Walt’s Wharf- My Favorite Seafood
Restaurant
I
love food! Common sense tells you that
you have to eat to live, but I like to say that I live to eat. I appreciate good food whether it comes from
a dive, a food truck, or a fancy restaurant.
My favorite type of food is seafood.
There is nothing better in the world than sitting down to a nice meal of
fresh, well prepared seafood. My
favorite seafood restaurant, Walt’s Wharf, located in the cozy seaside town of
Seal Beach, CA, is my favorite seafood restaurant. There are four criteria that are important
when evaluating a restaurant. A
restaurant’s ambiance, food quality and preparation, cleanliness, and prices
are key factors in a customer’s experience.
I feel as though Walt’s Wharf is near, if not at the top, in all four
categories.
As
you walk into the restaurant, you are greeted with friendly smiles from the
hostesses, and a very comfortable homely feel.
The ambiance at Walt’s Wharf is great.
I appreciate the fact that I can go there dressed in a suit and feel
like I fit right in, and then other times I have worn jeans and flip flops, and
still feel comfortable and appropriately dressed. It is a casual, but classy feel. Each table has candlelight, and so if you are
looking for a romantic feel you can get that while dining there as well. Because this restaurant is fantastic, there
tends to be a wait. I have never minded
the wait. The restaurant is located on a
corner on Main Street in Seal Beach.
There are cute “mom and pop” stores up and down main street. My wife and I always stroll up and down the
street checking out most of the stores while we wait. I love walking down Main Street while
waiting, smelling and feeling the salty ocean breeze. I don’t know of too many other restaurants
where people don’t mind waiting to be seated.
And for those of you that don’t like to wait, you can find yourself a
seat at the oyster bar and enjoy a drink and appetizer while you wait.
Each
time I have ever eaten at Walt’s Wharf, I have never been disappointed with
their food. Being that it is located in
a beach town, the seafood is always very fresh.
I consider myself a pro on their menu.
I have sampled it all. They offer
all types of seafood in a variety of ways.
You can get a delicious shrimp scampi made of fresh Mexican shrimp,
spaghetti, heirloom tomatoes, and basil in a white wine and garlic sauce or oak
grilled salmon tostada made of fresh grilled salmon, homemade black bean and
mango salsa, with avocado on top. Their
signature entrée dish is their caramelized wild king salmon. It is heavenly! It is a nice size cut of fresh salmon,
grilled to perfection. The salmon just
flakes in your mouth as you eat it. It
is tender and not at all over cooked. On
top of the salmon, is an orange shoyu glaze that adds a depth of flavor that I
have never before tasted until this dish.
When I first went to Walt’s Wharf, I read the name of this dish and
thought, “How can you caramelize salmon without over cooking it?” This orange shoyu glaze is the trick. It adds a sweet, yet subtle citrus taste that
your taste buds will thank you for. Another
nice thing about Walt’s Wharf, is though they are mostly a seafood restaurant,
they also offer chicken, pork and beef entrees.
Cleanliness
is a key factor in how I view a restaurant.
As for Walt’s Wharf’s cleanliness, it is very clean. There are always busboys walking around
everywhere cleaning up tables that just emptied, and taking care of keeping the
whole restaurant spotless. I have never
had any dirty utensils, glassware, or dishes.
As soon as you are seated, you are given a basket of the most delicious,
hot, sourdough bread. I always tend to
make a mess of my table while helping myself to this basket of bread. There are bread crumbs everywhere. I love the fact that the busboys come by
often with their little crumb knives and clean the crumbs off my table as I am
enjoying my meal. They don’t bother you
when doing this. They have a way of
doing it without you even noticing. The
bathrooms are also very clean, and they provide a hand soap that smells fresh
and leaves your hands soft. Are there
other restaurants that I have been to that are just as clean as Walt’s
Wharf? Yes, but
As
with any nice, fresh seafood restaurant, the prices at Walt’s Wharf are higher
than your regular food chain restaurant such as Chili’s. However, compared to your high end restaurants,
the prices at Walt’s Wharf are better, and yet they still offer the highest
quality of food. The entrée prices range
from $23-$36. These prices are great
considering the large portions you get, and the fact that the sides that come
with each entrée are just as gourmet as the entrée itself. Although you pay more at Walt’s Wharf than
your average chain restaurant, you know the quality of food and service are
worth it.
