Troll's Fish and Chips

I've heard a lot about Troll's, mostly good things, but there seems to be a lot of bad reviews of this place so I had to actually sit down and try it out for myself.  Sometime last year, I had some of the fish and chips here from their take-out window and it wasn't too bad....really greasy as with any other fish and chips place, but not bad.  Yeah, everything was soggy by the time I got to the park bench where we were going to eat, but that also wasn't a surprise.  Fish and Chips are best had, fresh out that bubbling vat of oil.

It was Sunday evening when I came back from Nanaimo with my iaido sensei (just attended a gasshuku in Parksville).  Troll's didn't appear as busy as the last time I saw it, but still, the hostess warned us that it would be about 1/2 wait time from the time we ordered our food to the time it would be served.  Nice of them to give us the heads up if they were understaffed, but in all honesty, the restaurant wasn't that packed as I had seen before.

The salmon with house salad....now, when I go to fish and chips, I generally order Cod...I have no idea why halibut is more expensive because it doesn't necesarily taste better than cod.  In fact, I find that most of the time, the halibut is dry and overcooked...cod is always moist.  Salmon, most places have no idea how to cook salmon....my favourite method of preparing salmon is sashimi....overcook salmon and it's heinous.  In any case, my sensei ordered salmon and the house salad as he tried it before and said it was really good.  I tried a bite and to my surprise, Troll's managed to make the salmon come out perfectly.   

Salmon with Caesar salad.

Cod and chips, with an extra order of deep fried oysters.  I ordered this, but after sampling the salmon, I might just give it a try the next time I'm at Troll's.  The fries were pretty much your run-of-the-mill fries, nothing special, the cod was tender and moist as I expected and the oysters were fantastic.

The wait time didn't seem as long as they warned us about, but I could see this place easily being understaffed during peak periods.  The staff were pretty friendly and it was nice of them to warn us, even though the actual wait time wasn't that bad.  The food was pretty good and the portions were enough to fill me up.  The prices however were a bit inflated if you dine in - $13.00 for two peices of cod and chips, and if you want to sub in a salad, it'll be about $2.00 extra.  I guess they figure their reputation is enough to charge such prices, but if you ever find yourself out in Whiterock, check out Moby Dick's.  For $13, you get two huge peices of fish, a large bucket of their house tartar sauce, and here's the kicker - an extra peice of fish.  Whatever you order, they always give you an extra peice, and it's not just a tiny little half-size thing, it's a whole peice...the portions at Moby Dick's are huge as it is, but the extra piece is always welcome.  So, you could order a single piece for $9.40, and get two pieces, which are still bigger and tastier than Troll's. 

Yes, it's obvious I prefer fish and chips from Moby Dick's, but if I were in Horsehoebay again, and the was no line up, I'd probably visit Troll's again and have their salmon and chips.

$9.40 vs $13.00