Phyllis’ Seafood Cafe & Salmon Bake

I ate here not that long ago and will come clean with you. I also was a tourist lured in by the crab legs on a sunny afternoon. And we ate a lot of them. Along with corn on the cob. And beer. And it was all delicious. Too bad it gets so many negative reviews but i must have caught them on a good day. I’d go back.

waiter was helpful and the food was ok

I thought this place would be okay if the service was decent, but it isn’t. Three waiters should be able to handle 10 tables. The food was decent, but it’s a super casual place and just as pricey as some of the nicer restaurants in the area… they served my drink in a paper cup!
Spend the same money and eat at Simon and Seaforts or comparable and you get sooo much more. Better food, better service, nicer atmosphere, etc.

Service and food was dismissal. First visit by wait staff to greet and take beer order. Second stop to bring food which was an elk burger and a standard burger. Third stop was the check… no checking in asking how the meal was. The biggest foul was the ¼″ thick burger that appeared to be from a freezer, and über dry. To top it off, the burger and fries were cold… and the place wasn’t busy. I recommend passing this place up. Dissapointing to say the least.

After reading the reviews I was PISSED that my husband had purchased a Groupon to this place… HOWEVER I am glad I decided to form my own opinion. First off: it is not fancy… you drink from a plastic cup and have a paper place mat.
Everyone around me seemed to be enjoying (or had enjoyed) their meals.
The service took a bit to find us, but was engaging, knowledgeable and friendly.
My husband had a halibut basket, and said it was better than some he’d had here in town, and that their fries were delicious.
The chowder was really good. It wasn’t the best in the universe (and I admit, my husband’s had a lot more «stuff» in it, I must have gotten a scoop from the top!). But it was tasty and satisfying.
I got the blackened/​grilled halibut… it was very tasty and well cooked.
Prices were high, but this is Anchorage folks, not Nebraska… suck it up!

Service slow, table and menu dirty. Very small portions. Should I ever go back to Anchorage, I’ll skip this place.

We never actually stepped foot in here and probably never will. My husband bought an «Alaska Rewards» coupon (like a groupon) and we accidentally let it expire by 2 days. He called to see if we could still use it and were told a flat out «NO». They wouldn’t even let us use it for the price we paid, without the discount.
Bad business. Will not even try to go.
I appreciate Cindy’s reply to most of the bad reviews, but please fix your customer service so people want to step foot in your restaurant. We are locals and will never bring or send guests here with the management like it is.
You got our $ 15 dollars. I hope it was worth it.

Not particularly happy with this place. The service isn’t that great and the food is pretty terrible. We have eaten here twice the first time I ordered crab cakes and you could tell they were the frozen kind from Sam’s club or something. The second time we returned was only because of a groupon we purchased and got king crab legs deeply discounted. Overall I would not eat here again many other places in Anchorage much worth your time.

I have lived in Alaska my entire life and always meant to try here but never seemed to remember to. When a groupon came out I saw it as a great opportunity to force me to. God I wish I hadn’t. First of all they were out of ALL form of crab except for king. Out of most fish, seemingly everything I tried to order and ALMOST out of lemons. The chowder was weak. I ended up with the king crab which was cooked awful. I paid them $ 30 to cook & screw up crab for me. Even though they werent that busy and closing in the next couple hours and had some lemons they refused to give me a wedge or two for my butter dip. I will never return to this place. Don’t waste your time or money.

«Oh, wow. they didn’t overcharge!». that’s my lasting impression of this place.
We had dinner plans (and this was a late late lunch) — so we went easy on the orders.
… Shrimp Wrap — They give you a TON of fresh shrimp wrapped in a thin crispy wrap. The unfortunate thing about this is that they tried to toast it. and it got damaged (charred) in the process. It was the first thing I noticed and left a bad taste in my mouth (literally and figuratively).
… Clam Chowder w /​bread bowl — Not impressed with places that burn /​char their bread bowl. Yeah… the chowder was thin but didn’t seem to skimp too much on the fixins.
The ambiance and service is very chill/​casual/​relaxed — kinda like
you’re eating at an ocean front… except that you’re not (quite the opposite) LOL.
… I think this place just needs a lesson in toasting and not charring their bread items.
They seem to have A LOT of beer — maybe that’s what people come here for…

