BY MEG VAN HUYGEN for WEEKLY VOLCANO | 6/26/2026
Look, I don’t know what your problem is, but my problem is that I have had such serious ADHD lately, about all things, including restaurants. My guy and I will speak enthusiastically on multiple occasions about how we simply must try this one restaurant, and then we’ll completely delete the thought from our brains, it seems, ’cause we’ll drive right past it the next week and be like…oh, yeah. We wanted to eat that. But we just ate dinner an hour ago. We wave to it as we sail past. Then we forget about it for another three weeks.
For months, Hot Fish House was high on the list of restaurants I was desperate to eat at but that kept falling out of my brain. I knew very little about it.
The main reason I wanted to eat here was the sign outside, which reads:
HOT FISH HOUSE
SEAFOOD, DAIQUIRI & TURKEY LEGS
Sounds like a winning combo to me. Plus, I see that these folks are in the rare 0.01 percent of people who know how to spell daiquiri. Decades ago, I used to host a spelling bee for drunk adults, and this was my favorite spelling bee word, so I notice when folks nail it.
Anyway, I hate that an Instagram post is what reminded us to go to Hot Fish House in Lakewood last week and not my own volition and free will. I could have known this pleasure for years already.
Hot Fish House is on 40th Street SW and SW 100th Street, kinda by that windowless adult bookstore. The building used to be a bikini coffee shop, and a regular coffee shop before that, and a Jamaican restaurant before that. It’s kind of by Pal-Do World. When we finally pulled up last weekend, there was an entire double-decker car hauler parked at the front of the lot, and we had to sidle around it edgewise. Damn, this person really needed some fried catfish, stat! Love it.
Inside, the whole staff and all the guests were glued to the Knicks vs. Spurs championship game, so we plunked down and started yelling at the TV along with them. Seemed like the thing to do. At the commercial, a staff member apologized and took our order, then sprinted back to the TV. No apology necessary! This is all very exciting!
What we ordered turned out to be one of the most fascinating things I’d eaten in a good while. Hot Fish House’s specialty is the triple-stuffed turkey leg. This is a small aluminum trough filled with a two-pound smoked turkey leg that’s been split open like a baked potato, then utterly paved over with collards, jambalaya, and mac and cheese. You can’t visibly detect any trace of the turkey leg when you pull the lid off. It’s just three stripes of sides, like a carton of Neapolitan ice cream. The giant drumstick is buried within.
I’ve never been served anything like this. How was it even dreamed up? The whole shebang weighed about five pounds. They serve this dish to you in the aluminum takeout things with the lid because, I assume, they know that two humans can’t and shouldn’t eat it all.
My guy somehow intrinsically knew what to do and, like an archaeologist, picked up his fork and started gently digging in the jambalaya with a combing motion, slowly bringing flakes of the deep-pink smoked turkey up to the surface in the process. At first glance, it looked like ham, but it flaked in the way turkey does. Normally, I would not be excited about turkey ham, but oh my god. Salty, savory, tender, smoky, and without the stringiness that ham sometimes brings. Absolutely yes.
The smoked turkey skin was intact and had baked chicken-thigh vibes, very nice. The jambalaya was a little light on the sausage and other goodies, but it was seasoned well, and we housed it all. The mac was perfectly creamy and accented with a little parsley. And the collards were gorgeous and velveteen, with little bits of smoked turkey mixed in. It was clear from the jump that this was going to be an important meal.
Although the dish we were served could have fed a small family, we actually did finish the whole thing, most incredibly, thanks to the basketball game. We were instantly invested in seeing the Knicks beat the Spurs once we walked in the door, so we just camped out and chipped away at this masterpiece while hooting and hollering at the TV, along with the staff and other patrons. Pure joyful pandemonium when the Knicks eventually won. There were some New Yorkers in the house. It was a party, folks, I am telling you.
We were back at Hot Fish House the next weekend for shrimp and grits, which we accompanied with sides of cheesy mac and those lovely, meaty collards. For the main, we received a generous bowl of white grits dressed with snipped chives, studded with six huge prawns, and served with lots of creamy-buttery-cheesy sauce poured all over the top. I flinched a little when I saw that the prawns were breaded and deep-fried, thinking the saucy grits would make them soggy, but no. They were crispy and flawless. Not overcooked a single iota, either. Been thinkin’ about them for days, tbh.
I also got a daiquiri this time, and if you haven’t been to Louisiana, it’s not the same one that Ernest Hemingway drank. In NOLA, a daiquiri is more like a boozy Slurpee, and Hot Fish House has them in four flavors. I got the piña colada one, and it was pretty good, if sweet. No clue what the booze was in there, either, Bacardi or similar? And there wasn’t a lot of it, but it was nice on a summer day for sure.
On our way out, chef-owner Quinton Gethers was chilling in the parking lot, tending to Hot Fish House’s cool-ass food truck that’s made out of a repurposed fire engine. “Q” asked how we liked the food, and then we three stood there and chatted about his family and background in Charleston, South Carolina. He also let us know he’s opening a new restaurant, bar, and nightclub in the old Ram Restaurant & Brewery space about a mile west of Hot Fish House. Sounds like it’ll take a note from Gethers’s previous bar and venue, Bleu Note Restaurant and Lounge, which was just around the corner from the new location, via an expanded Southern menu, swanky cocktails, and live jazz and comedy nights. Gethers isn’t quite sure yet when he’ll be opening Q’s, but hey, watch that space.
At this point, after two consecutive spectacular meals, the whole menu at Hot Fish House is a checklist for us. This menu is part of our relationship now. Next time, it’s the catfish.
Hot Fish House
3926 100th St SW, Lakewood, WA 98499
hotfishhouse.com
