Patterson’s Is Dingy, but the Kitchen Shines

When I was a boy growing up in New England, I loved dropping in at clam stands and lobster shacks to indulge in a box of fried Ipswich clams or a juicy boiled lobster.

New England seafood is available in these parts, too, minus the trawlers, clapboard houses and salty demeanor you find in almost any New England restaurant. Last week I visited two Orange County restaurants specializing in New England seafood. I have to admit there were more than a few surprises.

Patterson’s Railroad Inn is in a working-class Placentia neighborhood and is about the least likely looking candidate for this type of food one could imagine. Although the front window is painted with the logos of all the professional New England sports teams, the interior is dreary at best, in no way reminiscent of the Northeast. Half of the restaurant is occupied by a dark bar, where mostly men sit and watch sporting events on ESPN.

The dining area is only a little brighter, and the dingy, spotted carpet doesn’t inspire much confidence. But if you aren’t into appearances, you are going to be very, very pleased with what you eat here.

That live lobster tank near the kitchen is filled with Maine lobster, a sea creature that chef Johnny Wilson (a real-article Rhode Islander) really knows how to cook. Here, as almost everywhere in New England, lobsters are served broiled, boiled or baked stuffed, and you can count on the meat being every bit as succulent and tender as it would be on the rocky coast of Maine.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. You’ll want to start with a bowl of clam chowder, and we aren’t talking the library paste most local restaurants serve under that name. This is authentic New England clam chowder, chunks of clams and potatoes in a light, creamy clam broth, easily the best chowder I have tasted in a long time.

Will your spoon stand up in it? Sure . . . when the Red Sox win the World Series again. (The last time was 1918.)

Wilson also prepares such regional specialties as clam cakes and fried Ipswich clams, the only Orange County chef to do so. The name clam cakes is misleading. These are really little fried puffs of raised dough with chopped clams mixed into the batter. You get about 12 to an order.

The fried Ipswich clams are the best reason to come here. Wilson batters them in a special cornmeal he gets from Rhode Island (where cornmeal flour is king), then serves them with the bellies in, just as you’d get them at any clam stand from Rockport to Newport.

The rest of this menu is less interesting, but who cares? There are baked stuffed shrimp, scrod stuffed with Italian bread crumbs and scallops and other fried seafoods, all breaded with cornmeal. All seafoods are flown in fresh, and there are a few pasta dishes with clams, shrimps and scallops to balance the selections. Now, if they would only make this place a little more inviting to look at, it could be a local treasure.

Patterson’s Railroad Inn is moderately priced. Appetizers and chowders are $1.25 to $7.95. Dinners are $8.95 to $14.95.

New England Seafood Co., on the other hand, is quite cute enough to look at, but the cooking could use a little more inspiration.

The owners have brightened this narrow mini-mall space as well as can be expected, making it a pleasant place to pass time. A big sign advertising Sam Adams--a Massachusetts beer that has won numerous national awards--beckons as you enter. The walls have been painted with cheery waterfront murals and draped with fish netting, and there are mauve oilcloths on every table. The rear wall, just in front of the kitchen area, has been constructed with clapboard to resemble a dockside shack. If they could only put as much effort into what they prepare.

The restaurant features lobster prominently, but not, at least on my visits, in the shell. (When the supply is plentiful, live lobster is available.) The cooks shell their Maine lobsters and serve the meat en casserole in various preparations--authentic New England fare, all right, but hardly what most people hanker for.

Worse, the restaurant is often out of the steamers and fried clams that New Englanders eat so obsessively, relying on more commonplace ingredients like codfish, smelts and haddock to fill in the blanks. They’re New England foods too, but nothing we go out for back they-ah.

Smelts in a basket make a good beginning here, lightly dredged and served with lemon wedges and an unctuous homemade tartar sauce. They aren’t as flavorful as many smelts I’ve tasted, but they aren’t bad, either. I rather like the fish cake here, although fish cake is considered supermarket food back East. It’s a pan-fried hockey puck of codfish and potato, and I find it strangely comforting. This crab cake isn’t bad either, even if it does taste as if it was made from canned lump crab meat.

The house chowder needs to be rethought. The basic clam essence is present, but a thick, pasty texture obscures it. The next time I dine here I’m going to choose a salad instead. The pungent house raspberry vinaigrette has a good deal more gumption than this soup.

If it’s lobster you’ve come for, you can have it in a dish called seafood delight--an oven-baked dish with prime chunks of shelled lobster meat, delicious whole Eastern scallops (probably the best thing to eat here) and a couple of hefty prawns, all drooling butter and sprinkled with good seasoned bread crumbs. The price on this one is also hefty. At $18.99 it is the most expensive thing on the menu.

Scrod, a generic term for any young fish back East, here refers to the lowly codfish, and despite competent broiling, it will not take your breath away. I prefer to eat it deep-fried in the house fish and chips. These french fries are reasonably good, and as you probably know, with enough malt vinegar and good tartar sauce, almost any fresh fish can be tolerated.

New England Seafood Co. is moderately priced. Appetizers are $2.99 to $4.75. Main dishes are $5.75 to $18.99.

PATTERSON’S RAILROAD INN

1128 Orangethorpe Ave., Placentia.

(714) 996-5381.

Open daily, 11 a.m. through 10 p.m.

MasterCard and Visa accepted.

NEW ENGLAND SEAFOOD CO.

26000 Rockfield Blvd., El Toro.

(714) 859-2303.

Open Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Sunday, 4 to 9 p.m.

American Express, MasterCard and Visa accepted.