Hooters Big Fish Sandwich

I’ve plundered San Diego’s entire fast-food frontier and have tried all their fish sandwiches AFAIK, from McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish to Wienerschnitzel’s Sea Dog. Some chains have stopped offering their fish sandwiches (KFC) and some have left town entirely (A&W). Sigh.

I was skimming YouTube a few days ago and saw two separate reviews of fish sandwiches offered by nationwide chains. Some I’d already written about (Popeyes, Long John Silver’s) but one that surprised me was… Hooters.

AND THE REVIEWS WERE GLOWING.

I figured I’ve already gone down the slippery slope and reviewed Green Burrito’s and Del Taco’s fish tacos—not fish sandwiches per se—and Hooters is not fast food. It’s not even fast casual like The Habit or Slater’s 50/50. But I was curious and figured why not. This would be my first review since the pandemic and it’s a new world out there. Plus, I’d only ever been to Hooters once before. IN MY PRE-MARRIED DAYS.

I was promptly greeted and seated, but given no menu (I had to fetch one off an adjacent table). Their sandwich was advertised as tender cod, hand-battered and fried, served on a big hoagie roll with curly fries. And that’s what arrived. But let’s get into the details.

It arrived naked. Undressed. No shredded lettuce or cabbage. No cheese. No malt vinegar. No pickles. It did come with a packet of Heinz tartar sauce and a halved lemon. So I soaked that fish, slathered all the tartar sauce and had at it.

It was remarkable— meaning, I have some remarks.

It was extraordinarily dull. Vapid. I could not taste the fish past the bread, which was probably 2/3 of the mass of each bite. The hoagie outsized the fish like a third-grader’s foot in a size 14 flip-flop. It was a chore to consume. I even added hot sauce on the last few bites just to make it interesting… but even that was a waste. The Heinz packet revealed that Hooters didn’t even have a housemade tartar sauce. Plus, their “occasionally bent” (not “curly”) fries were cool (as in not hot) and also unseasoned.

The menu was kind enough to provide the calorie count (1,220 cal.) but no fat content. Had to jump online to find the sandwich has 710 fat calories, 79 grams of fat and 17 grams of saturated fat. As if to rub it in, their online menu shows a gigantic fish portion exploding past the perimeter of the hoagie. That wasn’t my experience, and given how bland the fish was, I don’t really know if that would’ve been an improvement.

Hooters’ big dumb sandwich was $15.49 with tax. (They list curly fries at $4.99 so mentally deduct that from the cost for an ala carte price comparison.)