There was a smaller area up front with high-backed booths that were situated just below the aquariums.  Short four-seater tables were on the floor up toward the windows that looked out onto the deck.  It was a little cool that evening so there was no one seated out on the deck.  

There was a larger dining space on the opposite end past the bar area.  It featured more booths under a mural of the Mississippi River where it runs east-west through the Quad Cities.  The river bends from the north just up-river from the Captain's Table - the bend is easily viewed from the restaurant - and continues west to Muscatine where it bends back to its usual north-south direction.  Yes, you actually drive south into Illinois from Iowa in the Quad Cities.  My wife's directions were screwed up the first few years she lived in Davenport as she learned growing up in Cedar Rapids that the Mississippi runs north-south.  She always thought she was looking east into Illinois from the Iowa side when she was looking south the whole time.  

We were seated in the back dining area and we were giving menus by one of the young ladies working at the front desk that evening.  Our server that night was a young lady by the name of Amber.  Even with Amber wearing her mask, my wife recognized her, but she didn't say anything.  Turns out that she's the girlfriend of a friend of ours.  She didn't recognize us - we had only been around her a couple three times with our friend - or if she did recognize us, she didn't say anything.  Amber asked if we wanted anything to drink and my wife ordered her usual Tito's Vodka and cranberry juice.  They had a handful of craft beers on the menu including some specialty beers from four or five local breweries.  But I ended up ordering a Deschutes Fresh Haze IPA. 

The food selections at the Captain's Table featured steaks, seafood and some combo dishes.  Sandwiches including burgers, pork tenderloins, chicken and catfish were on the menu - many of which were featured on the menu from the old Paddle Wheel that Eggers brought over when he came to the Captain's Table.  Appetizers included fried calamari, bacon-wrapped scallops, shrimp and crab dip, and chicken wings.  One of the things they also had on the menu was clam chowder.  

Now, when I first moved to the Quad Cities years ago, there were a handful of places that had wonderful clam chowder - restaurants such as the original Captain's Table, the Dock, the Belgian Village and a couple three other places in the area.  In fact, the guy who I worked for before I moved to the area in 1991 told me one time that the best clam chowder he ever had outside of New England was in the Quad Cities. Unfortunately, those restaurants - in their original forms - are all gone and it's been tough to find good clam chowder in the area.   

But I was intrigued enough to try the clam chowder at the Captain's Table.  It was a thick creamy base with chunks of potatoes and clams mixed in.  Chopped green onions came on the top of the chowder.  I asked Amber for some Tabasco and it reminded me of the time when I put Tabasco in my clam chowder in front of JoAnn Sweet at the original Captain's Table years ago and she went ballistic.  "You're ruining the taste of our clam chowder," she said in a raised voice.  "It's made to not have anything put in it!"  But I've been putting Tabasco in my clam chowder ever since I first had it back in the early 80's and I like a little zip to the taste. 

Now, I can't say that the Tabasco hindered the taste of the clam chowder at the present day Captain's Table.  In fact, it probably helped it.  The clam chowder was pretty bland and somewhat lifeless for my taste, but I'm sure some people probably like it that way.  

While I had my clam chowder, my wife got a dinner salad.  It came with mixed greens and chopped veggies, and was topped with house-made croutons then drizzle with a creamy garlic dressing.  My wife thought it was fine for what it was, just a basic dinner salad.

Along with the clam chowder and the dinner salad, a small loaf of warm house-made bread came with the starters.  The bread was crusty on the outside, but spongy on the inside.  It was a small loaf and we were able to each have two pieces of the bread with our salad and chowder.  

Quite actually, I really didn't know what to get that evening.  I wasn't certain I wanted a steak, and I wasn't certain I wanted seafood.  I thought about getting one of their burgers, but I didn't want my first meal at the new Captain's Table to be a burger.  They had crab cakes on the menu and I was just about to settle on those when my wife looked at a flap inside the menu.  "Oh," she exclaimed.  "They have prime rib tonight!"  On Friday and Saturday evenings starting at 4 p.m., the Captain's Table has a 12 ounce or 16 ounce prime rib for $27.00 or $30.00 respectively.  I hadn't had prime rib for long time, either, and I decided to get that.

