10 Restaurant Chains That Use The Lowest Quality Seafood, According To Customers

We can compromise on the quality of many things in life, but seafood isn't one of them. There's nothing worse than preparing to chow down on a plate of tasty shrimp, decadent lobster, or fried fish and receiving a plate full of rubbery, dry, or slimy disappointment — especially when there's no shortage of restaurants out there serving fresh alternatives.

Some chain restaurants fall into this category, only serving fresh, never-frozen seafood that ticks all the boxes. However, others fall into the trap that impacts all sections of chain restaurant menus: prioritizing affordability and quantity over quality. Importing seafood en masse to locations nationwide means that few (if any) outlets are receiving fresh catches, which is near-impossible to hide even with lashings of seasoning, salt, or sauce.

Fortunately, we're pretty passionate about good seafood. That's why we've combined our own experience with reviews from disappointed diners to figure out which businesses aren't up to scratch in that department. Here's our list of the 10 chain restaurants consistently accused of serving low-quality seafood.

For over 50 years, Captain D's has sought to offer high-quality seafood at affordable prices. While that second part is definitely still true today, we're not so sure if that first part has withstood the test of time. The chain — which currently boasts over 500 locations nationwide — has its fair share of disappointed customers, many of whom have claimed that Captain D's iconic fried fish tastes a little (or a lot) short of being fresh.

"The fish was maybe reheated," said one unimpressed customer on Tripadvisor, also adding that they were "done with this over priced frozen fish stick, nasty nugget food." Another customer on Tripadvisor who had ordered the catfish claimed that it "actually tasted like rotten fish smells" and that there were "too many other good restaurants in [the] area to settle for frozen, rotten food."

While it would be wrong to say that the chain doesn't have its fans, we will double down on the quality issue here by pointing out that Captain D's sources a lot of its seafood from fish farms. Its catfish is farmed from Alabama and Mississippi, while its tilapia, white fish, and salmon are farm-raised. Farmed fish have a reputation for being of lower quality than wild-caught fish, with farmed tilapia, in particular, earning a track record for being less nutritious than its non-farmed counterpart.

Golden Corral touts itself as an unlimited buffet, which is great if you're ravenous but not so great if you're after copious amounts of high-quality food. There's a reason why buffet restaurants can afford to plate up so much food on the cheap — and it's not because they're feeling extra generous. The chain has racked up complaints about its quality, with seafood often taking the brunt of this disappointment.

One of the most frequent sore points is the texture of its fish. "It was breaded and fried properly but the inside was nothing more than a mush of a fillet," said one customer on Tripadvisor. While we can't say with certainty that the chain uses frozen fish (although we'd be shocked to discover otherwise), this can be a surefire sign, with seafood that's frozen for a long time often deteriorating in quality. Others on the Tripadvisor website have labeled it as "nasty," and they have complained that the shrimp tastes "off flavor."

When you start to dig into what allegedly goes on behind the scenes at Golden Corral, this disappointing quality makes sense. Back in 2015, a former employee claimed that they were fired after exposing the conditions in one restaurant's kitchen, including the fact that fish was being left out in high temperatures and cooked despite its increasingly bad smell. Of course, this isn't representative of all restaurants, but it's still alarming to hear that fish was maybe cooked in these conditions at even one location.

Don't get us wrong, we're not knocking the overall quality of the Joe's Crab Shack dining experience. With its kitschy beachfront decor, elaborate seafood boils, and iconic Shark Bite cocktails (seriously, gold stars to whoever came up with blending the bloody drama of "Jaws" with an alcoholic beverage), you'd be hard-pressed to eat a more entertaining meal. Our issue lies more with the actual meal, which doesn't always live up to its surroundings.

As per some customers, Joe's Crab Shack often serves up food that tastes like it's been cooked in bulk from the freezer, not the sea. One Tripadvisor user claimed that they "already knew that the oysters were frozen just by the quality and experience with eating and chucking [their] own oysters," while a Reddit user slammed its offerings as tasting like "frozen seafood bought from the discard pile in bulk, deep fried in cheap grease."

