Bubba’s Shrimp Palace

It was like eating a mouth full of grease. Yuk. If they would not cook the shrimp in lard and get some flavor, they would have a good deal. How about cooking the shrimp and catfish in grapeseed oil. Then get a good batter with some good flavor. The beans and rice tasted like a sixteen year olds first attempt at cooking. Really, they have a great setting. Now maybe they can get the food to match. Party of 4 all thought the same. Will not be returning.

First time to eat here and it won’t be my last! The service was excellent, we had Kyle for our waiter. He was friendly and attentive. The food was excellent and not pricey. The view was beautiful. A great experience overall!

Expensive for what you received. Hush puppies were cold and over cooked. How can you screw up hush puppies? Everything on the menu was at «market» price even shrimp. I didn’t think shrimp was that volatile. It was all just so so. Even the fried shrimp was just OK, lightly breaded and greasy. Not worth $ 25 for all you can eat. I think $ 15 would have been a right price. Waitress was GREAT! Service was fine. Tea cold and refilled many times. Atmosphere great! Would I return? Probably not.

Not a bad place to drink. Their food is pretty much bar food. If you want anything besides greasy or fried food your better go somewhere else.

I’ll get the ugly out of the way — our waitress dump my sweet tea all over me. I was a wet, sticky mess for the entire meal. However, I’m a calm, patient dude, and I tried to not let that put a hamper on my father-in-law’s 60^th birthday dinner. The manager appeared very quickly and was super-​apologetic and of course comped my meal. So, instead of a fish platter, I went with the filet mignon. (That’s what you’d do, right?)
We were out in Kemah and he wanted shrimp. We’d heard great things about their endless shrimp (and at a really great price) — so we ventured away from the boardwalk (and the mediocre food at high prices) and hit up Bubba’s.
We didn’t head out here until after 7:30 — and by the time we got there, it was DARK. Super dark. No streetlights, and this place is out in the boonies, right in the water.
That said, it’s easy to find, it’s well marked, and there’s plenty of parking to match the large number of available seats.
Once entered, it’s quirky. There’s taxidermied animals everywhere. I mean I get it — you’re here to eat dead animals, what better decoration then dead animals?
The bar is there in the middle, the salad bar on the other side near the restrooms, and then a cavernous dining hall.
Prices on stuff was super reasonable — except the seafood. They were well below the chain prices on the boardwalk — but still slightly pricey. The all you can eat fish and shrimp were $ 24.99. I think the 8 piece shrimp was 19.99. Why not go endless?
At our table we had a kid’s popcorn dinner (he inhaled it), a shrimp po-​boy (claimed as one of the better that he’s ever had), a catifsh platter (finished completely), a hamburger and fries (plain — but was pretty good apparently) and a shrimp taco plate (also apparently ‘very good’). So, good food at decent prices. Just too bad it’s WAY out of the way for us.
Oh, there’s a hushpuppy and hand cut/​fried potato chip plate at every table. That’s a bonus.
If you’re in the neighborhood, go ahead.

Diana provided outstanding service tonight. We were a party of eight and she was extremely attentive.
Food was good and the environment was casual.

My brother, niece and I went to Bubba’s Shrimp Palace in San Leon while vacationing on September 10, 2015. The stuffed wildlife that populates the building was off putting, unnerving, depressing, and what it has to do with seafood, I’ll never know. A dead giraffe, lion, and a hippopotamus, among many others, were disturbing.
My brother ordered trout. There was only one left, and the waitress ‘reserved’ it for him. I had the gumbo. I forgot what my niece ordered. The trout turned out to be an old catfish, tough and fishy tasting. I suggested sending it back, but he didn’t and barely ate half of it. $ 19.00 down the tubes just for his dish. The gumbo was mushy and simply OK. We ordered unsweetened tea, a challenge in itself. Someone had poured sweetened tea syrup into all the dispensers, and there was no unsweetened tea to be had. The hush puppies were edible.
It’s overpriced. You can get a fabulous view of the ocean, but you can do that for free just by walking anywhere down there because, hey, you’re by the ocean.
Skip Bubba’s and go to Mario’s Pizza just across the bridge in Seabrook. Fresh food, fabulous eggplant parmesan. We had it three times in three days. It’s independently owned, not a chain. Fantastic.

