[Pigging by Wilfrid: August 11, 2014]
A short trip to Mystic, Connecticut, recently, the see the re-created old whaling port, and the whimsical Olde Mystick Village--where you can buy everything from year-round Christmas ornaments to Swedish cod roe pâté in a tube (I did), and really to get out of town for a spell.
There are plenty of clam shacks, and Mexican-Italian-sports bar joints, but Oyster Club jumped out of me as a dinner destination. The website says all the right things about local, seasonal produce, and the setting was a charming old clapboard house on downtown Water Street.
After the disappoinment of finding the oldest bar in the neighborhood--Captain Daniel Packer Inne--packed to the gunnels, we repaired to the Voodoo Lounge for an excellent session beer, Mystic Seaport Pale Ale (actually brewed for the town in Portland, Maine), and a taste of a genuinely local brew, Mystic Bridge IPA by Cottrell.
Oyster Club was right across the street. It's a professional, smoothly run operation, with a good feel to it. And it's busy on the weekend, as you might expect. In fact, apart from a couple of bachelorette parties, the look and feel reminded me a lof of Dover in Brooklyn.
Warm cornbread came right out. The menu changes, I was told, daily--so no specials. There are Connecticut and Rhode Island clams on the half-shell, but it's been a while since I had an oyster stew.
The red skin potatoes were much in evidence, giving it a bit of a chowder slant (there's a quahog chowder on the menu too), but the local oysters weren't over-cooked, and they popped with briney flavor.
I hadn't particularly been thinking of swordfish as a local delicacy when I sat down to dinner, but of course it is, and my server practically gave me the home address of the critter they'd fileted and seared for me. Over-seared, actually; the only mis-step of the evening was cooking the center of the fish well beyond medium, which of course dries it out.
The sweetcorn garnish was speckled with fresh tomatoes and goat cheese, there was a mildly spicy pepper coulis beneath the fish, and adding little explosions of floral mischief, these guys:
Dill flowers, indeed. And they must be in season, because they showed up throughout the meal, and very welcome they were. I wonder why these aren't more often seen in restaurants?
For the non-seafood eater, crispy fried tofu with sweet chili sauce, jasmine rice and a crisp cabbage– sesame salad, which was reported to be good.
As for the wine-list, New Yorkers should weep. Plenty of desirable bottles in the $30 range, and wines by the glass--appealing wines, not plonk--starting at $8 or $9. There are white Burgundies by the glass under twenty bucks. You are saving about 30 percent on wine over New York restaurant prices, whichever way you go. I went for a Pouilly-Fumé.
Here's the website, should you be headed up here.
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