Crab Proves a Good Catch at New Pacific Beach Seafood Restaurant

Not everyone may have noticed it, but early last month this city’s streets echoed with the sound of grinding teeth when the new McCormick & Schmick’s opened in Pacific Beach.

The teeth being ground belonged to the proprietors of many of San Diego’s established seafood houses, who saw their familiar, mesquite-grilled and deep-fried world turned topsy-turvy by the arrival of this upstart eatery.

If it accomplishes nothing more than to disturb the complacency of the operators of our local fish joints, McCormick & Schmick’s will have done all of us who enjoy good seafood quite a favor.

This large, most attractive outpost of a chain that operates several restaurants in Portland, Ore., and Seattle offers a really fine, comprehensive menu of the treasures of the deep, including many rarely seen in San Diego. Printed daily (although many items obviously repeat from day to day), this capacious list covers a lot of water and makes a specialty of Dungeness crab and several choice types of oysters from the Pacific Northwest.

Looks Like Seafood Restaurant

McCormick & Schmick’s actually includes a nightclub, a bar and a cafe as well as a formal dining room in the three-story structure it built at the northern end of the Pacific Beach shopping development called The Promenade, but it is in the formal room that the real culinary interest lies. This room in fact looks like a seafood restaurant, by the way, or like a good facsimile of the places that used to be common in major cities. The booths are deep, the ceilings coffered and the walls paneled in deep, warm mahogany. A few tables in one room offer a narrow slice of ocean view; The Promenade, which is one-half block from the boardwalk, was built with its back to the sea.

The servers also are notable, especially for their knowledge and efficiency; the training program evidently is rigorous, and if standards are maintained, it seems unlikely that diners ever will have the experience of being served overcooked swordfish by half-baked waiters.

One waiter’s knowledge burst forth like a leaping salmon when the subject of the Westcott Belon oysters was broached. Without pausing to take a breath, the waiter rattled off the information that these were indeed descendants of the famous, unrivaled French Belon oysters, raised in Westcott Bay, Wash., by a man who imported Belon spawn from France.

Belons traditionally are costly, and at McCormick & Schmick’s an order of six runs $8.95. They should be worth it to oyster fanciers, though, because they dissolve on the tongue (unlike most native American oysters, these are nearly liquid), and taste at first clean and briny, then sharp and coppery. This coppery aftertaste is their trademark, and not everyone will like it, but these are exquisite oysters. They should be dressed with nothing more than a drop of lemon juice.

The Dungeness crab cocktail is the second piece de resistance of the starter list. The late James Beard, in his time the recognized dean of American cookery, wrote that lobster should be served lavishly or not at all, and this is equally true of fresh Dungeness crab. McCormick & Schmick’s dishes it up prodigally, a mountain of tasty morsels doused with just a bit of excellent cocktail sauce made by someone who understands the importance of horseradish.

More Than 60 Entrees

The appetizer list also offers Quilcene, Appalachicola and native Westcott Bay oysters; Eastern mussels and Manila clams, both steamed; fried squid ringlets with garlic mayonnaise; smoked salmon and white sturgeon; a ceviche of bay scallops; gulf and bay shrimp cocktails, and a very good, starter-sized plate of fettuccine dressed with sweet rock shrimp, cream sauce and a blizzard of freshly shaved Parmesan. A menu this expansive is a pleasure to read.

The entree choices number more than 60, ranging from light, inexpensive dishes (fish and chips made with red rockfish, an excellent seafood Newburg, various sandwiches, and a hamburger for those who always occupy the doubters’ benches in seafood restaurants), to shrimp and Dungeness “Louie” salads, a glamorous selection of other Dungeness preparations, several meat dishes, pastas, and fish, fish, fish.

The fish category is broken into various sub-headings, including broiled, baked, pan-fried, grilled and steamed, and some fish appear under more than one heading.

Entrees include the choice of soup or salad, and both are good. The clam chowder is fully flavored, and creamy rather than pasty; the well-chosen greens taste best when thickly covered with bits of blue cheese. The kitchen, as unfortunately is common everywhere these days, does less well with side dishes. Most plates will include a less-than-happy rice preparation unless one knows enough to speak up and instead request the skin-on french fries, which are not the best the world has seen, but beat the poor rice by a mile. The vegetables are fresh but too underdone; ever since under-cooked veggies became fashionable, chefs have competed to see who could cook them the least while still rendering them hot.

Fish Beautifully Cooked

The kitchen has a fondness for pairing fish with dabs of composed butters or simple sauces, but the first emphasis is placed upon the fish itself, which in every instance was beautifully cooked. A long filet of Columbia River sturgeon stretched elegantly the length of an oval plate, its ivory flesh here and there burnished from a well-supervised broiling that left it moist and utterly delicious. The “Dijon hollandaise” (properly called a sauce dijonnaise ) served on the side did nothing to harm it, but was best-ignored because subtle fish like sturgeon does not benefit from the strong shock supplied by coarse mustard. (The kitchen, in fact, does not seem to regard sturgeon as all that delicate, since it also offers a “blackened” version. To treat sturgeon in this violent fashion seems an act of barbarism.)

Another lovely offering, a nicely crusted slab of yellowtail tuna, did benefit greatly from its sauce, in this case an imaginative blend of soy sauce and Madeira. Used more as a glaze, the mixture added a suave, subtly pungent note to this delicious fish.

Among the many other seafood choices offered recently were young Columbia River chinook salmon; Hawaiian spearfish in a red pepper butter; ling cod in a tomato, basil and garlic butter; pan-fried yearling oysters; several types of baked oyster dishes; local swordfish in lemon-dill butter, and petrale sole garnished with bay shrimp and almonds.

Grandest Moment

The menu reaches its grandest moment with the Dungeness crab section, which offers grilled crab cakes, a saute of crab legs with artichokes and mushrooms, deep fried crab legs, a Newberg of crab and red king salmon, and, at its summit, an entire, steamed crab.

The whole crab is a magnificent, impressively sized beast that requires a good deal of hand-work (as well as the wearing of a bib), but rewards the diner’s labors with a great deal of exquisitely fresh-tasting meat. At $17.50, it stands at the top of the price range, but unlike other costly shellfish, it yields enough meat to be quite filling.

The grilled crab cakes, though composed primarily of crab (most places use a lot of filler and just a dab of crab), were not the equal of the fried variety found elsewhere. Their texture was somewhat mushy, and they needed the definition that a crisp, brown crust would have given them. They were accompanied by a thoroughly incompetent sauce bearnaise ; every good cookbook includes a recipe for this standard sauce, and the kitchen would do well to undertake a little research.

The restaurant offers a limited selection of desserts but does make them on the premises. The custard is nice, eggy and rich--a rather all-American end to a crab or oyster feast--and the strawberries in sweetened cream also go down quite easily.

McCORMICK & SCHMICK’S

4190 Mission Blvd.

581-3938

Lunch Monday through Friday, dinner nightly.

Credit cards accepted.

Dinner prices vary considerably; dinner for two, with a glass of wine each, tax and tip, should cost anywhere from $25 to $70.