A night with Gerry, part I: fried fish

By Todd Stadler · Sunday, January 21, 2001 12:41am

Gerry and I were trying to think of where to eat, and had decided on "something Asian" somewhere on Sandy, in honor of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. We weren't really particular, and it helped us narrow down the choices in the dinner game to the mere twenty or thirty Asian restaurants on that street.

And then it suddenly occurred to me that where we really should go was Skipper's, the apparent Northwest equivalent of Long John Silver's. I'd never been there, and there are precious few people I know that would eat fast food fried fish with me, so I figured I'd seize the moment. Well, it turned out to be a pretty dismal experience, really. I was disappointed with their lack of ComboTek(tm), in which LJS clearly excels. LJS has all manner of fried things you can consume in varying arrangements - fries, hushpuppies, "fry" (the fried batter they use to soak up grease), shrimp, clams, fish, and chicken - the latter two of which are often indistinguishable. Skipper's only had one mega combo that approached this level of diversity. But they did have windows that looked like portholes. No buoys or ship steering wheels or anything like that, though. In fact, it was so stark and gray on the inside that it actually reminded one of a Navy ship, not that I find that to be pleasurable in any way. I also complained that they clearly didn't abide by the admittedly voluntary rules set by the Advisory Committee on Maritime Eateries which state, in part, that bathrooms "shall be labelled as 'Buoys' (for men) and 'Gulls' (for women)". They did, however, have two video games there - Asteroids Deluxe and Pole Position II, apparently the sequels to two very popular games, although the sequels were quite old by this time. This to me says something about Skipper's.