Usually i start with the food. seams to make sense since i am reviewing a restaurant. BUT,
$ 36 bucks, for a cup of gumbo, some fried shrimp, fries and a diet coke at dinner is pricy. BUT THIS WAS ONLY LUNCH! IF there were something amazing about the food I would say so and be back. But, it was just ok. my meal was cold when it got to me. the shrimp were ok, but sauces lacked flavor. gumbo was bland. the view was nice and i enjoyed being off the beaten path away from Kemah. Just NOT worth the money. sorry

Atmosphere is fun, albeit quirky. Views are good. It goes downhill from there.
Seafood tastes like it came from Sysco, which isn’t bad if I’m in a school cafeteria or the hospital commissary. Salad bar is an embarrassment. Or at least it was during our visit.
Avoid this place. Overpriced and less than mediocre food. Extremely poor management.

This place was great! Amazing views and the food was wonderful. All you can eat shrimp was the way to go free hush puppies and chips were good but don’t fill up on them. Loved the flounder and you could taste how fresh it was. Service was good. I can see how when they get busy the kitchen gets backed up but we had plenty of time to enjoy the views… just don’t eat too much chips! Save room for the amazing seafood!

Yesterday was not our first time at Bubba’s because we’ve always enjoyed it for both the food, the service and the view, but this time we got a bit of a nasty shock: the price of the 8 piece shrimp dinner. If you eat out much, you know that when the restaurant puts ‘market price’ on the menu, you may be in for that nasty shock. That was certainly the case yesterday when we found the our shrimp dinner was going to be $ 19.99 for 8 shrimp and 8 onion rings and the salad bar which is included in the price. Could we have walked out when we discovered the price? Yes, but given the distance we’d traveled and Bubba’s out-​of-​the-​way location we decided to stick it out. Would that the meal had been better to make the price and the drive worth it. Drive out on this lunch with iced tea, tax and tip was $ 53 and change.
So, how was the meal? You are immediately served a basket of homemade potato chips and hush puppies. The chips were good if a bit over salted, but the hush puppies were over cooked and a bit greasy. The shrimp were quite large and tasted good. The onion rings are homemade, but had a burned taste. The rings themselves weren’t burned so I have to assume that they were fried in old grease that was. The salad bar is pretty standard with regard to what’s on it, but most if not all the dressings are homemade. I thought the thousand island dressing I got could have used more taste. The waitress brought red sauce, tarter sauce, Bubba’s secret sauce and a remoulade. All the sauces are good, but the first red sauce must have been sitting for a while because it had turned to a jelly. All-​in-​all, I’d give the meal a grade of ‘C.‘
The last bit you may or may not find interesting. In what I feel to be a misguided attempt to justify their $ 19.95 pricing, there was a card on our table comparing Bubba’s price to that of seafood restaurants in nearby Kemah, specifically Landry’s, Willie G’s, etc. Of course these restaurants are a bit higher, but I don’t see Bubba’s picnic tables, napkins and silverware in buckets, sauces in bottles comparable to the rather more refined white-​tablecloth restaurants they used for comparison. The view in the easier-​to-​get-​to Kemah are just as good and there is much more to do there than just eat. Bottom line: I found this ploy a bit tacky to say the least.
Would I discourage you from going to Bubba’s? No, not by any means. Just be aware of what you’re getting into and plan accordingly. If we go again, it will be for the nearly half price all-​you-​can-​eat shrimp special on Mondays.