However, when Amber came to the table to take our order, I ordered up the 12 ounce prime rib.  "Oh!  I'm sorry," she said apologetically.  "I guess I forgot to tell you guys that we had run out of prime rib."  It was around 8 p.m. - they're only open until 9 - and I'm sure the early birds came in droves to run them out of the prime rib.  Somewhat crestfallen, I went with the crab cakes.  

The crab cakes entree featured two thick patties that were overcooked and topped with a remoulade sauce.  A side came with the meal and I went with the fries because someone at a table next us got the fries with a burger and they looked good.  But, looks can be deceiving as the fries were lukewarm and limp.  It was like they had made them up 20 minutes prior and left them in a bin for the cooks to pull from when needed.   The crab cake was rich, but it was dry and rather unappealing.  Overall, my meal was disappointing.  

My wife went the seafood route and ordered the 8 ounce grilled salmon.  She got a side of their potatoes-au-gratin.  Well, if I was disappointed with my meal, my wife was appalled at what she was served.  The piece of salmon - and a strong emphasis on "piece" - was nowhere near 8 ounces.  My wife remarked, "This looks like a piece of salmon you get in one of the big bags of frozen salmon filets from Costco!"  She thought the taste of it was fine, there just wasn't a lot of it.  

And she was even more upset with the potatoes-au-gratin.  It was like they had dumped two cups of cheese on a handful of cube-cut potatoes.  "My god, this is like cheese soup with a little bit of potatoes mixed in," she said as she stirred the concoction in its dish.  We counted 11 small chunks of potatoes in the dish - the rest was cheese.  

The crab cakes were so over-cooked and so rich that I couldn't finish them.  And I really didn't care if I finished them.  And I hardly made a dent in my fries.  Our meals were simply disappointing.

Amber tried to coax us into some dessert, but we were done.  We'd had enough and were ready to get out of there.  I just couldn't believe that the food didn't live up to the new and improved architecture of the Captain's Table. 

A couple days later, we met up with friends of ours, one of whom works for a food distributor in the Quad Cities.  "We went there for their soft opening," he said.  "We didn't think much of the food."  His wife agreed that she was disappointed in the food, as well.  My wife said, "Disappointed.  Yep, that sums up how we felt."  We all agreed that it would be a nice place to go to on an afternoon or evening and have a drink and some appetizers on the outdoor patio overlooking the river.  But going there for a special occasion, that was probably out of the question.

We were so hoping that the new Captain's Table would be a cut above the pre-fire Captain's Table.  But I can't say that it was.  And it may have even gone downhill from that era.  For people like us who remember the Captain's Table when the Sweet family owned the place years ago, the bar was set so incredibly high that any other incarnation of the Captain's Table would be difficult to match. For now, the Captain's Table is only open Wednesday through Sunday from 4 to 9.  We asked before we left if they were going to start doing lunch on the weekends and they said they hoped to during the upcoming boating season.  I would come back to try a burger some Sunday afternoon if they were to re-open during the day through the weekends.  Or I'd come back to sit on the deck on a nice summer afternoon to watch the river go by.  But as a destination for special event dinners, I'd have to give the new Captain's Table a hard pass.

Costa Del Mar Mariscos - Davenport, IA

A couple three weeks ago, my wife and I had the chance to get out and try a new restaurant in Davenport, one that specialized in seafood with a Mexican twist.  The place had been open since last summer, but with COVID-19 protocols in place we just didn't feel comfortable going out to restaurants like we normally do.  Now that things have settled down a bit, we decided to do a date night and have dinner at Costa del Mar Mariscos.

The corner of N. Brady St. and E. Kimberly Road in Davenport (see map) has always been a busy intersection in the city.  I've lived in the Quad Cities for nearly 30 years and the building on the southwest corner of the intersection has been a series of restaurants over the years.  The first one I remember was a Ground Round, a casual American-style dining restaurant chain that was popular in the 80's and 90's.  It has housed a number of Mexican restaurants over the years, most recently it was the home of a place by the name of Casa Maguey, and before that it was a Los Agaves location.  None of the restaurants were bad - in fact, nearly all of them have been very popular over the years.  But none of them have ever lasted more than a few years.  

In 2019, Casa Maguey closed its doors with the promise of a new and improved Mexican restaurant taking over the spot.  A large semi-trailer had been sitting in the parking lot for quite some time and I could tell there was construction going on in and around the building.  It looked like things were coming along nicely for a springtime 2020 opening, but then that little thing called COVID-19 came around.  Restaurants were shut down for a number of weeks before the State of Iowa allowed some to reopen at reduced capacity.  Costa del Mar Mariscos (which roughly translates into "Seacoast Seafood") opened in July of last year.  

