RESTAURANT REVIEW : Oyster Bliss at Schmick’s in Pasadena

My first experience at Pasadena’s McCormick & Schmick’s was oyster heaven.

A friend and I ordered the large sampler that had two each of six West Coast oysters, arranged in the same order as on the menu.

The oysters were fresh. Some were creamy like the skookum oyster, others crisper like the Fanny Bay and Totten Inlet types, mild as a tear. The Chiloes were gummy, and strongly flavored like an aged cheese. My favorites were the tiny, clean-tasting, almost sweet Kumamoto, and the mild, meaty and all-around pleasurable Belon.

After eating our way clockwise around this big plate, my friend and I were not only far more educated in oysterology, but unmistakably happy.

“What do you suppose it is about oysters that makes you happy?” my friend Kathy asked. “Are they full of life force?”

“Maybe just life,” I said, thinking about precisely how fresh these oysters might be.

McCormick & Schmick’s is a Seattle-based seafood restaurant chain, a kind of Flying Tigers for the 1990s. This newest M & S in Pasadena is a large store that seats well over 300 people in its various large dining rooms, bar and outdoor patio. Here, in the City of the Roses, M & S’ signature old-style, dark, wood-paneled men’s club atmosphere has been reinterpreted in a classic, local California Craftsman style, with quintessential Green and Green-style tongue-and-bolt joints everywhere. A man plays the piano on an overhead platform. Stuffed pheasants are planted in the greenery.

There is a mass market, mass appeal to this restaurant. The menu, printed daily, is a large 11-by-17-inch sheet featuring almost a hundred daunting choices--light meals and pastas to specialties utilizing 25 “catches of the day.”

That first night, I managed to hit the jackpot with almost everything I tried. A mixed green salad with blue cheese and sugar-glazed walnuts tasted better than it sounds: crunchy, creamy, crisp and dressed with restraint. Fresh Hawaiian swordfish, served with fresh steamed asparagus was moist and lightly grilled to a delicate exterior crispness. The seafood in a prawn-and-scallop ragout was cooked not a moment too long--but I found the florescent-orange chipotle cream sauce more rich and cloying than flavorful. The decent three-berry cobbler came with a big scoop of ice cream.

Subsequent experiences at McCormick & Schmick’s were significantly less blissful.

I learned that lunch reservations are a must; otherwise one is shuttled into the bar, where the service can be even more sluggish than it sometimes is in the dining rooms.

After those darn oysters, it’s hard to be enthusiastic about the other appetizers, though the menu offers a selection ranging from standard steamed shellfish to pan-Asian specialties.

I thought the steamed clams were fresh, but not very tasty; crab cakes were thready and bland, without enough of the spicy rouille sauce. Seafood moo shu , a tasty mix of fish and shrimp in a brittle pancake, was difficult to eat since the pancake fell apart.

I did like thin slices of fresh, nicely seared ahi tuna, which came with an OK Asian cucumber salad. The swordfish I had that first night also set a standard that often made subsequent meals disappointing. Penne with salmon, snow peas and allegedly fresh dill turned out to be a swamp of dull bland cream and second-rate Parmesan cheese.

The menu reads like a veritable encyclopedia of creative fish cookery: There’s a tortilla crust on the mahi mahi, Jamaican jerk spice on the sea bass, cherry green onion relish on the salmon.

Tenderized and deep-fried razor clams from Alaska were greasy and uninteresting, served with not enough good, lemony aioli butter to redeem the dish. Petrale sole, a delicate fish, was heavily browned, mushy and in no shape, by the time it came out of the saute pan, to be enhanced by the tiny dose of buerre blanc , capers and lemon.

I would have liked fresher coffee on each of my visits. Better service would have been nice too. While cheerful enough, the waitresses sometimes vanished for lengthy stretches between courses. Mostly, however, I would love to have more of those oysters.

*McCormick & Schmick’s, 111 N. Los Robles Ave., Pasadena, (818) 405-0064. Lunch Monday through Saturday, brunch Sunday, dinner seven days. Full bar. Valet or validated lot parking. Major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $20-$75.