Chain of Fools

Like many of us, I generally avoid chain restaurants in the same way I avoid poisonous snakes, grizzly bears and people who haven’t bathed lately. Last night, in the midst of some other drama that has contributed to my relative silence on this blog and that I may or may not detail at some later date, I had the occasion to visit an outpost of a regional chain of seafood restaurants.

They used to be owned by a Portland company and were called Newport Bay before they and their siblings were acquired by a Seattle oufit a couple of years ago. The new owners have remodeled, gussied up the décor, renamed them Newport Seafood Grille and made the menu more frou-frou.

What they haven’t done is improve the execution in the 8 or 9 years since I’ve been there. If anything, it has taken a step backward. The quality of the preparation seems to have an inverse correlation to the complexity of the recipe, a common theme at chains and certainly one that I mention to Portland visitors who want to visit one of the McCormick and Schmick’s stores that are touted by almost every guide to Portland restaurants imaginable. "Just don't order anything with a sauce. Stick with simple preparations," is my usual mantra.

I wasn’t hungry enough for a full meal but I was hungry, so I plopped myself in the bar, ordered a beer and perused the Happy Hour appetizer menu - items from two dollars to five dollars. Given that my life has been so hectic lately and my eating habits have been reduced to a lot of cheeseburgers, I decided I needed something green. I figured my digestive system, which has been severely out of whack and protesting for the past week in ways you don’t want to know about, would appreciate the effort. What to have?

Well, it was simple, at least at first. They offered an iceberg wedge with tomatoes, red onion and blue cheese dressing. Perfect! Retro as it is, it’s something I love and it’s almost impossible to screw up. Amazingly enough, they almost managed the task. 

Tomatoes? Hah! It's January, so I certainly wasn't expecting a big, juicy slice of Brandywine or Cherokee Purple, but c'mon. I didn't even get a decent chunk of Roma, having to settle for a few measly dice of what looked like Roma, and "dice" is being kind. Picture four or five little 1/4-inch squares interspersed among the wisps of thinly-sliced red onion that had probably been sliced and oxidizing since Sunday, judging by the pungent aroma. But hey, the iceberg was cold and crispy and the blue cheese dressing was pretty good, so what did I want for a lousy three bucks? So far so good.

Next up? Something a bit more challenging, the "red crab and seafood cakes". I've heard of blue crab, stone crab, Dungeness crab, rock crab, snow crab, king crab, "the crabs" and fake crab (surimi), but "red crab" isn't something with which I'm familiar. And "seafood"? What exactly is that? Could be anything from perch to pollock to plankton. So I asked my server who, in a surly fashion, replied "Red crab is like Dungeness and seafood means fish." 

Oh, sure. I get it. Either you don't have a clue or you're trying to blow smoke up my nether regions. Fine. They're four bucks, I'll roll with it. Mind you, a larger portion with a fancier presentation (one hopes) is on the regular menu for $8.50, so it's not like this is some special item they thought up just for Happy Hour. 

I should have ordered the sliders, even though they're burgers. They couldn't have been as bad as these patties of mush. Although crab cakes are generally browned in hot fat (oil or butter) these things were not brown, though someone had made an effort. In fact, I've seen Brits in January with better tans. They were greasy, they were tasteless and the only texture they had was delivered by the large chunks of under-cooked celery interspersed among the puree of miscellaneous, unidentified seafood and bread crumbs. In fact, oddly for a restaurant meal, they were severely lacking in salt, but I don't like to salt food at  the table (it's disgusting) so I didn't bother. 

Worse, they sat on a big, gloppy pool of what was supposed to be a roasted red pepper sauce of sorts. Pale pink, cold and almost tasteless, it only added to the sensation of greasiness in the cakes, caused mostly by the sautéing fat congealing as it hit the cold sauce. Accompanied by a slim wedge of lemon and not even a sprinkling of parsley to make them at least look good, they had all the appeal of a couple of hockey pucks. Still, I was hungry enough that I ate them, but if I'd made them at home I think the cat - the one I don't have - would have turned her nose up at them. 

