Chicago (Seafood) - Half Shell

Half Shell
676 W. Diversey Parkway, Chicago, Illinois; Phone 773-549-1773
Date of Review: July, 2008

In the heart of Lakeview right on busy Diversey Parkway, Half Shell is a little gem that serves excellent, reasonably priced seafood. This tiny restaurant has a basement entrance and the entire restaurant is located in the basement. It is like a little dungeon inside and it has the feeling of an Irish bar where you slip inside and walk out after many beers not knowing what hit you. In this cavernous basement though, they churn our large quantities of impressive seafood. To be honest, after walking into the place, you would never think they could serve up seafood of the quality that they do.

There is a dining area for maybe 30-40 inside the restaurant (including the bar) and they have a nice patio out front that nearly doubles the size of the restaurant during the summer. On our visit, we sat out front and enjoyed the weather.

While the menu does offer a few non-seafood items, you are not coming to Half Shell to eat anything but seafood. For appetizers, we had the half-shell sashimi, steamed mussels and sauce and crab cakes. The crab cakes were 2 large typical fried crab cake patties. I found them to be decent, but nothing out of the ordinary. The mussels were a generous portion but again nothing special. The garlic butter sauce the mussels were served with didn’t add much to the dish. The sashimi plate was excellent. It featured 7 thin slices of fresh and tasty salmon, 2 raw oysters and 2 pieces of shrimp cocktail. This was great value with a decent amount of fresh seafood.

For entrees, Mike and Ivy had the steamed King Crab legs. Served atop a generous portion of basic French fries and with a cup of coleslaw, these were the hit of the meal. The crab legs were huge and the meat was tasty and, importantly, very easy to get out of the shell. There wasn’t too much work involved which is always a concern for me with crab legs. The garlic butter sauce went well with the sweet crab meat and you cannot beat the value (26$) for the quality of the crab. It seemed everyone in the restaurant ordered the crab legs except for me. I had the deep fried scallops which were served atop fries with coleslaw. The scallops were large, tender and lightly fried. The portion of scallops was large and they were tasty.

Half Shell offers excellent value for the quality and quantity of food the offer. At $26.40 for jumbo King crab legs, you cannot beat the price. Our total bill including tax and tip came out to $180 and that included 3 appetizers, 3 entrees, 5 beers and 3 glasses of wine.