Since Brady Street is a one-way northbound, and there's no left turn access off of westbound E. Kimberly Road, there's only two access points into the parking lot at Costa del Mar Mariscos - a left turn from northbound N. Brady or a right turn off of eastbound E. Kimberly Road.  We were sort of surprised to see a number of cars in the parking lot when we pulled in, but we knew the restaurant was large enough to have people spread out for seating.  

There's two dining areas in Costa del Mar - the original dining area that dated back to the Ground Round days is to your right as you walk in.  It still has the atrium seating up front that was a signature of Ground Round restaurants in the past.  To the left is the cantina area that features a number of high-backed booths along with wooden tables and chairs, similar to the other dining area on the other side of the restaurant.  A large mural of the sea was on the wall on the far end of the cantina.  I have to say that the decor in previous restaurants probably hadn't been spruced up for a number of years and I remember remarking to my wife not long before Cafe Maguey closed in 2019 that the place looked rather tired.  But the remodeling project by Costa del Mar Mariscos management really sparked some life into the restaurant.  

The cantina area was completely redesigned from the previous bar/cantina area in previous restaurants.  Before, the bar was rectangular situated in the middle of the room with seating on all four sides.  The new design moved the bar back into a corner of the cantina area taking away two sides of seating.  I've been noticing that some of the newer Mexican restaurants that have bar areas have a number of flatscreen televisions around the bar.  Costa del Mar was no exception.

We were seated in one of the high-back booths in the cantina and were given a couple menus to look over.  My wife decided she didn't want to get a margarita that evening, but I ended up getting a Sol.  Later on, she decided that she wanted a Sol along with her dinner which was surprising since she very rarely drinks beer any more.   

Chips and a red salsa, the prerequisite for any Mexican meal served in a restaurant like Costa del Mar, came out to the table.  I asked our server if she had any of the green chile salsa.  She brought out a large bowl of the salsa verde not long after.  It was actually very good - not as salty as we've found many green chile salsas to be - and it had a bit of a spicy bite on the back end.  

The menu at Costa del Mar Mariscos featured the usual Mexican favorites - burritos, enchiladas, quesadillas, fajitas and chimichangas.  But the back part of the menu featured a number of seafood dishes along with steaks.  They had oysters on the half shell, shrimp and octopus cocktails, ceviche, seafood soups, and entrees with fish, shrimp or lobster.  They also had a number of shareable platters with various seafood offerings consisting of shrimp, octopus, mussels, oysters, crab legs and scallops.  The Paella del Mar featured both peeled and head-on shrimp, mussels, octopus, clams, and scallops all sautéed and mixed in with crab legs and rice.  You could get most of the sharable plates as single dinner selections, as well.  

My wife wasn't all that hungry and I wasn't either for some reason.  I can't remember if we had a big lunch earlier in the day, but I just remember that I didn't feel like getting much.  I ended up getting the pork chile verde - slow-roasted pork sautéed in a green chile salsa and spices, then served with Mexican rice and refried  beans.  Tortillas came with the pork chile verde.  The pork was tender and flavorful with the green chile salsa. I just love good salsa verde and what they had at Costa del Mar was very good.  

My wife went with the carne asada quesadilla - chunks of flank steak folded in a flour tortilla shell with cheese, grilled onions and cilantro, then lightly grilled. Mexican rice and refried beans came on the side along with pico de gallo and sour cream served in a tortilla bowl.  The was worried that the quesadilla would be big, but she was happy to see that it was manageable for her.  While she didn't eat the whole thing, she was very happy with her choice.  

For our first foray into the menu at Costa del Mar Mariscos, we were pretty impressed with what they had to offer and with what we ordered that evening.  My pork chile verde was very good and my wife really liked her carne asada quesadilla.  Our server that evening was attentive and friendly, and the decor was very nice after an extensive sprucing up that new management did before opening last year.  While we didn't try any of Costa del Mar's seafood offerings on our first trip, we made mental notes of what they offered for seafood dishes and made plans to go back at some point and try some of their shrimp dishes, the grilled octopus and some of their oysters-on-the-halfshell.