St. Louis Eats and Drinks With Joe and Ann Pollack

Harvest

Harvest has morphed from a Hot New Thing into a consistently reliable favorite with St. Louis diners and with lots of visitors, too. We never stop by for a meal or a late-night dessert that we don’t see at least one table of local business folks, others holding out-of-towners and always celebrants, often Washington U. students with visiting parents. Some are brought by local connections, some have come to dine because of consistently respectful remarks about Harvest in the national press, from the New York Times to Gourmet magazine.

We’d describe Steve Gontram’s food as modern American comfort food with regional overtones, from the killer onion rings to the bread pudding, nearly all of which arrives in St. Louis-sized portions – which is to say generous. Service is warm but not hovering. The dining room is semi-divided into three areas, a central, main room with a fireplace, a raised area along the west wall, and what the house terms "the café," beyond arches leading to what Ann refers to as the wisteria room because of the decor. When it’s busy, it can be noisy with the sound of folks having a good time.

It’s almost impossible for us to avoid ordering the thinly-sliced crispy onion rings with the cayenne-blue cheese dip that brightens the flavor, though the real onion-lover will take them separately. But we went in another direction, smoked trout on tiny blini-like pancakes, although these weren’t made with buckwheat flour, the way blini are. The slightly sweet cure on the trout was punctuated with a drizzle of yogurt zipped up with some Meyer lemon, bringing a nice combination of salty-smoky-sweet-tart. They’re on the spa menu, which features dishes low in fat and cholesterol, and has some other intriguing options as well.

Gontram’s take on what’s becoming a bistro standard in the U.S., a salade lyonnaise, is remarkably good. He uses curly endive, a green that’s tough enough to stand up to his warm dressing. For those who remember the old Ozark/Southern dish of wilted lettuce, this is a happy throwback, the endive slightly wilted under the mustardy vinaigrette and a generous hand with crunchy bits of bacon, the whole thing topped with a fried sunny-side-up egg, a fine substitute for the traditional poached. This is a dish we’d happily eat over and over again, and could serve as a main course for a light eater who wanted to leave room for dessert. (Or some onion rings?)

One of the perpetual favorites on the entree list is the hanger steak. Sometimes the urge for beef is too much to resist, but you’re not up for a whole sirloin. This is the answer. Hanger, a very flavorful cut, requires careful slicing at just the right angle, and the work is done for you here, with five generous slices draped in mid-plate and served with a fat horseradish-laced potato cake and some spinach that’s described on the menu as creamed. Actually, we thought it was more like a buttery saute, both for the color and the lack of ooze that often shows up with creamed spinach. The house’s own steak sauce, a ruddy-colored sharp-sweet mixture, rings it all, available but not interfering for those who prefer their deeply flavored beef straight.

Duck choucroute? Well, yes. Topped with slices of duck breast cooked to order, rare in our case, it included beans, red cabbage, fingerling potatoes, and, in a burst of surprise, small pickled red grapes, a tart punctuation that made the entire tasty dish even more so. A final flavor burst came from a slice of house-made bacon, cooked to the proper crisp. Rich and fully earning its stick-to-the-ribs reputation, it was just the dish for a cold, dreary night.

Gontram always has had a splendid wine list, with superior choices throughout the price spectrum, and proper offerings from the by-the-glass list. We sampled a wine-list special, a California Terre Rouge, mostly Shiraz (Syrah in France and the U.S.) blended with with other red varietals. It was rich and tasty, with a deep flavor and long finish. At $12, or more than $40 by the bottle, it was on the high side, but it was a splendid choice for a celebratory dinner. Another winner was a Cabernet Sauvignon from Trefethen, a venerable name among California winemakers.

Bread pudding is the signature dessert, made with brioche and served warm, of course, with a caramel sauce. But we went in search of something new, and found it in pineapple upside down cake, baked to order, the tart and slightly chewy pineapple tingling against the spice cake. And the caramel ice cream that came alongside was remarkable. (That flower-ish thing on top is a thin, thin slice of dried pineapple, great fun, and definitely an edible garnish.)Caramel-flavored desserts are sometimes not caramelly enough; that certainly wasn’t the case here, with a fine depth of flavor and velvet texture. A perfect combination of excellent individual items. We also tasted the blood orange sorbet, a lovely color, but the flavor was almost completely overridden by bitterness from the orange pith.

