Spencer Makenzie's Fish Company

Spencer Makenzie's Fish Company

806 East Thompson Boulevard
Ventura, CA  93001
(805) 643-TACO

Famous for their fish tacos, this probably wouldn't be a place I'd race to.  I'm not a big seafood lover.  If I eat fish, usually it has to be breaded and lots of sauce on it so the flavor is disguised.   Never the less, we had a coupon for this place and thus, we ended up here.

We pull up to what appears to be an old mobile home style dining car which has been retrofitted to look like a fishing boat.  The exterior looks old but not run-down.  Usually places with visual character tend to have pretty good food.

Although the fish tacos were all the rave, we both opted for the 3 piece fish and chips.    The menu describes it as "Three grilled or tempura pieces served with our Spencer Sauce & Coleslaw.  $9.50"  We also ordered some of their homemade chips and salsa for an additional $2.95.

The service here was top notch for the environment.   Our drinks were kept full and the server explained the menu very well and answered our questions confidently.  He checked in with us to make sure the food was as we expected and just was an all around friendly guy.

The tortilla chips were obviously made right there at the restaurant, although they weren't fresh out of the fryer.  They keep what appeared to be about 6-8 orders of chips underneath a heat lamp waiting for people to line up and order them.   Since we came just before the usual dinner time (4pm), perhaps they were expecting a dinner time rush of chips and wanted to have them ready.  Who knows how long they've been sitting underneath the lamp.   The salsa was delicious!   It really wasn't too spicy hot, but it definitely had a lot of flavor.  I cleaned out the small cup of salsa before we ran out of chips.  The salsa gets an A- on my report card.

After the chips and salsa were devoured, the fish and chips were delivered to the table.  We both ordered the tempura battered fish and it came out as three large pieces of fish sitting atop of mountain of french fries and a side of the Spencer Sauce and coleslaw.  The coleslaw was nothing special, I'm not too much of a coleslaw fan.   The Spencer Sauce was surprisingly good!   It basically is their own version of a tartar sauce.  The fish was perfectly crisp on the outside and very moist on the inside.  I'd say they know what they are doing here.

Another feature of the restaurant is that they make their own hot sauces for your fish.  I tried the 3 they had sitting on the table.  I first tried the Mean Green Sauce.   I like verde sauces, but it seems that I'm pretty selective of which ones I like.  There have been many times where a simple verde sauce is messed up and tastes awful.   This is one of those times.  I would steer clear of the verde sauce here.  The next up was the Caribbean Blaze Sauce.  I'm not fond of sweet sauces and this is one of those sweet n spicy sauces.  I'd say if you like sweet n spicy type sauces, you'd probably like this sauce.  By far my favorite, as expected, was the Habanero Sauce.  You can only put a little bit on each bite because it is HOT!   I put this sauce on two of my fish pieces and they really enhanced the flavor.

Nothing special to write about the french fries except they give you a mountain full of them.  We didn't even finish all of them.  

Overall, I'd say this was a good place for fish!  If I were to come back, I'd probably try their famous fish tacos with the Habanero sauce.  Come here if you're craving fish, they do a pretty decent job at it!

First Impression - 8/10

Service - 9/10

Menu - 8/10

Food - 8/10

Overall - 8/10


Sorry for no photos in this post.  We were kinda hungry and didn't remember to take any pictures until it was too late!