The Columbus Dispatch Menu Review, 2007

The stars of Polaris Grill’s new Floribbean menu might well be the two appetizers.

Calamari ($8.95) are crisply fried with a very thin coating of breading and served with a lemon-and-garlic mayonnaise and a mild red-pepper sauce. They taste fresh,
with an excellent, tender consistency (no rubbery bite here).

The shrimp seviche “cooks” the small shrimp in a pungent marinade of lime juice, cilantro, onion and jalapeno pepper. It’s served chilled on top of some crispy tortillas, accompanied by seaweed salad dressed with roasted sesame oil – a Pan- Asian touch that marvelously complements the seviche ($8.95).

But the blackened-grouper entree ($21.95) isn’t shabby, either. It isn’t really blackened – which is good; you can taste the fish and the plentiful hot spicing dusted on it before it is sauteed. Its sauce of butter, passion fruit and mango contributes, as do the large slices of fried plantain and the fluffy rice prepared with sweet and hot peppers.

The Key West salmon ($19.95) is grilled and given an unusually harmonious topping of guacamole mixed with crabmeat. Hardly a me-too salmon, it’s accompanied by the same flavorful rice and asparagus.