I'd been there a number of times to try the all-you-can-eat Fish Taco special on Tuesdays. To be honest, I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to what I'll call a 'Fish Taco', because I grew up in Southern California on Baja-style fish tacos, which consist of battered and fried white fish with a white sauce made from sour cream or mayo and some shredded cabbage on a soft corn tortilla topped with some thick homemade salsa roja. To me, that is the perfect fish taco. Unfortunately, it's hard to find anything quite like that in Pittsburgh.
The Penn Ave Fish Co fish taco is admittedly far from that, so let's not call it a 'Baja Fish Taco', but it's still good food. The Penn Ave Fish Co fish taco consists of some grilled mahi mahi, tuna, and salmon with shredded cabbage, a creamy sauce and some Sriracha (that red sauce you see at Asian restaurants with the rooster on the bottle) on a hard corn shell tortilla. Part of me does wonder if the special is designed to move the leftover bits of fish from when they fillet big fishes for wholesale orders or other purposes, but the two or three times I've had the fish tacos they were tasty and satisfying. And for $8.99 all you can eat, it's a ridiculously good deal. My record is knocking back about 6 of these guys. Compare that to $7.99 for three tacos off the standard menu.
A while back, I had made a previous attempt to do the all-you-can-eat-sushi special. Unfortunately, they had to cancel it that day because one of their sushi chefs had called in sick, and apparently they need two to handle the crowd if they do all-you-can-eat. Kinda disappointing, but okay. I did order sushi a la carte anyway, and it was fresh and no frills.
Today was my second attempt at the all-you-can-eat-sushi special, but unfortunately I was thwarted again. Apparently it only goes from 11AM-2PM, and I had walked in a half hour too late. This cheap all-you-can-eat-sushi is beginning to be a bit of a white whale. I ended up getting a bowl of salmon noodle soup and a sushi special they called Jumbo Johnny for some inexplicable reason, which was $12.99. The salmon noodle soup was basically like a chicken noodle soup, but with salmon instead. Perfectly acceptable, and the dish was nice with some oyster crackers thrown in.
The Jumbo Johnny consisted of a spicy basil shrimp roll, 2 pieces of eel nigiri, and 2 pieces of Ikura (salmon eggs). I found the Ikura a bit too salty and fishy for my preferences. I can only recall having Ikura once before, so it's possible that's just what it's supposed to taste like. Nonetheless, it didn't really make my mouth super happy. The basil shrimp roll was alright, but the basil flavor was a bit unusual in maki and was definitely the defining flavor of the roll. There was avocado in there, too, but that still didn't entirely balance it out. The eel nigiri, however, was AMAZING. In retrospect, I think I should have gone with one of the more traditional sushi platters because what I really wanted was some simple sushi done remarkably fresh, i.e. like the eel nigiri turned out.
I definitely plan on going back some Wednesday (in time) in order to see if their all-you-can-eat-sushi special is really as good as I hope it might be.