DONT EAT HERE. DO NOT EAT HERE. TOURIST TRAP ALERT! If you do decide to eat here, don’t eat, just sit under one of them tablets with the umbrellas & maybe have 1 beer & people watch…
My boss gave the girls in our department a $ 60 groupon to use since it expires on the September 1^st and he flew out of town to visit family. I was pretty discouraged because of all the bad reviews I read on here but it was a free, paid dinner so we worked with it. We ordered clam strips & the waitress bought out a plate of what looked like batter strips, hard, greasy pieces of supposed clam strips with a side of tarter sauce & cocktail sauce. She bought out reindeer sausage too with some bread & said it was on her… hmmm. The reindeer sausage was better than the clam strips needless to say. Wish she would’ve just told us not to order the clam strips.
Anywho, 2 of my girlfriends ordered burgers that were overcooked & practically burnt, my other girlfriend ordered the cheapest steak & got a small steak with some corn. Not cooked medium rare like she had ordered & it was very thin anyway but she was too afraid to send it back so she ate it & said it didn’t taste horrible. As for me I got the prawn basket & ordered it sauteed with their seafood chowder as a side because the waitress recommended it. She said the prawns were pretty big. They looked like just little shrimp I could’ve bought and sauteed myself at home. The chowder wasnt horrible but Ive had way better making homemade chowder and at the Glacier Brewhouse. Wine choices include Columbia Crest & Robert Mondavi. One glass of wine equalled about a sip of a regular sized bottle you can buy at Brown Jug or anywhere else. My girlfriend had a glass. The rest of us drank water. All the tourists around us seemed to be eating the $ 40-​$ 50 Alaska king crab plates that they could not have been getting full off of. The portions looked small. There was no way we were gonna order the outrageously priced crab…
What I LIKED about the whole experience was sitting in a kind of patio looking setting and people watching while catching up with close friends and coworkers. Love my girls!
What SUCKED? ?being up to about 3 in the morning because I had food poisoning. Couldve been the one piece of fried clam strip I had, I think it was the shrimp that wasnt fresh and/​or the seafood chowder. I was miserable at work today but the day flew by. It had to be food poisoning. Both girls who had the burgers didnt feel so well today either but they weren’t up to 3 in the morning with their stomach turning and turning :(
TAKE YOUR MONEY ELSEWHERE.

Do not eat here. I repeat, DO NOT EAT HERE. This place is a complete tourist trap and survives off people who are only in Anchorage a short time. My boyfriend and I are locals, but had never been. I happened upon a $ 60 Groupon so we decided to check it out. I had read the previous Unilocal reviews so I didn’t go in with high hopes. The atmosphere sucks and on a damp night like tonight the whole place just feels wet. (It’s a tent, basically.) Not wanting to spend more than the Groupon was worth after reading all of the bad reviews, I got the crab cake dinner ($ 17) and my boyfriend got the rib eye ($ 25). I added a ceasar salad to my meal for an additional $ 4. The salad came out and it was flat and spread out to make it look much bigger than it really was. Barely worth an extra $ 2, definitely not worth $ 4. The crab cakes were OK but they were very obviously frozen. I opted for red potatoes instead of fries and I received 2 small boiled red potatoes cut in half. No seasoning, no nothing. The small corn on the cob was very juicy and probably the best part of the meal. My boyfriend’s steak was the thinnest piece of meat I have ever seen. He ordered it medium and it came out almost beef jerky. He sent it back and they made him another one, but honestly nothing was fixing that cheap piece of meat. I know that they cater to tourists who are stuck downtown for a night or 2 without cars, but it’s just not worth it. Your money would be better spent at the food court in the 5^th Ave mall across the street.
Our server was very attentive and friendly and I know it’s not her fault that the food is terrible.

I hate to pile on, but this was the only bad restaurant experience that we had in Anchorage. Overpriced and not good at all. Service was poor as well.

It wasn’t the best place but it wasn’t bad. The food could have been a little more exciting. It was quite over priced considering the amount of food you are given and the quality of it. As a visitor, for some reason this place seemed to catch our eye as if it was a restaurant that locals go to. If only we had checked the reviews about this place before stepping in. We were just so hungry that we did not care. So now we know. on our way back to the car, we seen the restaurant ORSO… definitely trying out that place!

Total disappointment.
Driving by, it looked like a cute corner seafood café.
When the concierge at our hotel recommended it for dinner, I thought it was a good sign.
When we got there, my expectations dropped. We sat outside in their tented area (plastic chairs and dirty tables) because it was a relatively nice evening.
The food was extremely overpriced. $ 23 for salmon without any interesting preparation, an overboiled piece of corn and three red potatoes… really? $ 17.95 for reindeer kielbasa (I’m not 100% sure it was anything other than pork) with a wipe of bbq sauce, overboiled corn and three red potatoes… ouch.
It’s touted as a «locals spot» but the prices and quality reek of a tourist trap.