A consistently reliable house with food for everyone from the conservative to the adventurous.

Harvest

1059 S. Big Bend Blvd., Richmond Heights

314-645-3522

www.harveststlouis.com

Dinner Tues.-Sun.

Credit cards: Yes

Wheelchair access: Good

Smoking: Yes

Entrees: $18-$27

Mammer Jammer

WHACK. WHACK. Whackwhackwhackwhack, whackwhackwhackwhack. The rhythmic chopping is metal on metal, a complicated beat sounding like it's pounded on a drum kit’s cow bell. We were at Mammer Jammer, once a regular stop for night-owls at the triangular intersection where Olive Street and Lindell Boulevard split, now a denizen of a small strip mall on Natural Bridge, just west of Kingshighway.

"Underground restaurants" are a hot topic these days. But the phrase also has been applied to those little holes in the wall that almost no one knows about. There is some muttering in the blogosphere about Mammer Jammer, a diner-style restaurant that, in various locations, has been around more than 20 years. But we rarely run into anyone who has heard of it, much less a regular patron. And if the folks we’re talking to are metal mouths, people who like spicy food, they need to learn.

Mammer Jammer is, in its current location, quite tiny, with only two tables and five or six chairs. Almost all its business is carry out. Once upon a time, in what we think was the original Midtown location, it was larger, with a counter and a handful of tables; so was the North Kingshighway site that preceded this one. Open very late, it catered to cab drivers, wandering newspaper reporters, musicians, street people of all types.

The dish of choice is the sandwich of the same name. A mammer jammer is thinly sliced beef, further diced by the furiously flying spatulas of the cook. Onions and peppers, both red flakes and sliced jalapenos, cook along with the meat.

And that brings us to peppers. While the sign in the restaurant merely says REGULAR, MILD OR HOT, and the man who took our order asked, "Mild, hot or mixed?" there are eight degrees of heat or lack thereof. And we quote from the paper carryout menu: 

Regular - No Fire. For the Faint-hearted.

Mild - First hint. Just a little tingle.

Hot - Spicy. Taste the peppers.

Extra Hot - You like living on the edge.

Super Hot - You’ve got one foot over the edge!

Mary Francis - The hottest highsteppin’ mama in town! You are now over the edge!

Big John - Rest in peace! Notify next of kin!

"It" - You are in The Here After.

(It goes on to add, rather unnecessarily, "We Offer the Hottest Sandwich in Town".)

We got the hot. There’s a layer of melting cheese underneath the lava-like deluge of meat, vegetables and brown gravy, which sort of holds things together on the hoagie bun, but this is still a knife-and-fork sandwich unless it’s tightly wrapped and eaten leaning waay over. The heat was not, to our mouths, anywhere near too much. We could certainly taste other things. If we weren’t cutting it up, we might have preferred a sturdier piece of bread, but this worked well. And it surely tasted great.

There are other sandwiches available — sooner or later, we’ll surely try the mushroom steak, and the Philly — but this time we went for the tripe. Deep-fried and mostly extremely tender, it was done the way fish sandwiches often are, with onion and mustard on white bread, and the not-unexpected fillip of a couple of dashes of unannounced hot sauce finishing things off. Tripe isn’t for everyone, we know, but its presence on soul food menus has long intrigued us, and this was, for the tripe lover, something to be thought about until the next visit.

Mammer Jammer closes at 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday, but is open until 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday, just the thing to finish off a night of drinking a little.

Mammer Jammer

5124 Natural Bridge Rd.

314-381-1617

Lunch & Dinner Mon.-Sat. (See above)

Credit cards: Yes

Wheelchair access: Poor

Smoking: No

Sandwiches: $3-$6

This Week's Wine February 15, 2009

What’s a pair of innocent wine-and-food writers to do?

We recently journeyed to Wines of Wildwood, a shop we like even if it is in an area only a couple of miles from where we once thought dragons stuck their heads up over the edge of the earth and scouted for dinner. We were there to sip wine and taste chili, and to discuss which wine went with which chili, or vice versa. We also were to vote on our favorite chili. And after doing all that – we discovered we were in the midst of a major conundrum, and a two-headed conundrum at that.

