Ask around for a good restaurant in Lewes, Delaware, and the name Fin’s Ale House & Raw Bar is almost sure to come up.
When it does, run, don’t walk. It doesn’t matter if you want to sit and the bar and shuck oysters, or if you want to sit on the dining side. Just go and enjoy being a bit pampered while you enjoy fresh seafood.
In our experience, the service was great, especially for a place where shorts and ball caps are not questioned. It’s tourist-town-casual-dine, but up a notch.
We spent time asking a few of our usual questions of the server. What is your favorite? What is most popular? Anything we should avoid?
The Seafood Bake is the perfect sampler if you want to taste it all.
He quietly warned us that the chefs often have a heavy hand with the white wine on the Seafood Bake, making it watery, not better. We dared it anyway, and it must have been a good night—the flavor combination was delicious. Shrimp, scallops, flounder, crab cake, and a light sauce with Florentine butter, which is a mix of cultured butter, olive oil, and lemon, often with other seasonings or a bit of brandy thrown in.
The Crab Cakes were full of fresh crab, not filler.
He made sure we knew that the Jumbo Lump Crab Cakes weren’t your ordinary fried circles. No, they are pure crab, broiled and delicious. Hint: Ask for them to be delivered piping hot, as there appeared to be a tendency to let them sit just a little too long.
The Seafood Pasta from Fin’s Ale House.
We also took his recommendation and ordered the FINS’ Shellfish Pasta. It proved that you can take some of the same seafood and make it taste totally different. This dish had the shrimp, scallops, and lump crab meat, but was mixed with a delectable lobster cream sauce and served over penne pasta.
Specials when our party of three was there included a lobster roll made with “FINS’ famous lobster salad,” and a Spicy Grouper Scampi, using one of the daily fish selections. As good as it sounded—pan seared fillet, linguini, sun dried tomatoes, asparagus, garlic white wine, butter, capers, and crushed pepper—we stuck with the regular menu. We could also have gotten Pecan Encrusted Mahi or Horseradish Encrusted Halibut. All for another time.
Fin’s Ale House has a choose your own fish dish.
Fins is also known for its Build Your Own Fresh Fish aboard. The instructions are simple:
1. Select a fish from the daily rotating selection
2. Select a preparation (e.g. broiled, grilled, blackened, or even stuffed with crab imperial)
3. Select a sauce—citrus hollandaise, lobster sauce, lemon shallot cream, Creole sauce, and more
Just like that you can have the seafood dish of your dreams.
Oh, and if your tastes spin to the more exotic, they offered a Spanish Seafood Paella that sounded amazing. It was made with all the standards, including scallops, mussels, shrimp, clams, fish, lump crab meat, calamari, Andouille sausage, and saffron rice. This alone proves both the versatility of the restaurant and its commitment to fresh seafood.
We did feel the need for a crusty bread basket to sop up our sauces, but didn’t see it on the menu and one wasn’t automatically offered. Next time we’ll ask.
Because there will be a next time.
Photos by Paul K. Logsdon