Tables covered in brown paper and a shiny metal bucket on each — at the Red Sea restaurant in Dearborn, you know immediately that you’re meant to settle in for a messy round of seafood cracking. The bibs are also iconic; the only thing missing is finger bowls, because you will be using your hands.
Though the real Red Sea lies between Egypt and Yemen, and Arab pop plays on the sound system, the restaurant’s menu doesn’t read as particularly Middle Eastern — until you know about the spices, and that it’s halal. The offerings are almost 100% seafood — shrimp, lobster, mussels, crab, fish sticks — with a little chicken, plus the sides you’d get with seafood in New England or anywhere: rice, potatoes, corn on the cob. I heard another table ordering red snapper and learned that snapper and salmon were added after the menus were printed. (By the way, the internet is rife with info about why it’s pronounced “sammon” and not “sal-mon,” even videos.)
My favorite dish at the Red Sea was shrimp soup. Again, turning to the world wide web, you can find recipes for shrimp soup from Thailand, Mexico, Brazil, Ecuador, “the Mediterranean,” and “17 Best Shrimp Soup Recipes,” so there is a lot of leeway here, with star ingredients ranging from coconut milk to red curry paste to tomatoes. The Red Sea’s version is tomato-based and is made with Yemeni spices (owner Aiman Yahya Lutfallah is from Yemen); it’s buttery and though it contained only three shrimp, it didn’t matter, the soup was so multifaceted and luscious. I couldn’t extract data on the spices from the waitstaff or the manager, but research suggests cumin, coriander, black pepper, turmeric, cardamom, and cinnamon or cloves.
My second favorite would be the whole red snapper, whose crust was fried to golden light perfection. It’s so easy to separate the delicate bones from the flesh, and so satisfying to toss your leavings in the bucket as you go.
Some may object to the slow dissection involved in self-deboning a snapper, and it takes even longer to crack and pull out the prized crab and lobster flesh. (There’s a pretty long wait for the food to arrive at your table, too.) Those of us who consider it worth the effort should go with the Red Sea Platter, which includes snow crab, shrimp, mussels, corn, redskins, and rice. It’s the boil-in-bag variety; you choose among sauces that are slathered on before boiling: the Red Sea with Yemeni spices, lemon pepper, Cajun, or butter garlic. Our server said most guests go for “Mix ’Em,” which means all four.
The corn on the cob that comes in the bag is soggy and tasteless, but the other elements emerge as they should, and there are plenty of paper napkins. I counted at least 20 shrimp in my $65 Small Platter (a pound of them), five fat mussels (half a pound), and half a dozen crab legs (half a pound). The $88 Large Platter is a pound of each.
If you’re set on a whole lobster, call first. We were told the restaurant’s vendor had not been coming through lately (this was in November). We did get a boil-in-bag lobster tail, though, this time with lots of garlic butter, and it was as sweet and succulent as lobster is supposed to be.
You can also order grilled or fried shrimp, fish sticks with tartar sauce and fries, and sandwiches of lobster, shrimp, or chicken, the latter all with avocado sauce.
To drink you’ll find Pepsi products, and dessert may or may not be on hand.
Although the Red Sea mostly stays away, thankfully, from tired nautical themes, opting instead for big whimsical wall drawings of sea creatures, I was intrigued by the restroom signage. Ladies get a curvaceous mermaid and the gents a fellow who seems to be a cross between Captain Hook and Captain Ahab. Either Moby Dick or the crocodile got lucky!
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