Should of checked here before going in. We like many others before us, were fooled by their all you can eat sign. We were so looking forward to the all you can eat crab legs after a long drive from Denali. When we got to the restaurant, we looked a little more closely and was so disappointed that the all you can eat only from 4p to 6p and 9p to 11pm. It was 6:30pm.
We decided to try it anyway. Big mistake and big disappointment. The crab was over boiled and the shell was so soft that when you try to crack it, it would just bend. The corn that came with the plate tasted like it had been soaking in hot water all day.
After my meal here, I don’t want to eat crabs for a long, long time.
$ 73.90 + tip was the total for 2 and I wanted to barf after my meal.
Oh by the way, I couldn’t remember seeing the name of the restaurant until I sat down and saw it on the menu. So unfortunately you couldn’t Unilocal it before hand. The all-​you-​can-​eat sign is gigantic though.

I agree with Alisun, if I could give this place zero, that’s what I’d do. Over-​priced, none-​to-​clean, surly service — oh yeah, and truly poor quality. If I’d had a jar of peanut butter and a spoon I’d have had a better dinner.
Did they get anything right?
No waiting line. Of course, there was no one to seat us. All-​in-​all, a place to be avoided.

If I could give it zero stars, I would.
It must keep open by advertising the one thing you won’t find anywhere else in Anchorage: all you can eat crab legs.
Unfortunately those crab legs are MEALY and horribly overboiled. I knew crab legs could be tastleless, but I’ve never had crab leg meat that actually tasted bad. In that regard, Phyllis’s was a first for me.
Their «homemade» clam chowder was straight from a can… Sodexo’s, I’d bet (the food corporation that stocks nursing homes and prison cafeterias). I should know, I’ve had experience serving up the same thing at a community college lunch room. If I thought the stiff, freezing cold bread bowl would redeem that dish, I quickly learned otherwise.
The «shrimp basket» was 5 measly shrimp served on a pile of previously frozen french fries. I’m sure the Bear’s Tooth and the Snow Goose aren’t hand cutting their potatoes in the back room either, but I got a mountain of deliciously golden brown and crispy fries with my $ 15 dollar burger at both places, and that’s only a dollar more than I paid at Phyllis’s for something I could get at Long John Silver’s.
My friend ordered the «King Salmon» special for $ 30 and was expecting something king-​like. He got a slab of fish smaller than a 3X5 postcard, and it tasted like it was sprinkled with Old Bay and microwaved.
If this review sounds scathing, it’s because it is. This is the first bad review I’ve ever written on Unilocal,and dining at this establishment actually made me angry, it’s such a blatant rip off. I knew as soon as we sat down that something was up, but I thought the outdoor seating and sunny weather might liven up the night. Unfortunately the speaker next to our table literally played (I am not kidding) ELEVATOR MUSIC throughout the entire meal. ELEVATOR MUSIC. Extremely loudly.
There are some choice places to eat in Anchorage. This is not one of them. Go to Wendy’s instead and get the fish filet instead.

This is a tourist trap, because I can’t imagine it staying in business for any other reason. Do other Alaskans actually eat there?
We ate there twice. Both times, lousy service. The first time the food server was uninterested in us and the second time the food server had a bad attitude. Both times the food was not very good and Way overpriced.
Lastly, on one of our visits we took a 90-​year-​old woman who really wanted crab legs. We were some of the only patrons in the place so they weren’t very busy. When our very senior friend said she wanted crab but couldn’t crack the shells, waiting for the server to offer to have the shells cut open in the kitchen, he just looked at her, said something like, «Huh» and went on his way. She didn’t order the crab legs. We offered to do it for her, but she declined, I think because the server embarrassed her. I’ve been a food server and I was appalled that the young man didn’t know good customer service or to be helpful and respectful to a very old woman.
Will never go back.

Food was absolutely terrible — overcooked and bland. The waiter was extremely rude. The kitchen was moving at a sloth’s pace. And it was way overpriced.
I do have a question though? Why is the seafood here so expensive?! I mean they were serving ALASKAN king crab legs ($ 50) that were way more expensive than it would be back home on the east coast. I just dont get it. Wouldnt it be cheaper bc it’s in Alaska? Maine lobster in Maine is really cheap! Please explain this to me.
I should have listened to the reviews and avoided this spot bc I agree that it must only be here due to tourist. I only went here bc the concierge at the Hilton told me that it was one of the best seafood spots in town and that the prices were most reasonable. Lies. All lies!