Despite "crab" being in the chain's name — and Joe's Crab Shack insisting that it "never buys or serves underweight Stone Crab claws" — a common consensus is that there just isn't enough meat on the crab legs. The fish and chips, lobster, and shrimp have all also been singled out as letdowns. We're not saying that every guest has the same experience, but there does seem to be a degree of disappointment from restaurant to restaurant.

When you think of Applebee's, odds are you picture mozzarella sticks and burgers, not seafood. The chain's menu features a small but significant seafood section, offering customers the choice between salmon, shrimp, and fish and chips, although some likely wouldn't mind if they scrapped these options completely.

Reviewers have called out all three options for tasting subpar — and, in their opinion, cooked from frozen — at Applebee's restaurants. "Fish and chips were almost cold and tasted worse than fish sticks from frozen foods supermarket shelf," said one particularly passionate reviewer on Tripadvisor, while another questioned, "Why would a Florida restaurant use frozen shrimp? Why not cook it until it is at least warm?"

Applebee's employees have previously alleged that the vast majority of its menu is pre-frozen, so there's a chance there could be some veracity to these claims. Whatever the reason for its apparently lackluster quality, it's not just a handful of customers who feel this way about Applebee's seafood. The chain tied first with Cracker Barrel in a Mashed survey of chain restaurants with the worst quality seafood, with a whopping 43% of participants slamming its offerings. Yikes.

As previously mentioned, a Mashed survey once found that Cracker Barrel tied first with Applebee's for restaurants with the worst quality seafood. Similar to its co-winner (or to be more accurate, co-loser), its seafood offerings are pretty limited, with just catfish, shrimp, and a fish fry on the menu. While it previously also offered haddock, this was discontinued back in 2019.

As with the bulk of Cracker Barrel's menu, these all come fried (although you can request for the catfish to be grilled). That doesn't exactly scream "high-quality" — and neither do the reviews. While the catfish has a few dedicated fans, Cracker Barrel's shrimp doesn't get much love from customers. "The fried shrimp [was] terrible, the smallest shrimp I have ever seen served with the tails on," said one Tripadvisor reviewer, with the diminutive size of the seafood in general being a common complaint.

Again, we can't say for sure where Cracker Barrel sources its seafood or whether it's frozen. However, considering the fact that the chain has admitted that it can't source its shrimp domestically due to the sheer amount its restaurants require, we have an inkling of what the answer may be. Employees have also claimed that a significant portion of Cracker Barrel's newer stores have switched to selling pre-prepared food, which would suggest that freezing plays a role.

Long John Silver's has been doling out fast food seafood since 1969 and was once upon a time home to the unhealthiest menu item (and by default the unhealthiest seafood) in America. At least, that's what the Center for Science in the Public Interest said in 2013. Its "Big Catch" platter meal combined fried fish, hush puppies, and onion rings to offer up a combined 33 grams of trans fat and nearly 3,700 milligrams of sodium. This may have been scrapped a month after its very public callout, but the chain's menu remains high in fats and salt and retains a reputation for greasy offerings.

Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean the fish is low quality, but it does play a huge part in why some customers are left unimpressed — especially by the shrimp. "Shrimp was tiny, fish was dried and very thin, more batter than fish. Extremely greasy," wrote one Tripadvisor reviewer, while another noted that "the shrimp was too rubbery to eat." This rubbery texture is a big issue for multiple customers across multiple menu items despite being somewhat masked by the thick breading. Long John Silver's is pretty transparent about the fact that it flash freezes its fish – which, done properly, shouldn't result in a rubbery feel. Instead, a rubbery finish is typically the result of overcooking.

If you're looking for fine cuisine, we doubt TGI Fridays is your first destination. While its hefty portions of burgers, wings, and even the now-retired endless appetizers (RIP) are all perfectly passable, its relatively small seafood menu (which differs from location to location, but typically consists of shrimp, fish and chips, and grilled salmon) often falls short for many customers.

