After a lobster is properly cooked, its once-brown exoskeleton turns bright red, letting chefs know that it's both ready to serve and profoundly embarrassed for showing up without pants. Make a meal of deliciously mortified seafood with today's Groupon to Michael's Porthole in Oceanside. Choose between the following options:
- For $28, you get one appetizer and two dinner entrees (a $56 value).
- For $49, you get two appetizers and four dinner entrees (a $112 value).
Michael's Porthole prepares its classic American and seafood menu from locally caught seafood and fish and non-oceanic ingredients grown locally whenever possible. Dinners start with a flourish, as a pair of baked pretzels plunges into cheese sauce and mustard pools and the baked nacho tower's hand-cut tortilla chips train dipping strength by pumping weighty portions of cheddar cheese, beans, sliced steak, sour cream, salsa, and handmade guacamole. Spicy garlic seafood pasta hosts a delectable congregation of clams, mussels, and shrimp amid a bed of linguine in garlic-butter sauce, and landlubbering grilled rib eyes lounge in pan demi-glace with mashed-potato pillows. Fresh fish satisfy blue-water appetites with salmon, tuna, mahi-mahi, Chilean sea bass, and tilapia available broiled, grilled, or cooked Cajun-style and served with a choice of two sides.
Michael's Porthole shelters patrons with an inside dining room lined with leather booths and a renovated outdoor back deck with a spectacular waterfront view. In addition to a paved parking lot for automobile customers, customers arriving by sea can call ahead and make use of slips to accommodate boats and saddled manatees. Michael's Porthole hosts live evening music Friday–Sunday, Thursday karaoke nights, and Motown nights each Tuesday.
Michael's Porthole
Water laps at a freshly renovated wooden deck, drowned out by the chatter of diners seated beneath umbrellas. This oceanfront setting inspires the sea-blue tablecloths and nautical theme of the dining room at Michael's Porthole, as well as the eatery's menu of locally sourced seafood. Chefs crown their lobster paella with subaqueous morsels such as shrimp, clams, and mussels, but are sure to pick out any accidentally netted triathletes. Diners can cool their palates with frozen hurricane cocktails blended at one of two bars. At the bars and in the dining room, TVs broadcast NFL games, and live musicians play on the weekends.