Damola Adamolekun, CEO of Red Lobster at age 36.
Just returned from dining at the Red Lobster. I want the Red Lobster to come back as a business—I really do. (For one thing, I have stock.) I’ve recently seen the ads featuring a tall, good-looking young Black gentleman, Damola Adamolekun, their new CEO. He is the youngest CEO in Red Lobster history at age 36 and came from P.F. Chang’s and Goldman Sachs. Perhaps you’ve seen him doing a nationally televised ad for Red Lobster? One article I consulted said that Damola has “a proven record of transformation.”
Damola reminded me of Brad Pitt’s co-star (Damson Idris) in the movie “F-1” that we had just seen (more about the movie later.)
Good luck with that transformation, Damola. I have some suggestions.
I now have intense sympathy for any animal that has to forage for its food—squirrels come to mind. I ordered the crab special, which advertised a pound of crab legs for $31, plus crispy potatoes (I asked if they were French fries; they were not) and one side dish. I selected broccoli as my side dish. The 3 or 4 small pieces of potato that were swimming in the butter on the plate were not any kind of potato I’ve had anywhere else. I actually never got to eat one, so I cannot comment on how they tasted.
I’ve been taking weight loss drugs that give you no appetite. I can’t eat a dozen shrimp. 2 lobsters, and a bunch of other stuff at one sitting. I can eat 4 shrimp—maybe—and possibly 1 lobster tail. My advice would be to package some meals with smaller amounts for those of us now unable to eat like we used to eat. (*Consult the NYT for articles on how this weight loss craze has changed the “business lunch.”)
Damson Idris, of “F-1”
I thought crab legs, with all the attendant hassle to dig them out of their shells, might be a good choice for me. In other words, I expected this to be a smaller-than-their-average amount of food.
Damson Idris, co-star of “F-1,” another handsome young man on the way up. (Review of film to follow later).
SUGGESTIONS:
1) Advertise that there are small half-sized plates. The local Biaggi’s Italian restaurant has a smaller/cheaper half-plate option.
2) Make it possible for the customer to NOT have to wear plastic gloves and go to work for an hour digging tiny amounts of shredded crab meat from unforgiving shells. You could pierce the shells, but the crab would not come out. (“Come out! Come out! Wherever you are!”)I empathized with squirrels who bury their nuts against the harshness of winter and then spend hours digging fruitlessly, trying to find the hidden food.
3) Get a better tool to crack open the shells, or do it for the customer before serving the entree. With the handy-dandy tool I was given to extract the crab from the crab leg, I now could produce a shell with a needle-sized hole in it. No crab meat emerged. The contents of the shell were still very secure within the hard tube.
4) Make sure that the customer knows, going in, that all of the butter and LOTS of garlic will be dumped atop the plate, unless you specify otherwise.
OBSERVATIONS
I just want to warn anyone who selected this entrée for perfectly, good reasons, as I had: GOOD LUCK. Not only will you end up completely covered with garlic bits and butter, you won’t be rewarded with enough crab meat to adequately feed that squirrel.
My spouse warned me that the crab legs would be messy. I offered up my rationale for selecting the crab legs (my lower appetite), instead of his choice (the Admiral’s Feast). I hate to admit it, but he was right. The crab—no matter what the “deal” currently is—was a bad choice on SOOOO many levels!
In “the old days,” (which means before Red Lobster went bankrupt and DJT 2.0 set about bankrupting us in every other area of life), I would have ordered the meal that consists of fried shrimp, a lobster, and crab. That meal is pushing $50 now and I’m just not that hungry any more. So, I selected the crab legs, knowing it would be less bountiful. That was just fine by sixty-pounds lighter me.
I ordered the crab with garlic butter. I did not know that the “new way” to serve a Red Lobster customer garlic butter was to dump it atop the already-messy crab legs. You don’t get it on the side in a little container (like the old days) unless you specifically ask for it on the side. It would be best to warn Old Time Red Lobster patrons of this fact before they are presented with a large heap of oily crab legs, literally drowning in bits of garlic. (I don’t really like garlic that much; I generally ask my daughter-in-law to not put the garlic in my green beans, because I like a hint of the flavor, but I don’t eat it by the spoonful. But spoonfuls of this aromatic stuff had definitely been used on top of the crab legs.)
Red Lobster flyer.
Even though they gave me plastic gloves (I’m not kidding; actual plastic gloves), this greasy thankless crab-removal task is a job nobody needs nor wants. What happened to the idea of slicing the crab shell open in the kitchen before the customer has to start wearing surgical gloves to retrieve their meal?
