Red Lobster debuted new food offerings and brought back two popular items this week after the seafood restaurant chain overhauled its menu.
“We’re thrilled to give our guests more reasons to celebrate this season with the launch of our new menu,” Chief Marketing Officer Nichole Robillard said in a statement. “From mouthwatering new dishes and the return of beloved fan favorites to holiday-inspired sips and unlimited Cheddar Bay Biscuits, there’s something for everyone.”
Dishes like lobster pappardelle pasta, bacon-wrapped sea scallops, lobster bisque, lemon basil mahi, simply prepared mahi, parmesan-crusted chicken and roasted asparagus debuted on the new menu.
There is a new Create your Own Ultimate Feast combo at Red Lobster where customers can “mix and match two premium picks … with two classics” too, the chain said.
Meanwhile, hush puppies and popcorn shrimp are making a reappearance.
CEO Damola Adamolekun told “Today” there was “a social media riot over us taking off the hush puppies a few years ago.”
Red Lobster said each of the seafood chain’s 545 restaurants across the U.S. started using the new menu Monday.
The notorious endless shrimp deal, however, is not part of it.
The chain had in the past sold it as a permanent menu item starting in 2023. Before that, the deal, which first debuted in 2004, had been a limited-time offer.
While talking about the endless shrimp deal during an early October interview with CNN, Adamolekun said he “never want[s] to say never, but certainly not the way that it was done” and that the chain “won’t have it in a way that’s losing money in that fashion and isn’t managed.”
Red Lobster’s new menu comes roughly two months after the chain officially exited the bankruptcy process in mid-September.
When that happened, Adamolekun had called Red Lobster’s exit from bankruptcy “the start of a new chapter” for the seafood restaurant chain.
“With 30,000 passionate team members, millions of fans across the U.S. and Canada, deeply committed and experienced backers and more than 55 years of iconic history, I know we have what we need to restore Red Lobster’s status as an admired American restaurant,” he wrote on LinkedIn at the time.
