Review: Catch 22 Seafood Lounge in Belleville

Catch 22 Seafood Lounge, 22 Mascoutah Ave., Belleville, Ill., 618.233.8822, tapsncorks.com

Stuck as we are between two coasts and a gulf, the topic of seafood is always an issue for Midwesterners: How fresh is fresh? Is it frozen at sea (FAS)? Does the restaurant have its own terminal at Lambert? All things considered, St. Louis suppliers and restaurants do a pretty good job of sating our aquatic appetite with decent seafood. But that’s St. Louis, with its big airport and volume business. What about across the river in, say, Belleville?

Luis and Marisol Ibarra think they have the answer for their new “seafood lounge,” Catch 22: serve only flash-frozen fish from Alaska. The couple recently opened Catch 22 down the street from their other establishment, the club Blue Agave. The name is no literary homage to Joseph Heller; “Catch” means seafood is served, “22” refers to the street address. There isn’t anything particularly wrong with FAS fish, which is cleaned, processed and flash-frozen on the boat within two hours of catch. The technology is now so advanced that FAS fish tastes better than fish that’s been out of the water for a few days, shipped on ice and sitting around in cold storage for another day (or two or three). Many restaurants serve it as an adjunct when fresh is unavailable or prohibitively expensive.

So when I learned that Catch 22’s seafood concept was built around frozen fish, I wasn’t terribly concerned. The real catch was everything else. Well, not everything. The actual lounge area is quite inviting: Several large leather couches and armchairs, cozy end tables and warmer lighting make a convivial setting for sipping one of the many craft beers or something from the eclectic and reasonably priced wine list. And that mahi-mahi lettuce cup appetizer was pretty good: crunchy, cold, fun. Never saw that before. The fish tacos for lunch (you can’t get them for dinner) are fine: two soft tortillas filled with cod breaded in spicy tortilla crumbs and crunchy slaw.

But we aren’t dining in the comfy, softly lit lounge. We’re in the cavernous, loud dining hall, err, room, with its uneven lighting and high ceiling, sitting on chairs fancifully covered in black stretch fabric. For a restaurant shooting for upscale dining, this room is just too big and wide open for any semblance of intimate dining. The color scheme doesn’t help: misty, light blue walls, dark red ceiling. Nothing about this room makes you want to linger.

Focusing on fish, we passed on the pastas (all with seafood) and beef dishes (all prime grade). Crab cakes can be a good beginning. But what to make of these four half-dollar-sized, thin discs consisting of more breadcrumbs than crab, mushy, boring and accompanied by a sweet red pepper sauce that distracted more than contributed? A Spicy Fish Roll had more herbs and green peppers than fish wrapped in that deep-fried wonton. The high quality ahi tuna arrived seared rare, as it should, but, oddly, sliced as if run through a dull bread slicer, not neatly fanned out as is typically done when tuna is served sliced. The drizzle of soy-ginger sauce came off as pedestrian. Chilean sea bass, with its slick and buttery texture, (usually a no-no for me due to overfishing, but I had to know), also came sliced. Again, how odd. Does the kitchen think we need assistance? The sauce, advertised as a “delicate white wine mushroom sauce,” proved too delicate for distinction. Seared steelhead trout, prepared simply and salty, looked like salmon but was milder and less oily. It was also on the dry side. Sockeye salmon was overdone and fishy and lacked the herbal floral notes of the advertised cedar plank smoking. Too bad, because it was slathered with one of my favorite sauces for pan-roasted or grilled salmon: sticky sweet honey-based barbecue sauce. Other oddities: An energy drink on the beverage menu? Not many people dropping a C-note for a fine dining experience order a couple of Red Bulls to enhance their evening.

Entrées include two sides and a salad, but most striking is the sheer lack of creativity of the side dishes. Only three are offered: mashed potatoes portioned from an ice cream scooper, citrus rice and vegetable of the day. Forget pairing interesting sides to complement different proteins. Forget imaginative plating. Forget seasonal. Forget locavore. With the same protein-starch-vegetable trio, dishes look cafeteria-ish. During each visit, the vegetable medley, though fresh, included broccoli – drab, lifeless, overdone – carrots and, on one visit, some snow peas tossed in. The rice was no different than one finds in any basic Greek restaurant, and if the mashed potatoes were mashed from scratch, I’ll eat a gallon. In short, the food is underwhelming.

How do you aspire to high-end dining when so little attention is paid to the details? How do you become a destination restaurant when the most basic home cook can make the same meals more creatively? This is the unfortunate irony of Catch 22: It lives up to its name.

Where: Catch 22 Seafood Lounge, 22 Mascoutah Ave., Belleville, Ill., 618.233.8822, tapsncorks.com
When: Lunch: Mon. to Wed. – 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.; Dinner: Mon. to Wed. – 5 to 9 p.m., Thu. to Sat. – 5 to
11 p.m.
Don’t-Miss Dish: It’s hard to say.
Vibe: The large, open dining room with high ceilings has all the intimacy of a banquet hall. Warmer lighting, leather couches and armchairs make for an inviting lounge area.
Entrée Prices: $10.99 to $44.99