First, the dish that won the chili competition – even though we voted for it, too – was not what we call chili. It was tasty, and spicy, but it was based on chicken, lacked tomato. If we had to put a name on it, burgoo might have been more accurate. Still, it was imaginative and to our taste. Second, if we had decided to go to Indigo Joe’s, a few blocks away in the same plaza, where the dish was designed and prepared, we’d have learned that the chili from the competition and the chili from the menu were not the same.

A rather non-plussed management type from the restaurant admitted that the dish in the competition had been created after closing hours the previous evening when the kitchen staff (and maybe the servers, and perhaps some late-staying customers) realized it was time to create an entry. Some mixing, some matching, some corn, several different types of beans, chicken breasts, a fine hand with herbs and spices, and voila, chili.

Wine was different. It came from A. Bommarito, one of our favorite distributors, with red, white and rose offerings to taste alongside the chili. The wines, all from 2007 and all between $10 and $14 (more than twice that on a restaurant list), were excellent values, to accompany chili or anything else. As far as the chili was concerned, we thought the whites, and especially the rose, offered the best matches. Our favorite was an Italian rose from Friuli, imported by Joseph Bastianich, the New York restaurateur and partner of Mario Batali. The delicious, fruit-forward, quaffing wine, certainly dry enough for us, but with a hint of grapey fruitiness to balance the heat of the chile peppers, has been a favorite in our house for several years, or since Ann discovered it, almost by accident, at Batali’s Greenwich Village restaurant Babbo in New York. It has a lovely pink color, and can double as a winning drink -- or tasty gift -- for Valentine’s Day.

A Selbach ‘07 Riesling, from Alsace, had a bright, mineral finish, and a little sweetness to cut the spice. A good companion to the chili. Toad Hollow Chardonnay, a tribute to the late Todd Williams, brother of Robin and a splendid winemaker, was dry and will be a pleasure to some, but was not quite to our taste. By the way, the Toad Hollow label will not disappear; Todd’s widow will continue the winery. Toad of the label is a boyhood nickname given by his brother, obviously a comedian his entire life.

The reds, all very tasty, with the flavor and body we enjoy at our house, included a rather austere Sonoma County Pinot Noir from Castle Rock, a delicious, fruity Malbec from Tillia Vineyards in Argentina’s Mendoza Valley and a charming blend from Stickleback, a rich, hearty Australian offering that was primarily Cabernet Sauvignon (52 percent), bolstered with Shiraz (Syrah) (33), Grenache (10) and Dolcetto (5). But they just don’t work for us with the spice of the chilis, or the burgoo.

The chili competitors, all from the Wildwood area, were: B. Donovan's Steakhouse Grill,  Big Bear Grill, Brickhouse Pub & Grill,  Indigo Joe's, Rise & Dine Restaurant, and Simply Sue's Cafe. 

-Joe  

Saleem's

Salim Hanna has been satisfying St. Louisans with Lebanese cuisine for 35 years, beginning on South Grand boulevard and leading the neighborhood into its position as the core of St. Louis’ ethnic diversity in terms of dining. He changed the name of his eponymous restaurant from Salim’s to Saleem’s to make it easier for St. Louisans to pronounce. Today, after stops in University City and Creve Coeur, he’s tucked into a corner of a string of businesses in the West County municipality of Winchester, quietly turning out some extremely tasty meals. The establishment, bigger than it appears from the street, includes a double dining room and a bar, all painted in a warm red. There’s smoking in the bar, but we didn’t get even a whiff in the dining room.

One of the basic dishes of a restaurant with this heritage is hummus. Whether the dish turns out to be beige goo or something more exciting has more to do with the chef’s personal taste and cooking skill than any particular ethnicity. Here, hummus doesn’t hum, it sings, with bouncy notes of lemon and the background of some tahini adding a little nuttiness to its rich warm flavor and a texture that makes it easy to spread on a triangular chunk of pita that comes alongside. More unusual is the sauteed onions. Slices are gently cooked and seasoned with sumac, made of ground sumac berries which yield a tart, red powder. It’s often found in this cuisine, and if you like what lemon adds to a dish, you’ll be happy with sumac. We piled the onion strips on triangles of pita, and used the last of the bread to wipe up the cooking juices in the bottom of the bowl, down to the last delicious drop. And then there was the garlic. Saleem’s has, over the years, described itself as the "king of garlic," and here, golden brown, was an entire head of roasted garlic, the individual cloves to be winkled out and eaten straight or squashed onto what pita hadn’t been consumed with the hummus or the onion. Perfect for garlic lovers, and unusually handsome of its kind, too.

