For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Phillips Foods Brand, they are a frozen food company that specializes in seafood and also are part of the Phillips Seafood Restaurant company. My first experience with Phillips was years ago during a trip to Ocean City, Maryland. On this trip I visited a Phillips Seafood Buffet during my final food outing of the trip. I engorged myself with crab cakes, crab legs, shrimp, lobster and anything else that they had available. I remember feeling saddened when I had the realization that I had wished that I had eaten every meal at Phillips while on this trip. Is saddened the right word? Maybe not. Maybe more like I missed an opportunity. Don’t get me wrong I had some amazing meals on this trip but I also had some bad ones. There was also a Phillips a la carte restaurant across town which I had missed out on. I had vowed to myself that one day I would be back to enjoy Phillips Seafood again. I must admit that to this day I had not held up on the vow that I made to myself that day and with that said, I still do intend to do right by it eventually.
Since then, Phillips has expanded their restaurant presence and opened more locations. Unfortunately for me, the only one in New Jersey seems to be in the Newark Airport and I just don’t see myself going into an airport to dine with Phillip, at least not without booking a flight.
Thankfully Phillips does have retail versions of their seafood. I am one who believes that the store bought retail version is never as good as the freshly made restaurant version of any dish no matter what company. However, I have enjoyed their retail Boardwalk Style Crab Cakes which are great but still not as good as the fresh version. When food shopping, I have not seen much of a variety of different kinds of seafood from Phillips on store shelves until recently when I saw the Shrimp Toast. I could not resist but try them.
I am not really one who enjoys shrimp toast. This is not because I do not like the ingredients. In fact I love the very idea of shrimp toast. The reason for my hesitance for shrimp toast comes from being spoiled. When I was young, my parents would order Chinese Food from a restaurant called Lum Chin in Tenafly, New Jersey. We considered them to have some of the best Chinese Food in North Jersey at the time and the menu item that we ordered every single time was their Shrimp Toast. It was expected. Their large pieces of shrimp toast were loaded with chunks of shrimp and pressed as flat as possible to give a crispy texture that truly complimented the shrimp. There was simply nothing better and I still remember them clearly to this day. Every time that I had tried Shrimp Toast elsewhere since Lum Chin closed years ago, I would always be disappointed because it was just not the same.
You may ask why would I bring up Shrimp Toast from an old Chinese restaurant should have nothing to do with the Phillips' version pictured above? Phillips Shrimp Toast are rather small but larger than bite size. They are packed with lumps of shrimp just like I described from my old favorite Lum Chin. Texture-wise it was very similar and they had just the perfect amount of scallion which was not over powering at all. In a small way, I was brought back to my childhood and I was in disbelief because this was a frozen product that I picked up at Stop and Shop. This was the closest Shrimp Toast to Lum Chin in my opinion. You may find your taste from them different than I did due to that simple fact that I had the basis of comparison that I did.
I plan to expand on Phillips Frozen Foods and post more about them in the future. As you read above, I was definitely impressed with this item and recommend them to all who read this review. Please feel free to leave a comment on this post to let me know how you liked them or even if you completely disagree with me. I would love to discuss your thoughts on these wonderful Shrimp Toast. Enjoy!
Check out the Phillips website by clinking this LINK for more information. You can also find them @phillipsseafood on Instagram.
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