Crab-Stuffed Calamari

The crab-stuffed calamari is the first hot appetizer listed on the Catch menu and it immediately caught our eye. It sounded great! When it came, we had that unfortunate incident with the runner but it did not reduce our love for this dish. The appetizer consisted of grilled calamari, stuffed with crab and chorizo, in a broth that tasted to us like a buttery tom yum soup, with chickpeas and peppers. According to the menu, it also had piquillo, mint and chili-lime.

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M's take: I wasn't sure what to expect from this dish based on the menu description. For some reason, I thought it would be rings of fried calamari with crab inside the ring like a donut hole. That doesn't make much sense in retrospect and what we got was so much better. The grilled calamari was cooked perfectly. Sometimes grilled calamari can get too chewy, but these were nice and soft. The crab and chorizo stuffing were excellent, the broth was complex and the vegetables were a perfect complement. In my opinion, the crunchy rice cakes just edged out the calamari as my favorite dish. There was such a diversity of flavor to this dish and it all worked together really well.

A's take: This was a very interesting and tasty dish. The squid stuffed with chorizo and crab was amazing. The squid was so soft and tender and didn't have any chewiness to it. The stuffing was flavorful and had enough salt to balance the broth. The broth really put everything together. As noted, it tasted like a buttery tom yum soup, and all of the vegetables soaked up the flavor.

That's it for the appetizers! Next up, snapper and brussels sprouts.