Where the Fish Is Fresh and the Wine a Bargain : THE FOOD : Shall we pop up to Avila Beach for dinner? Welcome to a world so near, yet so far away

Olde Port Inn, at the end of the 3rd Pier, Port San Luis, Avila Beach. (805) 595-2515. Open for dinner only, nightly. Full bar. Parking at end of the pier (if there’s room). All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $25-$50.

Walking down the long dark pier, alone, I feel as if I am in some foreign place, maybe Italy or Greece. On one side, lights twinkle on the water as cars race along the curve of the bay. On the other, boats at anchor take shelter in the shadow of a brooding cliff whose darkness defines the water’s edge.

The air smells like salt and fish--clean in a way that Los Angeles never is, even when you’re standing at the ocean. There’s a rectangle of light along the pier; within the light a group of people stand in wading boots, cleaning fish with precise gestures. I think of how remote their lives are from mine, and then the gnawing in my stomach reminds me: I am hungry.

Three hours ago, I was at my desk in downtown Los Angeles. The plane ride--on a plane so small it looked like a toy-- was loud, bumpy and slightly scary; it felt like being on the inside of a blender. The noise was so intense that the quiet when we landed at little San Luis Obispo airport was like a physical force. And then I was driving down peaceful country roads, threading my way through the farm country I’d looked down upon only moments ago. It felt like an escape.

Slipping into the mineral hot tub that sat in a private patio outside my room at the motel, I floated in the sulfury water and let the city slide away. I watched the moon through the branches of the trees and thought that no sane person would fly to Avila Beach for dinner. But then, no food critic is completely sane.

For years, I have heard about the Olde Port Inn. Then Dan Berger wrote about the wine list (see accompanying article), and it whetted my hunger even more. Weeks passed, but I couldn’t seem to interest anybody in driving up here with me. It’s too far, they all said; it takes too much time. Finally, I just came alone.

And here I am, at the end of the pier, about to enter the restaurant. It doesn’t look like much. Inside, a sign tells me to walk up the stairs, and as I do I pass a couple in blue jeans and their daughter, who sucks on a yellow plastic bottle. A sign at the top announces that today’s specials are halibut with mushroom sauce, red snapper, steamed Washington oysters and cioppino. A young man with long blond hair leads me through the semidarkness to a table. A candle in a red vase flickers through what looks like a cut-out coffee can. Although we are right on the pier, and I am looking down at the water, it looks like one of those inland places that tries to pretend it’s on the water. Fish nets hang on the old plank walls and slightly wizened plants dangle from the rafters.

An aggressively cheery young man asks if I’d like anything to drink. I say I’d like the wine list. I ask him to recommend a local wine, and he does, bringing me the Meridian ’88 Chardonnay. It is not until the end of the meal that he says, “Not bad for a local wine, eh?” admitting that he really prefers wines from the Napa Valley. I wish he’d mentioned that earlier.

My main problem is going to be ordering a lot of food without looking suspicious. To this end I have equipped my purse with plastic Baggies and myself with a fictitious friend back at the motel. It hardly seems necessary; the waiter doesn’t blink when I place my order, and he doesn’t seem to think that a woman sitting down to a whole bottle of wine by herself is weird.

Perhaps not; at one end of the restaurant one extremely boisterous group seems to be drinking a lot and having a wonderful time. At another table, two guys sit having a swearing contest. A couple at the far end of the restaurant seems to be enjoying a romantic candlelight dinner. Meanwhile, the guy at the next table is all alone, reading a magazine.

I fit right in. The waiter suggests I start with shrimp stuffed with jack cheese, wrapped in bacon and deep-fried. Not my idea of great food, but they’re better than I expect them to be. I cast surreptitious looks around the room, open one of the little foil packages of butter, look around again and whisk three of the shrimp into a baggie and bury them in my purse.

Entrees come with clam chowder or salad. The chowder has a great reputation, so I opt for that. I take one spoonful, and then another, and as I’m trying to define exactly what it is that I don’t like about the soup, I discover that there is none left in my bowl. It did have a moderately clammy flavor, but it was thick and pasty, and compared to the chowder served at Swan’s Oyster Depot in San Francisco (as good as I’ve had anywhere), it was pretty pathetic stuff.

I’d asked the waiter for guidance on the entree. “You can’t go wrong with the specials--they’re all fresh fish,” he had replied. And so I ordered the halibut. It turns out to be a nice thick piece of fish, and so beautifully cooked it is still moist and juicy. The mushroom sauce is fine too. But the fish has picked up a slightly metallic taste from the grill that puts me off a little. And while I like the buttery baby pea pods served on the side, this scoop of herbed rice sits on the plate like ice cream that refuses to melt. I wish it would go away. So I stuff it, and half the halibut, into a Baggie and think about dessert.

At my right, the lone diner is telling the waiter, “Got to have a piece of Butterfinger pie.” “Bring me the same,” I say. And here it is--an ice cream pie, a sort of American version of Biscuit Tortoni--that seems like the perfect dessert for this restaurant.

I remind the waiter about my friend at the motel. “He’ll be getting pretty hungry,” I say. “Could you get the chef to pack up a cioppino for me to take along?” The waiter says that this will be no problem. As I walk out the door, balancing a bag full of soup and another bag full of wine, he says, “I hope you’re parked at the end of the pier.”

I’m not. But I enjoy the walk back down to the car in the clear, cold night air. I look up at Orion stretched out in the sky. I look at the boats bobbing on the water. I stand there, eating cioppino with a plastic spoon, thinking that I’ll take another mineral hot tub when I get back to my room and that, as jobs go, this isn’t a bad one.