Max Fish
Glastonbury
June 19, 2024
When I was growing up in Hartford, I always thought of Max Downtown as the ultimate in fine dining. I never went inside, saw a menu, or heard anyone talk about it. But when I walked by on a Friday evening, I saw the men at the tables in their business suits and the women in their evening gowns and thought, “Wow, that’s fancy.”
Fast forward to now, where I’ve learned the magic of the Happy Hour deal, and finally I can experience a little bit of what the “haves” get. I even went to the rarified air of Glastonbury to experience Max Fish, one of the many sister restaurants to Max Downtown operated by the Max Hospitality Group.
I wasted no time when I entered the restaurant, sitting at the cold bar and going for the drink menu. I ordered a pomegranate margarita made with El Jimador reposado, triple sec, sour and POM juice. I wanted something fruity and refreshing, and was pleasantly surprised to find that the drink wasn’t sweet. The pomegranate juice actually added a slightly acidic taste, which balanced well against the tequila.
It was time for the food. The happy hour menu offered almost exclusively seafood dishes, which I was happy about; I didn’t want to go to a seafood restaurant and be relegated to burger sliders and chicken wings. I began with a bowl of clam chowder, one of my favorite foods. The chowder was creamy and stuffed with potatoes, vegetables and chunks of clam. It was lightly seasoned, which allowed me to enjoy the saltiness of the clam and the sweetness of the cream.
Next I ordered one of my other longtime favorites, buffalo shrimp. It used to be my go to dish at the USS Chowder Pot IV, a seafood restaurant in Hartford that closed last year. The jumbo shrimp was fried until crispy and covered generously in buffalo sauce, but not so much that it dampened the crunch beneath the flavor. The sauce itself was the right mix of spicy and flavorful, where the spice heightened the tanginess of the sauce instead of simply blasting my tastebuds with heat.
The “main course” of happy hour selections arrived shortly after I finished the shrimp. I’d ordered the fried rock shrimp taco, which came with mezcal-infused mango salsa. The combination of fried rock shrimp and chunks of mango was an interesting contrast of textures, but I felt like I couldn’t get the right kind of chew going as I ate. I was either biting down too hard on the soft mango or too gently on the crunchy shrimp. Eventually I separated the two; I placed the mango to the side and bit into the taco first, finishing with a bite of the mango like a garnish.
Lastly, I wanted to try something I’d never had before anywhere else. I settled on the Spanish stuffed clam, which includes chorizo, roasted peppers and panko. It was the only dish that I wasn’t fond of. The combination of clam and chorizo resulted in a muddled flavor that didn’t highlight either of the meats. The pepper was lost in the mix as well, so I felt like I was eating more of a bland mix of ingredients than a carefully constructed delicacy.
All in all, I enjoyed the chance to finally eat at a Max restaurant. As silly as it may sound, there are signifiers of success that don’t mean much to some people, but really do serve as symbols to others. Being able to say that I’m a Max diner is one of those for me, and the experience was worth the wait.
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Max Fish is open seven days a week.
Jamil returns to the site of one of his earliest reviews.