 

Yes, there’s beef and fish on the menu, as well as sandwiches. But we turn immediately to lamb and chicken, the tastiest specialties of Lebanese cuisine. When it comes to lamb, there are three possibilities: kabobs, rack of lamb, and lamb shank. It’s hard for Ann to pass up lamb shank, but in order to keep from turning this into a festival of lamb (lamboree?), she went in another direction, leaving the kabobs and rack of lamb on the table. Kabobs arrived on the house’s tender-but-not-overcooked rice, a delicious accompaniment to every entree. Each piece was nicely trimmed and cooked rare, hard to do with kabobs. Very good, but not as thrilling as the rack of lamb, which came as five small chops, larger than the "lamb lollipops" of very high-end restaurants but smaller than the usual rib chops. The meat had been beautifully seasoned, and was dazzlingly flavorful. In terms of bang-for-the-buck, to use the Zagat phrase, this may well be the best lamb dish in town. The chicken was riz-taouk, shown at right, seasoned and grilled strips of breast, mixed with romaine lettuce, tomato and cucumber, tossed with a tahini-lemon sauce and served over the rice. The chicken is extremely flavorful and moist, an antidote to the million exhausted boneless skinless chicken breasts out there, and the combination of warm and cold, crunchy and soft, tart and savory, is first-rate. A Lebanese combo platter of kibbe and tabouli. Kibbe, ground beef mixed with cracked wheat and seasonings, is shaped and baked into a fat patty, dense and satisfying, alongside the light and virtuous-feeling tabouli, the parsley salad flecked with tomato and more ground wheat, dressed with lemon and olive oil.

Hanna’s son, Simon, is the pastry chef, often seen in the dining room in a handsome red tunic. His frequent pastime is flaming one of the signature desserts, strawberries flambe. Fresh strawberries are fired up with some triple sec and served over vanilla ice cream, good fun and a nice touch. But what we found particularly remarkable was the baklava, house-made and the polar opposite of the dense diamonds the dish usually involves. Simon layers and angles the pastry, with curls that come to a point, and instead of honey, uses lemon juice sweetened and seasoned with rose water and orange flower water. A lovely change, making the pastry light and not overly sweet.

The Lebanese have thousands of years of history as winemakers, but the industry took hold as a commercial entity in 1930, just about the time the California industry was returning to life after a decade of Prohibition. With grapes like Carignane, Syrah and Cinsault, Rhone Valley varietals to accompany the French classics like Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. Chateau Musar, dating to 1930, does a number of reds and whites, though the nation’s wine industry is primarily of reds. A 2002 Hochar was delightful, though there was a hint of barnyard aroma made us think the bottle might be corked. However, the flavor, slightly tannin despite its age and with a predominant flavor of dark fruit, suggested that it was still worth drinking – and it was, with the aroma smoothing out after the bottles were open a while. The wine had good structure, rich flavor and a pleasing finish. It would be a good idea to decant this wine. Some research a day or two later explained it. The winery uses a Brettanomyces yeast, which can produce the off-putting aroma, and decanting the wine, or pouring it into glasses about 30 minutes before drinking, will definitely help.

Saleem’s

14560 Manchester Rd., Winchester

636-207-1368  

www.saleemswest.com

Credit cards: Yes

Dinner Mon.-Sat.

Smoking: Yes

Entrees: $10-$19

Wheelchair access: Good 

 

Hunt's Seafood, Panama City

There’s something very satisfying about finding a truly local restaurant in a highly-touristed area. A recent visit to Panama City, Fla., turned up an absolute find, the sort of place we’d head for if we had only one night in town. Hunt’s Oyster Bar is deeply casual; t-shirts and cutoffs are the norm. It’s a bright yellow building in downtown Panama City, with a couple of small parking lots and some benches in front. Those benches are the first clue to Hunt’s popularity and a place to wait, unless you’re lucky. And no, they don’t take reservations. (Apparently most Panama City restaurants are the same way; during the busy season, they don’t need to, and during the off season - well, they feel they don’t need to then, either.) We were told it would be a 45-minute wait, and sent a scouting party out to check a fancy-schmancy spot across the street. The scouts returned, reported a 30-minute wait. We stuck to Hunt’s, and were seated in 25 minutes.

