The Line on Cowboy Seafood

Maybe it’s the magical scent of mesquite drifting across the parking lot. Maybe it’s just the name. Whatever; Cowboy Seafood in Newport Beach has been a phenomenal success from the start.

Of course, it has the faux elegance of a diffusely lit California bungalow, with dozens of fans in its wood-beamed ceiling and tables covered in white butcher paper, and all this has its magic. So does a hip, comforting American menu emphasizing seafood and regional favorites.

But you’ll need patience if you want to experience it. Cowboy Seafood’s parking lot is crammed full by 5:30 (the place takes no reservations). By 6:30, the bar is overflowing with the young and the restless of Newport waiting for tables. Men in designer suits and women straight from the Ford Agency catalog are spilling out onto the patio, blocking the front lectern.

When you finally make it to the lectern and put your name on the list, you’ll be handed a buzzer, which hums when your table is ready. On three visits, my average wait for buzz-time was 55 minutes.

At last you enter the dining room, where you pass chefs busily shucking premium-quality oysters. The menu has an excellent selection of wines; even better, there’s no corkage fee--a boon to wine enthusiasts. And near the kitchen is O.C.’s first community hand-wash sink, a bizarre but effective conversation piece.

Your waiters are enthusiastic twentysomethings making the best of a very busy room. On one visit, our waitress was so effusive about the food that one of us finally asked whether there was anything on the menu she didn’t like. “Well,” she said hesitantly, “I don’t like the quail.” Then she giggled and said, “But I don’t really like quail.”

Well, I find there are many things on this menu I do not like, along with many I like a lot. Here’s a for-instance: “chilled marinated delicious and famous chicken livers,” a $5 appetizer listed on the menu with a money-back guarantee in parentheses. I found them tough and oily (though not enough to send back).

The “awesome cherrywood smoked trout dip” is salty, creamy and nicely pungent, but it cloys after a few mouthfuls. “No. 1 tuna chop house carpaccio” (another good sample of the menu prose) is nothing like carpaccio--the albacore is thickly sliced, and it’s nowhere near as delicate or flavorful as sushi-quality tuna.

You’d be better off starting with the crispy squid. The squid is tasty in its spicy, somewhat heavy cornmeal crust, and the enjoyable “hangman sauce” is sort of halfway between Thousand Island and a nice remoulade.

Better yet, you could have the Cowboy Caesar. Sure, it has way too much cheese and dressing, but it’s delicious cheese and delicious dressing.

The entrees are good on the whole, though a couple are staggeringly expensive. The “pan-roasted USDA Prime jumbo Cowboy beef rib steak with homemade Worcestershire and shoestring potatoes” is $32, which is about what you’d pay for the same cut at a Morton’s or Ruth’s Chris. And though my steak was flavorful and nicely crusted with herbs, I still prefer steak cooked on the sort of high-heat broiler a premium steakhouse uses, rather than on a mesquite grill.

The jumbo lump crab cakes also struck me as pricey at $29, although the two large, moist cakes were almost pure crab meat. They came with creamy coleslaw and a somewhat distracting mustard sauce.

*

Sometimes, I have to say, this kitchen is right on the mark. “The best fried jumbo shrimp” live up to their billing. Totally fresh, exquisitely golden and crunchy, these may be the most perfect fried shrimp I’ve ever tasted.

The campfire cedar plank salmon with hand-cut fries and chilled asparagus also is a nice plate of food. The salmon has the same smoky overtones of the planked salmon you’d get at an upscale fish house in the Northwest.

“Very nice pan-seared jumbo scallops with white beans and wilted wild lettuce” turns out to be fine, plump, tender scallops, seared brownish-black on the bottom. You can count on the daily fish special, which is usually mesquite-grilled swordfish or striped bass.

By the way, I had to agree with my waitress about those quail she didn’t like. Your portion (two birds) features a distressingly sweet corn bread stuffing and a sticky dipping sauce. One bite was about all I could manage.

Desserts are confined to strawberry shortcake and the double chocolate paradise cake. The shortcake has the potential to be spectacular--the buttery, biscuit-like shortbread is as good as any I’ve tasted, and it’s topped with hand-whipped cream. But the giant strawberries are insipid and terribly underripe; you can barely pierce them with a fork.

The rich (probably flourless) paradise cake, served in a pool of what tastes like melted vanilla ice cream, may be too much for any mortal. My party of four left almost half of it.

As I elbowed my way to the exit one night, I thought ruefully of all the O.C. restaurants such as Troquet, where you can get a seat immediately and have wonderful food. I was glad to escape the herd.

Cowboy Seafood is expensive. Appetizers are $2 to $10. Salads are $6 to $16. Entrees are $16 to $32. Desserts are $7 to $8.

BE THERE

Cowboy Seafood, 850 Avocado Ave., Newport Beach. (949) 718-0187. Dinner only, 5-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 5-11 p.m. Friday-Sunday. All major cards.