Walt’s
Wharf is a total experience. Not only do
you experience high quality, well prepared fresh seafood, but you are able to
have that at a great price. You will
also appreciate the cleanliness there as you enjoy the ambiance of the
restaurant. If you ever find yourself in
Orange County, CA, craving some great food at a wonderful restaurant, I highly
suggest you eat Walt’s Wharf. You will
not be disappointed.
Works Cited
Walt’s
Wharf. Home page.2012.Web. 16 March 2012. < http://waltswharf.com
>.
Eng
102
29
March 2012
Project 2 Self-Assessment
In
this project of evaluating a favorite place, I have learned a lot about
audience. I learned that I should not
write in first person. I should avoid using
“I statements”. When beginning this
project I thought I already knew the purpose of doing an evaluation, and I did
to an extent, but I have learned a lot more.
I realized just how important it is to actually have certain criteria in
mind before conducting the evaluation. I
have learned that the purpose of an evaluation is not just to tell what I think
of something or some place, but to give certain examples of certain criteria,
and how what is being evaluated measures up to other things. I see now how important it is to compare it
to other like things to give the evaluation credit. It helps to make it a more valid
evaluation. Choosing to evaluate a
favorite restaurant made me want to really present my evaluation of the
criteria in a way that would appeal to the reader’s senses. I wanted to describe and explain in a way
that let the reader know just how much I love this restaurant. I enjoy reading food and travel blogs, so I
knew that I wanted to present my evaluation in a blog. I like the comfortable, almost laid back feel
of some blogs. I wanted that to be the
same feeling in my blog about Walt’s Wharf.
I wanted the reader to feel as though they were reading an evaluation
written for them by one of their friends.
To decide which criteria to use
to evaluate this restaurant, I just thought about what I love most about
it. Why do I love Walt’s Wharf more than
any other seafood restaurant I have been to?
Once I defined those reasons why I love it so much, I knew that those
were my four criteria. I feel as though
I did fulfill my responsibility to my readers.
I wrote a very fair evaluation in which I gave many reasons why Walt’s
Wharf is such a great place to eat, and
I compared it to other restaurants.
Luckily, I have had many years of research for this evaluation. I have been eating at Walt’s Wharf at least 8
times a year for the past 25 years. I
think that that is very sufficient research.
Through writing this evaluation, I have become at evaluation because I
have learned that it is okay to compare the object of my evaluation to other
like things, and to be honest if what I am evaluating comes up short on some of
the criteria.
To be completely honest, I did
not really start my evaluation with an outline or brainstorming web, or any
type of organizational strategy like those.
I knew that I wanted to evaluate Walt’s Wharf, so I just asked myself I
loved most about Walt’s Wharf, and what makes it so much better than other
restaurants. That is how I came up with
my criteria. Once I had figured the four
criteria, I already knew what to address about how Walt’s Wharf measures up on
each one.
I believe the strongest point of
my evaluation to be my use of description to appeal to the reader. I actually enjoyed trying to describe the
food, the ambiance, and other aspects of Walt’s Wharf in a way that would
appeal to one’s senses. The review I got
from the IA helped me to see that my weakest part of my rough draft was the
fact that I was using “I statements”. I
didn’t realize that if I would refrain from using those, it would help to give
my evaluation more credit. I had a
sentence that said, “There are four criteria that I use when I evaluate a
restaurant.” The IA suggested that it
would be more convincing if I didn’t use the first person. She thought I could reword that sentence to
say, “ There are four important categories to use when evaluation a restaurant.” I realize that when you write in first person
for an evaluation, it comes off as your opinion. If I avoid using first person as much, it
comes off more as fact. I also
appreciated the peer review that I received that suggested I add a picture of
the caramelized salmon dish that I described in detail in my evaluation. I did try to incorporate pictures that would
show the reader the different aspects of Walt’s Wharf that I discussed or
mentioned in the evaluation.
In this project, at the beginning
of my writing process, I found that I
was better able to concentrate on the context of my evaluation, rather than my
spelling and grammar. I feel that that
enabled me to write a better evaluation.
I used my peer reviews and especially my IA review to help me revise and
correct my spelling and grammar mistakes.
I was grateful to the IA for commenting and showing me how to correct my
MLA in text citations.
I was a bit intimidated when I read
that we either had to do a brochure or blog.
I got frustrated a few times creating my blog, but in the end, I am
happy with what I accomplished. I
actually feel like this blog that I created can become a sort of journal for
me. I am glad I was forced into learning
how to start one up.
