This is a favorite of ours. We have dinner at Aleathea's at least once, every time we visit. It's one of the must-do's of our trip...and there's a reason why.
Since we arrived a little before six o'clock, we were still eligible for the early bird seating prices. This is such a good deal. I would recommend making a reservation for 5:30, actually, so you have time to peruse your choices. We made our reservation for 6, but because we are seasoned veterans, we glanced at the menu in about 3 minutes and placed our order before the six o'clock cut-off time.
The reason the early bird seating is such a good deal is because you get the choice of a soup or salad, an entree, and dessert, for one reasonable price. When compared to the pricing of even the small portion of the regular dinner items, the early bird is the much better way to go. I think it was about $18 dollars for what I ordered. The same item would usually cost $19 dollars if ordered after the early bird special-hour, and it wouldn't include soup/salad or dessert, either. So, in short, go early.
Since this is one of our favorite places, I knew exactly what I would get. That said, I did take a few seconds to see what was on the rest of the menu. In the end opted for the black bean and corn soup for my starter and Grouper for my main.
This was delicious! It was slightly creamy with tons of black beans, corn, and possibly some red peppers. It had some heat, but wasn't necessarily spicy. I could have eaten a whole bowl of this. But I find that I have to pace myself at these restaurants or else my family will have to roll me out!
Did I mention that they give you bread with roasted garlic and olive oil?
Now you can understand why I have to move slowly through my meal. Add to that the baked brie and fried oysters for appetizers, and I was almost totally full before my fish came!
I am a BIG fan of baked brie. This was especially tasty because slathered between the brie and the bread was raspberry jelly. YUM! Restraint is a virtue. The fried oysters were surprisingly good as well. I've never eaten an oyster before, but give me anything fried and I'm good to go! This tasted a little like fried fish. It wasn't scary or slimy at all (which is how I usually envision an oyster experience) and it had this spicy white sauce drizzled over top of it that gave my bite a little kick! I felt rather adventurous while eating it: so adventurous, in fact, that I didn't get to take a picture. But, you can imagine it....
At long last came the star of the night....the grouper.
The picture doesn't even begin to do it justice. You see, the fish is lightly sautéed, topped with lump crab meat, tomatoes, basil, and-get this- frizzled leaks. Basically just a fancy way of saying...fried onions! All of this is set over a mound of risotto and surrounded with some kind of white wine sauce (perhaps? Not positive, but that's what it tasted like to me). This was and is AWESOME. Since there is so much food involved in this dining experience, we always save half for lunch the next day. It's the best thing, ever. You can't go wrong. You won't be sorry. There are other things on the menu, but don't bother. This is it.
As part of our early bird package, we also got to choose a dessert. I am a chocolate lover, but the only chocolate item on the menu was a chocolate-peanut-butter pie, and I'm not a huge peanut-butter girl, so I went with the lemon layer cake. This, my friends, is where I think I went a little wrong.
It's cute, right? Petite and circular and everything. But the cake part was somewhat dry, and the mousse-middle part was too dense and too acidic for my taste. But we had yummy chocolate chip cookies at home, so after spending some time at the arcade with my cousin, we were not lamenting our lack of dessert at the restaurant. I love Aleathea's and if you're in Cape May, I'd highly suggest you add this to your to-do list. They have delicious food, friendly wait-staff, and beautiful views of the beach.
I had a wonderful first evening of food and family. And now I have a delicious lunch to look forward to tomorrow. :)
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