By the Dock of the Bay

Seattle’s seafood classic remains...a classic.

By Kathryn Robinson

Photo: Amos Morgan

Menu mainstay Kasu cod with choy sum cabbage and jasmine rice.

And then our waiter arrived and brought us crashing back from our reverie. It wasn’t anything he said or did; it was his manner—a little rushed, a little canned, a little too-many-times-I’ve-defined-sake-kasu-for-these-rubes—which stood in marked contrast with the engaged professionalism that has distinguished this waitstaff in years past. Looking around we realized that everyone seated near us was elderly, toasting an anniversary, or in from Peoria. In short: special-occasion people, not food people. It explained the perfunctory server. More than that, it explained the food.

We sank our forks into classics like that stolen kasu cod, still a mainstay of the menu, whose buttery flesh all but melted over the choy sum cabbage and jasmine rice, its sweetness gently augmented with honeyed soy sauce. A hank of clean, bright grilled halibut arrived in a Mediterranean party of tomatoes and peppers and caper berries over olive mashed potatoes—a stroke of originality amid otherwise familiar flavors. My Boathouse salad was quietly grand; a quarter-head of butter lettuce embellished with shaved almonds, dried cranberries, and large hunks of luscious Point Reyes Farmstead blue cheese.

My sea scallops—five of them—were expertly seared, dripping their rich caramel over chard and fennel and artichoke hearts, the lot of it swimming in black-olive butter pocked with fat, chewy bits of pecorino Toscano. This plate was feisty, a little bit rogue—with that lusty pecorino dancing onstage like Carmen Miranda. But this dish was the exception. The others? Predictable. Flawlessly cooked, but predictable. We’d seen them before. A plate of crab cakes swizzled with mustard gave the impression even the kitchen was bored. The Dungeness crab salad, with its toasted coconut shavings and peanuts and squirts of lime, is a faded dowager and should be retired—no matter what the elders from Peoria are ordering.

A great blue heron posed on a piling just offshore from our table.

But even as I write that, I can see it’s a little unfair. Not every restaurant has to be in the reinvention business; classics are important too. Here it should be noted that New York is receiving Ramseyer’s Wild Salmon with tepid praise. One critic commended execution of the salmon even as he dissed the fish as “the Cheerios of restaurant food.” Birk is—as promised—proving a stolid steward of Ramseyer’s traditionalist vision. And why shouldn’t he? Ray’s is so crazy popular the hosts call all reservations to confirm their tables. Birk isn’t about to fix what from a bottom-line standpoint ain’t broke.

It’s just deflating in light of Ray’s past distinction. Not as deflating, mind you, as what’s going on upstairs at Ray’s Café, whose careless presentations (a starter of broken-shelled and overdone Penn Cove mussels, an infuriatingly mediocre clam linguine featuring a few mud-filled clams) and sophomoric service (“I know fruit sauce on salmon sounds weird, but you should try it!”) have bothered me for years. Why can’t I accept Ray’s Café as a harmless family place with fruity cocktails, crayons for the kids, and a breathtaking view? Because it’s nobody’s portal to civilization.

I’ll end with two up notes: Ray’s wine list remains a marvel, and its wine program—a pillar of the new open-mindedness toward red or white with fish—approachable and fine. And pastry chef Marcia Sisley-Berger brings down the house with her careful and sumptuous finales. Everything we sampled off the long dessert list was a stunner, especially a brainy chili-lime chocolate soufflé cake with a lush texture and a shot of voltage. Portal to bliss, anyone?


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