Seafood with Atlantic attitude

Transplants from New England always seem to mourn for East Coast seafood. They go on and on about how much they miss the taste of live Maine lobsters or bluefish, Nantucket bay scallops or fried Ipswich clams. After a few visits to Martha’s Vineyard, I understand their nostalgia. Seafood from our warmer Pacific waters just doesn’t have the same intensity of flavor.

So when Menemsha opened this past November, I was right there with a few East Coast friends with lobster and clam chowder and a taste of home on their minds. Its owner is Brad Johnson, an entrepreneur who has been involved in the clubs Roxbury and the Sunset Room.

Named for a funky little fishing port on Martha’s Vineyard, the restaurant on Washington Boulevard in Venice is hard to spot in the darkness. Look for the painted sign mounted above the building. Painted in a naive style, it depicts a lighthouse on a rocky outcrop that looks more like chunky boxes than rocks.

The entrance is a patio sheltered by high walls and warmed by a stone fireplace and heat lamps. With its bar backlit in red and a massive stone fireplace at the far end of the room, the restaurant itself feels like a cozy lodge hunched against the elements. The walls are lined with knotty pine. A poster-size print of the colorful clay-streaked cliffs of Aquinnah reigns over the dining room and a handful of books on Cape Cod themes are disposed about the room for your browsing pleasure.

Oysters of the day

At the U-shaped raw bar, places are set with silverware and glasses. A few intrepid oyster lovers have already settled in and are slurping down Fanny Bays and Skookums. The oysters of the day are listed on a blackboard behind the chef manning this station. There are usually about half a dozen, and the prices are among the best in town. When you can get Fanny Bays or Quilcenes for $18 a dozen, that’s an incredible deal when other restaurants are charging as much as $3 apiece. The fact that they not only have oysters, but also cherrystone and littleneck clams rivets the attention of seafood lovers.

Except when the place is half empty, the noise level at Menemsha can be deafening enough to spoil the evening. Every time I come we end up jockeying to see which of the tables on offer might be just a tad quieter. Sometimes there’s no difference. The waiters, though, valiantly cut through the noise, leaning to hear each person’s shouted order.

It’s rare to find waiters who can explain the difference between Hama Hama and Willapa Bay, for example, but Menemsha’s servers can. One night when everyone at the table is an oyster lover, we order four different kinds, plus a dozen raw clams for good measure. Not long after, an enormous two-tiered aluminum platter arrives heaped with ice and shellfish with four different condiments in the center -- the usual cocktail sauce and horseradish, and an unusual mignonette laced with grated cucumber, which I appreciated for its cool summery taste. I usually don’t like to adulterate my shellfish with anything other than a drop of lemon, if that, but these were unusually tempting. All the shellfish had a perfect chill, and each was as distinct and delicious as the next.

The cherrystones had a big blustery taste, assertive and briny as the sea. You don’t get many Ipswich clams to an order, but they’re beautifully fried, crunchy and delicious, and come with a little crock of excellent tartar sauce. Littlenecks steamed in white wine and herbs are another good choice.

Restaurant clam chowder is a dicey proposition, but when the waiter mentioned theirs was made with Quahogs flown in daily from New England, I was hooked. The taste of the clams was authentic, and generally the flavoring quite good, but I wish the kitchen hadn’t decided to thicken it to a unappetizing, gluey texture. A good chowder is incredibly easy to make if you have the right ingredients. And they do. I’m tempted to put it down to one of those restaurant mysteries -- or a flawed model.

The Martha’s Vineyard girl at the table had to order a lobster roll, just to see what a West Coast restaurant would do with it. And, I have to say, it was delicious. For the uninitiated, it’s basically a lobster salad sandwich on a tender butter-drenched bun (crisped a little on the grill or in the oven) and filled with chunks of fresh lobster in a good mayonnaise. Cod cakes, though, another New England specialty, are decent, but not particularly noteworthy.

As we move into more complicated dishes, the kitchen is sailing in choppier waters. Bluefish, one of your oilier, but wonderfully tasty fishes, can be absolutely delicious when it’s very fresh and prepared simply. But Menemsha’s fancy preparation of bluefish topped with shredded lump crab does neither ingredient any favors. It’s flat-out awful, as far off the mark as the lazy man’s lobster. That’s basically an oval gratin dish with shelled lobster (hence the lazy in the description: You don’t have to work at eating it) weighted down with bread crumbs, garlic, a splash of Sherry and more butter than is good for either man or lobster. It’s so rich, it’s hard to get past more than two bites.

Perfectly cooked lobster

Better to wait for Tuesday night when the blue plate special is twin steamed lobsters. While the lobster doesn’t have the vivid taste of those pulled from an ocean-fed tank at the port of Menemsha, it is straight from a lobster tank and perfectly cooked. Finally, here’s a restaurant that eschews the usual silly lobster bibs, a plus in my mind. Still, you’d best tuck in that napkin high. What a luxurious feast: two bright red steamed Maine lobsters with a crock of drawn butter. Who needs anything more?

Fish and chips made from Eastern cod is basically fine, but not a whole lot better than what you’d find at a chain fish ‘n’ chips shop. Thursday’s fisherman’s platter adds more kinds of fish and some shellfish to the basic fish ‘n’ chips model.

A new chef, Simon Zatyrka, who cooked at Pinot Hollywood, has just written a spring menu. His salmon dish steamed in a broth perfumed with oregano and saffron stands out, but roasted monkfish medallions with a spring vegetable ragout is dull. Fortunately, a straightforward linguine with those delicious clams or the Yankee pot roast are better choices. The latter is braised to tenderness and served with a generous array of vegetables and horseradish mashed potatoes.

The wine list could do a better job of offering the sort of minerally whites that would truly complement the seafood. But the drinks from the bar are spot on.

Dessert offers a molasses-drenched Indian pudding with stewed autumn fruit (yes, even in springtime), which is too sweet to live. Maple creme brulee, though an interesting idea, doesn’t quite work because the sweet custard doesn’t offer a contrast with the burnt-sugar topping. The one dessert that shines is a banana cream pie: sliced bananas in a soft cloud of whipped cream. That one made the round of the table just once, and it was gone.

The concept of Menemsha is a good one, the setting is cheerful, but the food doesn’t quite live up to the billing yet. When the raw seafood is the best thing on the menu, that’s not a good sign. The quality of the fish may be part of the problem. Johnson, who spent summers on Martha’s Vineyard as a kid, knows what he’s talking about when he means New England seafood, but I’m not entirely sure the kitchen does.

*

Menemsha

Rating: *

Location: 822 Washington Blvd., Venice; (310) 822-2550.

Ambience: Sprawling New England seafood house with outdoor patio, pine-clad walls and clubby, but noisy, atmosphere. There’s also a raw seafood bar with seating, and a stone fireplace at the end of the room.

Service: Amiable but scattered.

Price: Appetizers, $4 to $17; main courses, $14 to $44; desserts, $7.

Best dishes: Oysters and clams on the half shell, lobster roll, fried Ipswich clams, steamed littlenecks, twin steamed lobsters, oven steamed salmon, Yankee pot roast, linguine with clams, banana cream pie.

Wine list: Serviceable, but not enough of the minerally whites that go so well with seafood. Corkage: $10

Best table: In front of the fireplace where the acoustics make this table a bit quieter.

Details: Open Tuesday through Sunday, 5:30 to 10 p.m. (until 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday) and for Sunday brunch, 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Full bar. Valet parking.

Rating is based on food, service and ambience, with price taken into account in relation to quality. ****: Outstanding on every level. ***: Excellent. **: Very good. *: Good. No star: Poor to satisfactory.