You don’t want overwhelmingly loud music. You don’t want a wall of televisions with sports, sports and more sports. You want to be able to share a meal and catch up.
Why does the Black Pearl work? There’s something warmly nostalgic about the decor; the planks and the fishing nets give you a feel of the old seafood emporiums of decades ago. And the updated menu has a lot of choices for family-style eating. Get a full lobster — grilled or baked — for sharing, served with potatoes. Speaking from experience, getting the family together to take apart a lobster becomes a team effort in shell cracking. Remember that you can’t leave any little bit of the succulent meat behind. The seafood tower, with crab, oysters, prawns and lobsters, is another family project waiting to happen.
The great thing about seafood is that it’s interactive — the cracking, the fishing out of the meat. It’s a great thing to do over conversation. And, in an era of short attentions spans, that’s a great thing.
10132 104 St., 780-705-7887, blackpearlseafood.ca
This article appears in the February 2020 issue of Avenue Edmonton
