Eatery Well Schooled in the Fine Art of Fish

Do you flounder when ordering seafood? If so, kindly ponder the following:

If you were a fish

Would it be your wish

To be wetly kissed

By an ichthyologist

Or garnished,

and served on a dish?

--1992, understandably anonymous

Cosmic ramifications aside, the point of the above is to introduce the idea of seafood, especially on those occasions when it is presented as an entree. There are those who won’t look at anything spawned in brine, but friends from under the sea are pretty popular these days, and the question of where to find them at their best certainly is topical.

Any number of restaurants perpetually perpetrate piscatorial peccadilloes, to be sure. A question that constantly arises asks, “Where is the best place to order seafood in North County?” The only way to answer this is to respond, “Order fish at a good restaurant.”

Any establishment that makes a point of quality is most likely to emphasize the freshest, most carefully prepared fish and shellfish. The term catch of the day may seem an annoying cliche, but at many restaurants it does represent the finest seafood, prepared with imagination and, in some cases, affection.

If impeccable freshness is the sole criterion, there is no better place to seek it than at a sushi bar, of which there are many in North County. But not everyone is prepared to scale the sushi heights.

Self-proclaimed seafooderies sometimes deliver, and sometimes take advantage of the unwary by spinning fishwives’ tales in the form of menu claims that do not meet the basic tests of taste and quality. Price no longer is a reliable guide to quality--if it ever was--and the fact that a plate of halibut or swordfish costs in the $20 range by no means guarantees that the cut has not spent months immured in the icy precincts of a walk-in freezer. The simplest and best rule of thumb is to trust a restaurant that pleases you on other fronts; any place that displays an insistence on quality is likely to observe it in the realm of seafood cookery.

Quite a few North County restaurants meet this test. But should you feel it utterly imperative to dine at an undeniable “fish house,” an establishment that bans meat as if it were something beneath the consideration of decent folk, the Fish Market in Solana Beach is a solid bet.

This restaurant, solidly established and frequently plagued by lengthy waits for tables, offers an exceptionally well-rounded menu that opens with a grand assortment of shellfish appetizers and runs along to imaginative seafood salads and entrees and a fine list of unadorned but well-cooked fresh fish. The shellfish choices probably are the best that can be found locally, including several types of oysters from Westcott Bay in Puget Sound--the plump Belons are related to the inimitable Belons of France; a generously served cocktail of Oregon Dungeness crab (explore this unique flavor by anointing it simply with lemon juice, rather than drowning it in cocktail sauce); littleneck clams and steamed Prince Edward Island mussels, spawned in reassuringly cold water. Icy depths almost always make for better-tasting seafood.

The menu takes time to read, since it offers a remarkable range of cooking styles. There is a section of smoked fish, another of salads (crab or shrimp Louie, avocado stuffed with smoked salmon), another of seafood pastas, and an oyster bar section that offers pan-fried oysters, sushi and Maryland soft shell crabs.

The entree list deals primarily with grilled fresh fish, of which there are usually a dozen or more choices, including, recently, Chinook salmon, Petrale sole, Punta Magdalena yellowtail, Canadian halibut, ling cod, Mexican sea bass, farm-raised trout and catfish, thresher shark from local waters and Hawaiian swordfish.

The grilling proceeds with care, which is to say that the kitchen knows how to send out a moist piece of fish; a recently sampled swordfish was notably succulent. This is not fancy fare, though, and you generally have to settle for tartar sauce, which by no means can be considered the best condiment for grilled fish.

Skewered items include Mexican shrimp wrapped in bacon, a simple but quite pleasant presentation that lets the shrimp taste like shrimp but keeps them juicy, as well as scallops with snapper and shrimp, and the extravagance of small Maine lobster tails strung out in a luxury kebab.

Caveats extend not only to the intense noise level of the restaurant, which may make you feel as if you are dining in an echo chamber, but also to the extremely limited choice of side dishes. The “fishwife” rice lacks virtue, and the au gratin potatoes can be leathery; french-fried potatoes, so perfect for many types of fish, evidently are considered vulgar here. But there is, by way of compensation, the a la carte option of a freshly steamed artichoke.

The Fish Market

640 Via de la Valle, Solana Beach Calls: 755-2277

Hours: Lunch and dinner daily

Cost: Entrees $8.75 to $24.65. Dinner for two, including a glass of wine each, tax and tip, about $30 to $70.