MY BIRTHDAY IN MONTEREY

Ok, I realize that I'm a bit behind on my posts. My birthday was 3 weeks ago, afterall. I actually had to work on my birthday. I normally don't work on Mondays, but my co-worker was off in Argentina, so we celebrated the day after my birthday with a day trip to Monterey. Our trip to Monterey was really so I could check out sea otters, and we saw a bunch- five in all. They're so cute and awesome. After a trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, we headed out for lunch at one of the restaurants on Cannery Row. It's a pretty touristy area, but we'd done some research and had picked out a restaurant called Fish Hopper.

It was pretty empty cause we were having an early lunch. But it had a great location on the beach and despite the light rain, we decided to sit outdoors on the heated deck. Here's a picture of the view:

So this place specializes in seafood, which is exactly what I wanted while we were visiting Monterey (see fish in aquarium, eat fish for lunch). Tom started off with an appetizer of crab cakes. Here they are below.

They look pretty good, but he wasn't such a huge fan of all the pink sauce that they had drizzled it with. Meanwhile, I started off with a bowl of their "famous" clam chowder.

I thought it was allright. It had large chunks of veggies and stuff, and it was a nice warming thing to have sitting outside. But it wasn't the best chowder I'd ever had. Next, I ordered an entree of half a Dungeness crab. It is currently crab season up in Northern California, so I was expecting really delicious, fresh crab. But it was clear that my crab had been cooked ahead of time and reheated, so it was kinda dry. It was also really really tasteless. I had to dip it into cocktail sauce to really give it flavor.

Meanwhile, Tom ordered a fried seafood platter.

He said it was ok. Overall, this place really is a bit of a tourist trap. I mean, it's got an amazing location, but the food was really eh and the prices were sky high. On the other had, we really did have a great trip to Monterey. I highly suggest it for anyone who wants to see some really cute otters.