Don’t think we will be going back to Bubba’s after our last experience. Service was absolutely terrible! Our waitress was clueless. We couldn’t get a refill on our ice tea, even after asking several times. She brought out the wrong orders then overcharged us. Pretty much everything she could do wrong she did. No apology at all, she just kept wandering around the restaurant oblivious to everything around her. Rant over, on to the review of the restaurant.
Walking in you will be greeted by lots and lots of taxidermy. The décor doesn’t make a lot of sense as it’s a seafood restaurant painted in pastel Caribbean /​beach colors, pinks, greens, blues and yellows but… They have a stuffed giraffe head and polar bear at the front entrance. Looking around you will see everything from lions, hippos, deer, elk, moose mounted on just about every wall. More of something you would see in a safari themed steak house. Just weird.
For my entrée I ordered the shrimp poboy. Seasoned popcorn shrimp on a toasted hogie roll, average. $ 10 without a side. I also order a side of onion rings, overcooked and hard. My grandmother had the crabcake appetizer. One crabcake market price $ 17.00. My daughter and my wife both had the salad with fried shrimp, they said it was ok.
To sum it up, average overpriced food, lackluster service with a side of weird taxidermy. Nope, not going back.

Here’s the real scoop on this place. If you like fried shrimp or fish it’s good, actually real good. It tastes like homemade fried shrimp and I love it. Monday’s they have an all you can eat special for 14.99 which is a decent deal even if you don’t gorge yourself. The service is below par. Service is slow even when you get the all you can eat fried fish. But to be honest it’s what you should expect from a place like this. Youre not paying high priced seafood prices so no surprise really.
The atmosphere is really cool, right on Galveston Bay. Great view out garage doors which are open or closed at times. And it’s fun to walk out by the water after dinner. Really food is a 4 and service is a 2 star. Overall it’s a good place to go from time to time.

This place have a good thing going with the all you can eat for 9.99. Beautiful location and actually very good food. But do to how rude and unconcerned the managers are I will take my money somewhere else.
And before we could leave this location a waiter seen another customer hit my sister new Camaro. She had know information but the color of the car!
Also there is a side door to the kitchen that they stand out of and smoke cigarettes while watching you.

Congrats! This one made it to my top 3 most awful meals I’ve consumed in my entire life. If you are used to boxed/​canned food then this is the place for you. $ 25 for a steak? Sure… But a bad awful chewy steak? Rough. Maybe people in this area are not used to good food or don’t mind throwing money away. At least service was good?

I used to love coming here. We had terrible service. It took forever to get drinks. We actually just did our own refills. I will say I like the location, the food was not cold after we complained, and on Monday nights its $ 14.99 for the shrimp. Worth it on that night, if it was same experience on another night I would have been really disappointed. Eat here if you have alot of time to burn and want to have a great view.

This was our 3^rd trip over to Bubba’s. #protip — If you come for lunch — you can make this your MOTD (Meal of the Day). I ordered the shrimp (8 pieces) dinner — fried. It comes with 2 sides, unlimited chips/​hush puppies and a salad bar. Later that afternoon/​night — I did not eat dinner and felt fine. For local fried shrimp — it is difficult to find better than this.
#protip — ask for Scott. His waiter-​ability is only eclipsed by his personality and wit.
In sum, good: food, service, view. Prices are a little high.

We have been to Bubba’s Shrimp Palace a few times. The food here is hit or miss. In my opinion, the fried items are more miss and the grilled are more hit. It’s not that I don’t like fried food, but it seems to be greasy. For those of you who don’t really care for seafood, the non-​seafood items are limited. I have had their burger but it is average at best. I’m always a little annoyed when they ask if I want mayo or mustard on my burger and then bring it on the side for me to put on. If I wanted to make my own burger, I would have made it at home. The pre-​meal hush puppies and homemade chips are worth eating. I will probably go back but I won’t rush to get there. There are definitely better seafood places in the area.
Please let me know below if you find this review helpful.

Okay so, let me start by saying I’m a vegetarian and was not thrilled that my coworkers wanted to stop in here after a meeting we had in the area. But omg!
Perfect Hush Puppies and chips and that secret sauce!!! And the salad bar… I wasn’t ready. for how surprisingly fresh the veggies were and a decent amount of choices. I was super content.
Also the staff is superb… just perfect. I want to go back just because they were so sweet and welcoming. And I don’t even eat meat! Very cool place

Hush puppies are delicious, and I’m not a fan of hush puppies. Crawfish tails are good too. Good service. Most food is fried. They have a big bar. Nice