Ever since arriving in SoCal after the most recent leg of my road trip, I haven’t really been getting out to do much. I’ve gone on a few out-of-town trips since then, but while in SoCal, I’ve mostly just been staying put indoors—a stark difference from going on tourist activities, hiking, and exercising at the hotel gym during my travels.
When I do go out, though, it’s usually because someone invites me to do something. Prompted by one of my friends and former co-workers, I decided to head over to the downtown Long Beach area near the convention center to make a visit to the aquarium.
Unfortunately, it seemed like there was an event going on and there was an unusually high volume of tourists in the area, so the aquarium didn’t have any walk-in tickets available, and the next open time slot wasn’t for another few hours. Instead of waiting, we decided to stop by a restaurant and walk around the bay.
The restaurant we chose was Gladstone’s. They started us with a very large portion of free bread.
As the appetizer, I ordered a half-dozen oysters. The size of each oyster was unexpectedly small, so the portion size wasn’t very satisfying. But, at the very least, they didn’t pre-season the oysters and instead put all the sauces on the side, so I was able to eat the oysters plain and enjoy the deep, rich, untarnished flavor of just the oysters themselves.
My friend ordered a Caesar salad with chicken breast.
For my entrée, I selected Hawaiian swordfish.
I feel like it’s difficult to prepare swordfish in a way that makes it particularly unique, but I feel like this restaurant still did a decent job at it. The swordfish tasted like normal swordfish, and the texture was great—it was a good mixture of firm and tender that you expect from nicely-cooked swordfish. However, the uniqueness came from the rice, which had a subtle but noticeable tang to it, which was well balanced by the slight bitterness of the broccolini.
Here are some shots from Shoreline Park and the surrounding areas near the restaurant:
