Conscious Choice: Big Fish Meets Small Food

March 2008 | Local Food

Big Fish Meets Small Food

The Ocenaire Seafood Room

By Amy Pennington

When a chef sets a plate in front of you, in this case an architectural tower of balanced shells and claws, and tells you to “Get sexy with it” before walking away, you pretty much fall in love. You fall in love with both the chef and the glistening crab set forth on the table. This being the third course, I was sold already, but as I cracked the claw, accidentally splattering my arms in a sticky and syrupy sauce, I made up my mind for good.

I usually prefer small, locally owned restaurants. By eating at these places, I feel like I’m doing my best to support both the local economy and local agriculture. It’s not often, then, that you’ll find me in a big restaurant chain. I made an exception recently for the smack-in-the-heart-of-downtown
Oceanaire.

Everything at Oceanaire is big: big martini glasses, big breadboards, big leathery seating, and now they can add another — big conscience. You wouldn’t think it given the breadth of Oceanaire’s growth — in the past several years they’ve opened 15 restaurants with plans for another in Cincinnati later this year. Yet, talking to Chef Eric Donnelly recently made me think, maybe big isn’t always bad.

Even though Oceanaire often serves dinner to more than 500 hungry mouths a night, Eric still counts his small potatoes. “We used to go fly fishing and mushroom picking as kids, and now it’s cool to support farm-to-table” he explained, noting the many local choices on his menu. “It’s like a connected Northwest cuisine.”

I started my meal in Seattle with a platter of oysters hailing from off the coast of Cortes Island in British Columbia and stretching south to Eagle Rock, just a stone’s throw away in south Puget Sound. It’s worth noting that all of the twelve oyster species available on Oceanaire’s menu are from no farther than a few 100 miles away. The same goes for that sticky crab I fell in love with. We tend to think that most Dungeness are plucked from the steely waters of Alaska, but this one was caught off the coast of Westport, WA.

Eagle Rock was also home to the next course of saké-steamed clams. Down on the Wallins Farm off Barron Point, they raise the clams a bit longer than usual at Eric’s request. These have “meat and integrity,” he said with a grin. True as that is, the broth was undeniably delicious, too, and I spent more time slurping up the lime-lemongrass-basil infusion than I did eating the clams.

I had the Columbia River Sturgeon, cooked to perfection and resting in a glossy puddle of rich sauce. This dish was served with Black Trumpet and Hedgehog mushrooms, both foraged locally by a small outfit called Found and Foraged, based here in Seattle. You can find them set up at the Ballard Farmers’ Market most weekends. I also had a taste of the Alaskan Troll-Caught Salmon from Sitka, my favorite dish of the night. On the plate were sun-dried pears from Tiny’s Produce (another stand often at the Ballard Market on Sundays), heavy with a lengthy maceration in pear brandy from Oregon. The pears were silky and sweet and the fish had a nice crispy skin. Alongside both these dishes was a clay pot with cider-glazed fall vegetables and Hempler’s bacon, just what you’d crave on a cool winter night. Both entrees were paired with a Pinot Noir from Adelsheim out of the Willamette Valley — a bit farther than a 100-mile food radius, but not by far.

This focus on local product is supported in all of the Oceanaires around the country. Clearly, that means different menus in different cities. At the Oceanaire in Indianapolis, farmland prevails and the chef is currently meeting with local farmers to plan and plot out gardens for the upcoming season. The Oceanaire in Miami works with a small crab boat down in Marathon, Fla. Way down on the tip of the Florida Keys, they harvest Stone Crab, a sustainable warm-water crab that is rated as one of the “best” choices for crab according to the national program Seafood Watch, a global fisheries watchdog.

All this makes the food pretty tasty. Full of flavor and well prepared, each dish is a satisfying mouthful. The service is excellent and the setting is highfalutin pretty with sexy booths and shiny silver bars, servers in pressed white linens and nary a diner in jeans. Next time I want a big dinner out with small-scale ingredients, I’ll know where to head.

Amy Pennington recently learned how to shuck an oyster. She adds this to her growing list of foodie accomplishments, right alongside growing vegetables from seed and the ability to make homemade caramel sauce.

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