The kitchen crew is swimming in seafood over at Catch 22. Owner Luis Ibarra, who also owns bar-lounge Blue Agave in downtown Belleville, Ill., recently opened his upscale seafood restaurant at 22 Mascoutah Ave., in Belleville.
The catch is pretty extensive at Catch 22. Among the popular appetizers are mahi-mahi lettuce cuts (romaine strips topped with cilantro, avocado, sweet mango and diced mahi-mahi, served with a side of sesame-ginger-soy sauce), a spicy fish roll, crab cakes and fried calamari rings. House-made soups include a chowder featuring sockeye salmon, a cream-based shrimp soup with hickory smoked bacon and, for non fish-lovers, vegetable minestrone and a hearty tomato-based Southwestern chicken soup. Lunch takers will also find fish tacos, a crab cake poor boy, a shrimp poor boy and an Alaskan salmon burger. All of the pastas on the menu – shrimp scampi, penne seafood pasta and fettuccini Alfredo with blackened sockeye salmon – are also available with whole wheat noodles, while highlights among entrées include the Chilean sea bass, steelhead trout and pan-seared sushi-grade ahi tuna.
There is seating for 70 in the dining room, plus room for more than 40 in the lounge, where patrons can relax on leather couches while sipping from one of the many imported bottled beers or affordable glasses of wine available at the restaurant.
Catch 22 is open Monday to Wednesday, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. for lunch and 5 to 9 p.m. for dinner. Thursday through Saturday, the restaurant is open from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
This article appears in February 2011.