Great Bowls of Gumbo

Gumbo is where you find it. In this case, it’s across the street from the Northridge post office, right next to a Korean acupuncture parlor in one of those long, narrow “shotgun” strip malls that extend deep into a block. I’d never have noticed the place at all if its sign weren’t prominently visible from my podiatrist’s parking lot.

The name of the place is SeaPreme Seafood, and its gumbo is just a Friday and Saturday thing, I regret to say, because it’s quite a good one. You get a big bowl of swampy broth full of file flavoring, mixed with rice, chunks of chicken, plenty of hot link slices and maybe even an occasional crayfish. On top come about four skinny snow crab legs, fresh-tasting and not overcooked. It’s messy to wrestle the sweet flesh out of the legs, even with the nutcracker and crab fork that are provided, but worth it.

And that’s the small bowl. It would be a real challenge for a single person to put away the larger one.

SeaPreme is a plain little place with a taste for lighthouses as decor--there are three posters showing lighthouses, two of them representing the Cape Hatteras light in North Carolina, with its spiraling bands of black and white brick. Other than that, there isn’t much to see here but the counter and a refrigerated display case containing fish, a squeeze dispenser of hot sauce and the odd dessert.

Gumbo isn’t actually mentioned on the menu, only on a board behind the counter (which also reveals that Wednesday is dominoes night here). The regular menu is shrimp and half a dozen kinds of fish, all of which can be ordered either fried, grilled or blackened and served either as a fish plate or in a po’-boy sandwich. (Salmon is not available as a sandwich, however.) You can also put together combination plates or even hire SeaPreme’s catering services for a party.

Presumably, you could get a grilled or blackened oyster po’-boy, but you don’t want to do anything crazy. Get the oysters fried; they come on a soft roll with lettuce, tomato and either tartar sauce or mayo. With a shrimp po’-boy, the staff may offer you the choice of a cocktail sauce instead. It has a decent level of horseradish, making for a sort of hybrid of po’-boy and shrimp cocktail on a roll. All sandwiches come with a choice of coleslaw or French fries.

With the fish plates, go ahead and have the fish cooked any way you like. Blackened fish (red snapper being the usual choice) is only moderately peppery. I’ve had a big pile of thin filets of sole fried quite neatly. Salmon--the most expensive and the least Southern fish here--is a decent piece of fish, grilled a point .

Really, though, the best item seems to be the fried catfish, characterized by big chunks of fresh, sweet fish. If your taste runs to something with a really fishy flavor, on the other hand, you can get whiting, a fish you don’t see very much in LA.

*

The fish plates run 70 cents to $1.70 more than the sandwiches and come with two choices of side order. The string beans, candied yams and macaroni and cheese are standard-issue versions, the red beans and rice a little better than that. There’s a coleslaw with shredded carrots in it and a potato salad that follows the school of flavoring with a little pickle juice. The collard greens are quite plain but improve with a little hot sauce (or even a little tartar sauce).

The most distinctive side order is spaghetti salad. This is not like any conventional pasta salad--no elbow macaroni with mayo here. In effect, it’s cold spaghetti marinara with a dose of garlicky vinaigrette. As somebody who’s eaten his share of cold spaghetti, I can say this is an idea that makes excellent sense.

For dessert, the usual choices are a rather plain version of sock-it-to-me cake and a sweet potato pie with a loud but not over-sweetened filling, and peach cobbler, served in a foam cup like a kind of hot peach pudding mixed with crust.

And remember, Wednes-day is dominoes night.

*

SeaPreme Seafood, 9545 Reseda Blvd. #16, Northridge. (818) 885-8020. Open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, noon to 9 p.m. Saturdays; closed Sundays and Mondays. No alcohol. Parking lot. All major cards. Lunch for one, $5.25 to $9.25; gumbo $11.95 to $15.95. What to get: fried catfish plate, grilled salmon plate, shrimp po’-boy, chicken wing plate, gumbo (Friday and Saturday only).