[It's really, really challenging to take pictures when you're eating here since you're wearing plastic gloves and eating with your hands...good thing the team is happy to take a few snaps for you on your phone/camera!]

Recently, Modern Mississauga visited the new Captain’s Boil on the Queensway in neighbouring Etobicoke since there’ll most likely be one or two landing in Mississauga in 2017.

The short version of what a “boil” joint is this: You eat with your hands, you get messy (well, as messy as you choose with the plastic gloves you’re given to eat with) and you pick your food and spice level. It’s a definite must try if you’re a seafood fan and it’s a cool, unique experience if you’re a first timer, like we were.

The Captain’s Boil’s website is pretty simple to understand for those unfamiliar with the concept.
Their 3 steps are:
1. Choose your catch. Your options are crawfish, lobster, Dungeness crab, king or snow crab legs, shrimp, clams, mussels or chicken slices.
2. Choose your flavor. Pick between Cajun, lemon pepper, garlic sauce or enjoy the best of everything with the Captain’s Boil sauce, which is a combination of all three. 
3. Last up is your heat level. Non-spicy, mild, medium and fire are you options.

During our visit, we had samplings of nearly all available combinations of the three aforementioned steps. While there wasn’t a bad option for us, what we will say is that we particularly enjoyed the lobster in a medium Cajun sauce, fire shrimp in the Captain’s Boil sauce and the lemon pepper mussels in the medium sauce.
Your taste buds and preferences will yield a different result and there are plenty of combinations to experience and enjoy.
As far as add-ons and side orders go, I recommend the okra and corn but there are 17 other options to pick from if my two aren’t your two.
However…the rice was our clear favourite, hands down. I think we went through three portions of it…that’s how delicious it was. We’ve been to other “Boil” restaurants in recent weeks and the rice here is the clear winner when it comes to flavour.

A cool factor about Captain’s Boil is that they use biodegradable bags that are BPA free and FDA certified. Since everything shows up on the table in these bags, they’re going through hundreds of them daily.

The service level during our visit was quite pleasant. The team offered suggestions and recommendations based on our tastes, were friendly without being overbearing and (most importantly for us) they were attentive so that we didn’t have an empty bag on our table for more than a few minutes at most.

Would we go back to Captain’s Boil? Absolutely…and not just for the rice. There’s an inviting and clean atmosphere, fantastic food (that’s shipped fresh to their stores daily!) and strong service. The only thing we’d change is to have them offer another alternate aside from chicken since groups of people may not like seafood or chicken. 

 

They’ve opened multiple locations in the past year and a bit but aren’t growing too fast that the food and service quality suffers...it’s moderate and consistent grown that works these days if done well, which it definitely appears that they’re doing.
With competition close at hand, The Captain’s Boil are doing the right things to introduce this new (well, new-ish as far as mainstream food goes) type of dining experience to the masses.

For more information, head to www.thecaptainsboil.com