 

The specialty of the house is, of course, oysters. And the house oysters at Hunt’s are Apalachicolas, brinier, a little more metallic and far tastier than those found farther west in the Gulf. Like a lot of seafood houses, not all their offerings are local. But we like to honor locally sourced ingredients whenever we visit restaurants, and most of what we had was local and worthwhile.

Oysters to start? But of course. and at the wonderful price of $4.75 a dozen.

 

And if they’re running a little small, a dozen at Hunt’s turns out to be 13 or 14, sometimes 15, and so it was. They arrived icy cold, gleaming and almost quivering they were so fresh. Absolutely delicious, the finest Apalachicolas we’ve ever had. Several varieties of baked oysters, still on the shell, were next, though cheese toppings are not Joe’s favorite because they can overwhelm a delicate oyster.

He likes oysters straight, or the baked ones topped with bacon or spinach. These were improved by being fresh and from the broiler; and a three-cheese Cajun succeeded because it was gooey, nicely spiced and not overcooked.

Also called "Cajun spiced" but using a slightly different spice mixture were the steamed shrimp. Large head-on shrimp, still warm, the seasoning somewhat spicy with a surprising note of clove that adds a little sweetness. If you’re the sort of seafood addict who knows to suck the heads of crawfish, these heads, too, are worthwhile. For everyone, the tender meat is delicious, even addictive. 

Grilled grouper, a favorite Florida fish that’s mild and white-fleshed, arrived lightly cooked, and topped with an oregano-laced tomato-and-pepper saute. The same treatment for a large serving of little bay scallops was a good idea, too. Of the sides, we’d advise the hush puppies, spicier than most, and skipping the forgettable steamed vegetables and the garlic toast, harsh and artificial-tasting.

Key lime pie is the dessert of choice. Hunt’s version is served half-frozen, its filling firm and lightly tart, topped with whipped cream. We won’t get into the argument over whether key lime pie should be topped with meringue or whipped cream, and we disagreed on the pie itself. Ann, after some consideration, decided she liked the density and coldness of the pie after a rather spicy meal; Joe thought it was merely okay.

But the oysters, shrimp, grouper and scallops were far beyond for the merely okay, and at the Hunt’s price, it’s a pleasure to fill up on oysters. A real find.

Hunt’s Oyster Bar

1150 Beck Ave, Panama City, FL

850-763-9645

www. huntsoysterbar.com 

Lunch & Dinner Mon.-Sat.

Credit cards: Yes

 Wheelchair access: Poor

Smoking: No

Entrees: $10-$18

 

 

Niche

No restaurant in town has received as much press in the last year and a half as Niche. Named by Food & Wine magazine as one of 2008's Best New Chefs, Gerard Craft and his crew have lightened up the Benton Park neighborhood with their urbane little bistro. Cozy but not crowded (which is the only thing that gives the lie to the New York-y feeling), it rocks. In a city that rushes to the restaurant of the moment and then moves on to the next, Niche shows every sign of becoming a perpetual hot table, or at least one that’s darned warm. Our most recent visit was in a room with a 10-top of suits and ties, a family party with a grade-school eater the guest of honor, lots of 30-somethings, and grateful empty-nesters gabbing with their pals. The noise level is not unreasonable compared to many of its peers, the lighting is absolutely impeccable, giving a warm, imperceptibly golden, glow to things, and the service is warm and smooth, without being goofy-casual.

We opened with an amuse bouche of a single sea scallop, seared and sliced very thin, topped with croutons of pork cracklings, some shreds of candied Meyer lemon peel and a few bits of the lemon flesh, and surrounded with what Craft called "popcorn consomme", a clear broth that showed plenty of evidence of corn in its flavor. Pretty charming.

