My parents told me about Captain Brian’s a long time ago as the place to get the best (and most reasonably priced) lobster around. After picking up Gabriel’s brand new car at Honda nearby in Bradenton, and before going to spend a fun day at the Ringling Museum, we decided it was the perfect opportunity to try it out for lunch. We parked and went in to find a restaurant and fish market with very dated decor. There is a great, big, fish tank smack in the middle of the room, dark wood tables and chairs and light peach tablecloths and booths.  The rest of the patrons were mostly 70+ years old, and seemed to all be regulars. We were seated in a booth right away and the very warm and welcoming waitress brought us ice water and menus.

We looked over the menus which were filled with great sounding lunch options for around $8-$13 each. Most of them come with a side or two, and I was happy to find out that one of them could be the salad bar. I LOVE salad bars. I easily made my choice of a lobster roll which came with steak fries and cole slaw, and I went up to get my salad. The salad bar was small, but full of fresh lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, chick peas, potato salad, pasta salad, cole slaw, beets, olives, and more. I could probably have made a lunch of that pretty easily but saved room for my highly anticipated lobster roll. It came out soon after I finished my salad and was bursting at the seams with huge chunks of lobster. I’m used to paying far too much for a skimpy rolled filled with more mayo than seafood and this was a VERY pleasant surprise. The lobster itself was amazing. Sweet, perfectly cooked, and lightly dressed with mayo. The roll fell apart almost immediately, but ‘too much lobster’ is really not a reason to fault a falling-apart roll in my book. The thick cut steak fries were a great side, along with the fresh cole slaw.

After we polished off our rolls, we decided to split the banana split pie, mostly because I’m a sucker for a dessert I’ve never had before- and especially when it includes fudge and ice cream in a chocolate cookie crust. It had very thin layers of sliced bananas on top of the crust, then 3 flavors of ice cream, then a thin layer of ooey, gooey, sticky, delicious fudge, and then whipped cream on top with chocolate shavings to complete the deliciousness. YUM. We cleaned our plate super fast with this one.

I must say again that our waitress was really friendly, sweet and warm. I felt like a regular even though this was our first visit. With service like that, it’s no wonder that people return over and over again. I’m sure we’ll be back soon, certainly not for the old-age home type decor, but absolutely for the great service, fair prices and wonderfully fresh seafood.