When the plate first appeared with massive amounts of garlic garnishing it, our waitress stopped to check on us. I was really sorry to be “that customer” but I told her that, actually, I had not anticipated the giant greasy load of garlic pieces.
“I don’t even like garlic much,” I mumbled.
I feel very bad to EVER send anything back. It’s not in my nature. I cringe just writing this, but I could not just sit there staring at the plate, so I answered honestly. I give high marks to the waitress’s efforts to please an ignorant customer who ordered without complete knowledge of the “new” Red Lobster.
She was great about it. She took the plate with the untouched pound of crab legs and the pound and a half of garlic and butter and the very few pieces of potato that were buried beneath this mess in a greasy liquid butter to the kitchen. The crab legs were returned without the butter and the garlic (also without the potatoes).
If I ever dine there again, (1) I will not order the crab legs and (2) I will definitely ask that the garlic butter of olden days be put on the side, like it used to be. I can’t even finish 1/2 of the 6-pack of chicken nuggets from Chik’ Fil A these days. Damola, maybe consider the smaller plate option with a smaller price if you order less?
I wonder how many times and how many other unsuspecting customers have been burned by this New Way of Doing Things at Red Lobster? Maybe Red Lobster needs to write the advice about the dipping sauce on the actual menu next to the entrée description. The need to re-do my plate was certainly wasteful. For that I apologize.
So now starts the fun part: trying to get the crab out of the shell.
Forget it.
The broccoli was good. I ate most of it while waiting for the return of the garlic-less crab legs. No idea what happened to the “crispy potatoes.” I can guarantee you that they weren’t very “crispy” after marinating in a pound of butter and garlic; then they disappeared. I honestly did not care by that point. I needed to go wash my hands, one of three trips to the women’s rest room necessitated by the overly greasy presentation.
RED LOBSTER REST ROOM
Let’s leave the booth in the bar for a moment and travel to the nearby women’s bathroom in Davenport, Iowa. After the ordeal of foraging for 2 to 3 ounces of crab meat like a famished squirrel, I needed to wash my hands. Repeatedly.
So let me warn prospective patrons about the two (2) stalls in the women’s rest room in the Red Lobster location in Davenport, Iowa. (I was recently locked in the rest room of the Main Street Pizza in Buda, Texas for almost half an hour, calling on my phone for someone to come pry the stuck door open, so bear with me if I sound skittish about being locked in the rest room stall in the women’s rest room of the Red Lobster in Davenport, Iowa.)
Stall #1, the handicapped stall, has a lock that no longer functions. The bar that slides back-and-forth only slides back-and-forth on the wrong side (outside) of the metal thing that you are supposed to slide the bar into. Good luck in trying to hold the door closed with your hand while seated during your time in the stall! (Ahem).
On my second hand-washing trip, a portly woman with a cane tried to lock the door to Stall #1–the one that needs a handyman to come and fix it. She tried to “fix” it by slamming the door repeatedly. That didn’t work, but, as a result, I got stuck in the Stall #2 where the door had (previously) operated just fine.
Stall #2, the stall closest to the entry door, DID have a lock that worked. This was good news. [Since the gizmo given me to free the 3 oz. of crab meat from the shell didn’t work I lost faith in all of the implements provided by the establishment for specific purposes.]
The door to Stall #2 DID work, but wait: Just try to exit Stall #2 after unlocking it. The door only opened 8 inches. It reminded me of my red Prius (the FireBird) after a teenaged driver slammed into us in Okmulgee, Oklahoma on our November 3rd drive to Texas. The side impact crash totaled the car. The door on my car’s passenger’s side only opened about eight inches. My husband had to come around from the driver’s side and pull with all of his force to open the door to allow me to exit. (And then we twist tied the car together and drove 6 hours to Austin, Texas, with no headlights).
The Firebird, post crash.
This Red Lobster door to Stall #2 in the women’s rest room opened almost the same amount, but I had no male companion in the ladies’ rest room to help pry it open. I wonder if the large woman with the cane, in attempting to lock her side of Stall #1, did damage to MY door?
Fortunately, following my Ozempic/Mounjuaro months, I am much smaller (60 lbs.). I was able—just barely—to slip through the very narrow opening and return to the booth to struggle with securing food. [Hungry squirrel returns to the field to forage.]
Finally, I decided to discontinue wrestling with the crab legs. That battle was lost. The bill was close to $100 (2 people, no alcoholic beverages). I figure my 3 oz. of shredded crab probably cost about $20 an ounce. I was still hungry when I left.
Warning to prospective crab leg customers: be sure to ask for whatever kind of butter you select on the side.
[If you’re female, good luck in the rest room!]