Then on to the more serious business. Vitello tonnato in Craft’s hands is almost a pun - certainly the reference to the classic Italian summertime dish of cold sliced veal with a tuna mayonnaise is there, but only obliquely. The menu explains that it contains hamachi and sweetbreads, so there’s your tuna and veal, more or less. The seared sweetbreads sit on a bed of thin-sliced raw hamachi with more shredded atop, the whole thing lightly sauced with lemon and capers. Amazingly with the savor of the fish and the tartness of the lemon and capers, the tender-firm sweetbread’s flavor is almost magnified, rather than disappearing into the rest of the dish, the way it does in many sweetbread preparations. We liked it a lot. A special of the evening was pappardelle, broad, thin noodles of artisanal pasta sauced with shreds and chunks of smoked pork shank (think barbecue rather than ham), paper-thin slices of Granny Smith apple and a hit of mascarpone cheese to thicken the braising juices. Deeply savory, it was perfect for a cold, cold night, the smoke and the apple’s sweet-tart bouncing around in the creaminess.

A pause. A sorbet to cleanse the palate arrived. "A savory Meyer lemon sorbet," announced our server. Meyer lemons are hard to come by around here, and obviously Craft had pounced on them. Not a problem for us; we love lemon, and the sweeter, deeply aromatic Meyer lemons are remarkable. The small scoop of the sorbet intrigued. Quite tart, but also bitter, presumably from the deliberate inclusion of the white pith of the lemon, there was another flavor bouncing around there that we couldn’t quite identify. We liked it a lot but agreed that it is the sort of thing that might not be universally popular.

For entrees a couple of duos, a common Craft theme, taking two cuts of the same meat and preparing them differently. Beef arrived as diagonal slices of a rib steak, carefully trimmed and cooked to the requested rareness, and oxtail cannoli, shreds of that wonderful rich meat that had been braised in a little tomato, wrapped in a shell and deep-fried to crispness. Alongside was a potato puree, soft and extremely buttery, a heap of wild mushrooms, and a small tangle of arugula riding atop it all, softened slightly from the heat and wearing a fast drizzle of vinaigrette. Craft seems to be a real master of pork, and reports he get much of his meat from Carlos Hinkbein’s happy hogs. This visit, the pork was slices of pork loin and a slab of pork belly. Pork belly, of course, is currently deeply fashionable in the restaurant world. (Watch for the price of bacon to continue to increase, of course.) This belly had been braised and the top skin then crisped up. Deeply unctuous, it was fork-tender, the epitome of piggy goodness. A pan sauce with red wine was hanging around, the better to sop up the cylinder of finely-ground polenta, a handful of brussels sprouts, cooked until tender but still green rather than the usual depressing gray, a few more of the mushrooms, and greens with a slightly different dressing wilting them down just slightly and quite properly.

Matthew Rice is the pastry chef, a fellow whose desserts are available at Veruca, the next-door bakery and café, if you get the urge for dessert before Niche opens. Rice’s imagination is the equal of Craft’s, so this is definitely not the place to go looking for the same old molten chocolate cake and creme brulee. We opted for blood orange profiteroles, cream puffs, if you will, split and filled with blood orange sorbet. Blood oranges are in season, a ray of light at a dark time of year, and they were a welcome sight on the menu. The profiteroles were marvelous, but equaled by the accompanying marmalade of wee squares of the rind of the oranges, tangy-tart and delicious. (Oh, for that on    hot buttered toast this morning!) And for chocolate, what was titled salted milk chocolate pudding turned out to be malted as well as salted, at least in the accompaniments. The pudding, lightly chocolate and baked like a custard, was also lightly salted, and wore whipped cream flavored with malt, as well as crumbles of malt candy and a couple of quarter-sized sandwich cookies of darker chocolate. A great combination of textures and tastes, it was far more seductive than we’d imagined.

The wine list is expensive, but the by-the-glass list has a number in the high single figures, a few in the low doubles, and they represent the world’s major wine-growing regions. Gemtree, an Australian blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz (or Syrah if you prefer the French name), is delicious, beautifully structured, with chocolate notes in the aroma and a splendidly long finish that sits warmly in the throat. Italian Prosecco. busily intruding into the more modest end of sparkling wines everywhere, was delicious.

This may be the most intellectually challenging menu in St. Louis right now. Only the most numbed palate or the most jaded can eat this food without stopping to think about it. Niche may turn out to be one of St. Louis’ legendary restaurants.