Okay . . . dessert. Let's keep this short and put it this way: By scraping the frosting off a Hostess chocolate cupcake, inverting it and spreading some Smucker's raspberry jam and Hershey's syrup around the plate, I could make something that tastes just as good. If I were to put the jam and syrup in squeeze bottles it would look just as good. Just sayin'. 

So, dear peeps, todays lesson is that only fools go to chain restaurants if they're expecting food beyond what they can get at Mickey D's or BK. Stay away, stay very far away.

It's Almost Dungeness Crab Season - Want The Perfect Wine?

Dungeness season starts on December 1 here in Oregon, so we're not that far off and you'll want the perfect wine for the first crabs of the year. Well . . . here it is, peeps.  Shy Chenin chenin blanc.  It's from my friends Chenin and Sean Carlton who also have Basket Case Wine, the off-dry Stumbling Block Wine and the huge, complex Reversal syrah from southern Oregon.  There's another Shy Chenin wine and it's a really good syrah rose that's best in warm weather but there's no reason you can't light a fire, crank up the heat or just get hot and bothered with your honey and have some over the winter.


I told the story about re-connecting with Chenin way back in my post about Pacific City, and it's a good one, so I encourage you to check the archives and read it. Just rest assured that Chenin, who was named after the chenin blanc vines her parents planted in Temecula in 1968 while her mom was pregnant with her, is anything but shy in real life, and neither is Sean. After all, how shy can they be when the motto for their Basket Case line is "Wine For The Crazy In All Of Us"?  How shy can either of them be when the educational page of their website - where you can find a long and detailed treatise on trichlorianisole (TCA), the compound that causes "cork taint" or a smell of musty cardboard in your wine - is entitled "Screw U"? But, as usual, I digress.


Find yourself some of this wine. It's aromatic, floral and crisp - just the perfect thing for Dungeness crab, hot or cold. They sell it mostly at their tasting room and at farmers' markets around Portland, but it's available in some retail outlets and they have out-of-state distribution, too. Ask around or, if all else fails, drop me a note and I'll get ahold of Chenin and find out where you can get some.  


And while we're on the subject of Dungeness crab, here are some tips I've picked up during my time here in the northwest.  One is, if at all possible, buy it live - or better yet catch it yourself.  While there's generally good turnover in crab you buy cooked, you don't really know how long ago it was cooked before being delivered to your retailer, who can only tell you when it came into the store.  The other advantage of buying them live is that your fishmonger should be willing to take the backs off them (killing them instantly) and clean them for you.  That way you can steam them without the body meat (the sweetest part) getting tainted by the innards.  


Another is not to use those hinged cracker thingies to crack the shells. All you end up with most of the time is pulverized shell in your crab. Get yourself a cheap dinner fork from Goodwill or a restaurant supply store and stick a tine into the little seam where the shell is soft on the legs and claws. Then sort of zip the fork along the leg longitudinally to create an opening. Now you can just open the shell the way you'd open a book and the meat will come right out. The body requires you to pick the cartilage out with your fingers anyway, so roll up your sleeves and go to it.

Lastly, try something kinda different to dip the crab in. Steep a crushed clove of garlic in some melted butter for about half an hour, then stir in a little bit of Sambal Oelek, available at Asian groceries and most regular supermarkets that have branched out beyond Wonder Bread and Velveeta "cheese".  Huy Fong is the brand I'm accustomed to seeing, but I'm sure there's more than one. It's a red chile paste, so be careful when you add it unless you like your food spicy, bearing in mind that too much spice will overpower the delicate crab.  


One more tip: If the crabs don't weigh at least a pound and a half (2 pounds is better) don't buy them.  The meat-to-shell ratio isn't very good.  


So there you have it.  I can't wait for crab season now that I've written this.