A common frustration with low-quality shrimp is its size. TGI Fridays has decried the small shrimp on offer at the chain, with one Tripadvisor noting that they were "swallowed up by way too much breading and grease, obviously in an attempt to hide the little shrimp." Customers have also found fault with the seafood due to the fact that it tasted like it had been frozen. As one reviewer so eloquently put it, "You're better just [grabbing] something out the freezer [because] that's what they did." They're most likely not far off the mark. As per TGI Fridays, its salmon is at least shipped in frozen from a producer in Norway. One of the shadier details about the TGI Fridays menu is that a significant portion is allegedly microwaved (something the chain didn't deny when asked by Business Insider), which isn't exactly indicative of gourmet seafood.

Back in 1995, "Forrest Gump" took home six Academy Awards for its sweet (and perhaps a little bit saccharine) tale of a kind-hearted man from Alabama (Gump, played by Tom Hanks) who stumbles into several important historical events. Little did we know that its biggest real-world impact would come a year later when Rusty Pelican Restaurants and Paramount Pictures opened the first Bubba Shrimp Company restaurant in Monterey, California, inspired by the business Gump opened in the memory of his friend Benjamin Buford "Bubba" Blue in the film. To this day, it's a fantastic novelty — even if it's not the highest quality seafood restaurant in the world.

Customers have complained that the fish simply does not taste fresh. "It's not local, it's days old at best," explained one Reddit user. "Not very tasty when you consider the other options." Meanwhile, a customer on Tripadvisor noted that they "told [the server] the fish was awful and her response was '[yeah] I've heard that a lot about the fish.'" As another Reddit user said, "Why would you choose to go there when there are literally dozens of fresh local seafood places that aren't corporate owned?"

Considering that shrimp's in the name, you'd at least hope that it boasts stronger reviews than the fish and chips, salmon, and crab that bulks out the rest of the menu. Sadly, that's not the case. Reviews often call it out for tasting old, having a tough texture, or feeling rubbery.

With a menu stacked with burgers, steaks, and fried chicken, Chili's is the definition of American comfort food. However, its seafood hasn't exactly received the most comforting reviews, with many left disappointed by the shrimp and salmon used in several dishes.

To put it bluntly, there are some pretty damning accounts out there about eating seafood at Chili's. As one Tripadvisor user recalled, they were told outright that their salmon needed to defrost properly before they could start eating. "Everybody got their meal except one member of our party [whose] salmon didn't arrive and their excuse was, 'Sorry I didn't know there was a problem with the fish, we didn't defrost enough.'" Not exactly what you want to hear when paying good money for your fish.

They're not the only ones to call out Chili's for serving frozen seafood. "The avocado was brown and the shrimp tasted like they were frozen," another reviewer said after receiving their tacos. Size and quality have also proven problematic. Despite the pictures on the menu featuring a decent-sized portion of shrimp, one Tripadvisor user was served "five tiny crustaceans that could easily be mistaken for krill." Even Chili's own employees have warned customers off ordering the seafood, which says it all.

Personally, if we have to don plastic gloves and a bib to eat a meal, we want it to be worth it. Opinions are pretty mixed on whether The Boiling Crab meets this requirement. While the chain's proven popular enough since opening its first Texas location in 2004 to expand internationally to Australia, China, and Saudi Arabia, some of its domestic customers remain deeply unimpressed.

Some feel like the quality of its seafood boils has gone downhill in recent years. "No MEAT AT ALL in these tiny little Snow Crab replicas," raged one Tripadvisor reviewer, before fondly recalling that "the KING CRAB Legs used to be big meaty and succulent." There's no shortage of reviewers with a similar sentiment, with some taking to Yelp to denounce the decline in quality of its shrimp and the fact that their clams were close to empty shells. Others have called out the lack of flavor, with a Tripadvisor user claiming that the fresh Gulf oysters "were tasteless, quite a feat unless they had been refrigerated for a week" and that the crab "tasted like freezer burn." All in all, not the most promising appraisals.