Niche

1831 Sidney St.

314-773-7755

www.nichestlouis.com

Dinner nightly

Credit cards: All major

Wheelchair access: Poor

Smoking: No

Entrees: $23-$28 

On Oysters

The Chinese calendar may proclaim what’s just ahead as the Year of the Ox, but for me, it’s beginning to be the Year of the Oyster. I’ve been a fan of succulent bivalves – both oysters and clams -- since I was a small boy, barely able to reach the raw bar counter at Lundy’s famous seafood restaurant in Sheepshead Bay. In those days, fishing boats would return from the Atlantic Ocean and dock just across the street from the terminus of the Ocean Avenue trolley car.

Toward the other end of the line, clattering along Rogers Avenue in the Crown Heights neighborhood, it stopped a block from our house, delivering a rattling ride even before Judy Garland commemorated that form of transportation in "Meet Me in St. Louis." The fare was a nickel, as was each freshly opened shellfish.

Since then, I’ve eaten raw clams and oysters near their homes on several continents, the small, briny Belons on the shores of the Bay of Biscay, tart Whitbys from the Irish Sea, European Flats from Amsterdam, Blue Points from Long Island Sound, Olympias from Seattle, Chincoteagues from Chesapeake Bay, Apalachicolas from the Florida river of the same name, many others from all the oceans and gulfs of the Earth.

Other oysters have migrated from here to there, or in the case of a St. Louis diner, from there to there. Kumamotos and Pacifics, for example, came from Japan to the U. S., and the former even shows up at St. Louis seafood restaurants on occasion. European Flats made the trip from Holland to this country shortly after World War II and Eastern/Virginica, an East Coast native, migrated westward in the 19th century. We’re not big on the Gulf oysters from the New Orleans area. They tend to be mushier and lack brininess. Our general rule is that the colder the water, the better the oyster.

Clams, mussels, scallops and other shellfish have wandered the world, their shells often used as coinage, their meat eaten raw or cooked in dozens of different styles.

Anyway, in search of an event to keep us occupied and happy on New Year’s Eve, an eve we usually spend at home, I found a link to Taylor Shellfish Farms, a West Coast shellfish supplier who offered what I thought would be a good surprise on the home front – a package containing four dozen oysters, 12 each of four types, two oyster knives and instructions on how to go about shucking them without sacrificing fingers. Delivery on New Year’s Eve day was guaranteed and since there already was Champagne in the refrigerator, I was halfway home. Of course, I had not shucked an oyster in about 20 years, on a night when I had only a screwdriver as an appliance. For some peculiar reason, alcohol obviously fueled my coordination because I opened a couple of dozen without physical harm.

They arrived on time and my skills were so impressive that before I was half finished, I had gained a co-shucker. The bubbly, and an oven mitt, kept our fingers in good shape, and the fact that the mitt did not survive was a fair tradeoff.

All four dozen of the oysters -- two large, two small – were outstanding. They arrived chilled, peaceful, obviously happy (leaning to read oyster shells is a fine hobby for retirement). Kumamotos and Olympias are small, some of the latter not much larger than a half-dollar. They are sweet, with a slightly metallic aftertaste; Kumamotos are slightly larger, with a deep cup, slightly nutty flavor on the tongue. Eastern/Virginicas are larger and very briny, with a color that ranges from cream to brown and a noticeable mineral finish, while the Pacific oysters have a shell about three inches long that ranges in color from white to greyish-brown, with white-to-brown flesh. The flavor is clean and mostly sweet with briny overtones.

We’re not much for red oyster sauce, though we’ll taste it from time to time, and the vinegar-shallot sauce strikes us similarly. I like them with a good squirt of lemon and a drop or two of Tabasco; Ann eats ‘em straight.

We thought we were finished with oysters for a while, and then we went to the Florida panhandle, sometimes rudely dubbed "the Redneck Riviera." The first platter of oysters I tried was unimpressive, and I was not seduced by oysters topped with cheese and slices of jalapeno pepper, then baked briefly. I like oysters Rockefeller (and clams Casino) but too often, the bivalve is ruined by the addition of cheese, whose flavor tromps all over the natural taste of the shellfish.

But Apalachicola oysters were in high season, and they were terrific, big and briny and with bright mineral overtones. Hunt’s Oyster Bar in Panama City was dealing them out by the hundreds, and at a price of $4.75 a dozen, we ate iced-up oysters and drank icy beer right from the bottle until the world looked level and we were satiated, one of the rare times in our lives to eat oysters until we simply couldn’t eat any more – until the next time.

-Joe