Chopbiscuit on the road dining review: Skipjack's, Foxborough, MA

Welcome (again) to another delightful ad hoc Chopbiscuit inspection of some of the USA's most frequented saloons, dining halls, dive bars, food trucks, in-room dining and high end bistro's. At least one of your humble contributors is on the road virtually every week and luckily have the opportunity to dine at some of the finest institutions and loathsome watering holes known to man. Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, some deity would permit us to be pirates and savage our nutriment.

We like eating. It fascinates us. We sit and look at the food for hours. We often eat while laying down in my hotel room with a bib in my lap and my outlook calendar open. Eating is our tweeting, except it's much cooler. Food is often made into the celebrity of carnage, which makes us appear to be pompous and scarce in regards to the act of eating itself. You eat because you fuel. We eat because we're hungry. We eat because it's our job. We go out to these establishments to consume their lineups with arrogance.

I then judge it. (Poncho Sinatra style)

Skipjack's
Patriot Place-Foxborough Skipjack's

226 Patriot Place

Foxborough, Ma

Hey folks, it's been a few months since I posted a restaurant review. Outside of the whole "kid" thing, I've been working pretty close to home so I've been dormant on the food review scene. This past week I was in Boston for a work meeting and we collectively decided to give Skipjack's seafood emporium a trial run. Ironically I was with our product development team - so blogging about the experience was less on my mind since it was "work" associated. This was my first time to Patriot Place, a gargantuan lifestyle center surrounding Gillette stadium in Foxborough, MA. As a Giants fan I was in enemy territory, but it was a pretty creative display of retail space.

What I Ingested

As the picture above denotes I decided to go with their Rhode Island Calamari which is fried calamari tossed with garlic butter and spicy peppers. The key to great fried calamari is the breading and how it holds up with any flavors that are rendered in. It should have a nice, golden crisp which denotes the often rubbery texture of the squid. The breading was decent and the cherry peppers added some nice heat. For my entree I chose the fish tacos with grilled pepper–spiced Mahi Mahi, chipotle slaw and avocado mango salsa. Again, decent flavor but could have had some better notes of pepper flavored fish from the seasoning.

One of the elements I did like here was an award winning wine list, which included many decent wines by the glass.  Their schematic was to emphasize on American vintages Skipjack's has been bestowed the prestigious “Award of Excellence” for more than 25 years in a row by Wine Spectator Magazine. Nice job there.

The space was of a typical Big Box food retailer model with huge, scenic environment cues with a glass wine room and slightly open kitchen space. It had a cookie cutter approach to their menu and service that gave it a standard casual dining feel. It felt like a slight upgrade to standard bar seafood fare. Understandably since the restaurant was adjacent from the entrance to Gillette Stadium. A good safe place for the folks that want the 72 inch flat screen blasting your favorite sports team in action while you eat your Lobster Bisque soup. Meh.

1 out of 4 Biscuits