Tempest

The grand finale of our tour of new restaurants during this summer’s iteration of Restaurant Week was dinner at Tempest Oyster Bar on Friday night. It was hands-down the best dinner we ate all week, and probably the most enjoyable dining experience, partly because our friends Becky and John joined us for the evening and partly because the food and the venue were just that good.

We already had a table by the time our friends came in and even had a plate of oysters Rockefeller waiting for them. None of us had eaten oysters before. I don’t know about the others, but I have a general rule that I won’t eat anything that I can’t distinguish from snot. My Darling B felt, however, that if we were going to an oyster bar, we pretty much had to eat oysters.

I told her that under no circumstances would I be slurping down a raw oyster. There might be enough alcohol in the world to get me drunk enough to do it, but I’m positive that at my age I don’t have the fortitude any more to survive being that drunk. B kept egging me on, and I kept saying no until she ran across a menu item billed as oysters Rockefeller: broiled oysters on the half shell. I could raise no objection to eating cooked boogers. She knows I’ll try anything anybody passes off as cuisine so long as it’s cooked. I’ve eaten slugs, bugs, tentacles and I can’t even remember what else, so I agreed to a plate of oysters Rockefeller.

And you know, they were not bad. I wouldn’t say I’m crazy about them, and I wouldn’t go out of my way for another serving, but as one of those things to try just to say I did it, it wasn’t bad. It reminded me of the dark-meat scallops we used to get at restaurants in Japan with the guts and all the rest of the tripe still attached, not the clean, white scallops typically served here in the States. Chewy. A little gristly. I’d describe the taste as muddy. We all tried them and I think we all had about the same opinion: they were okay, but nobody raved about them. But we ate oysters at the oyster bar. Bucket list item checked off.

Oysters Rockefeller was actually the pre-appetizers appetizer, an extra treat we ordered because it was a special night out. The appetizer from Tempest’s prix fixe menu for Restaurant Week was a choice of she-crab soup, whitefish cakes, or a Caesar salad. Becky and I had the whitefish cake. It was wonderful. Nice and flaky, just a little creamy, and just a little bit sweet. John had Caesar salad. I think B had crab soup (not sure, too lazy to go upstairs to ask her).

For the main course, Becky and My Darling B had the marlin. For the longest time I didn’t think anyone ever ate marlin. I thought people fished for marlin just so they could have a stuffed marlin on the wall to tell stories about. Reading Hemingway will do that to you. He made it sound like catching a marlin was pretty tough to do, but I suppose they don’t reel them in on a line any more. It’s a tasty fish, but much meatier than any of us expected it to be. Each bite was a solid mouthful of food that had to be chewed like steak. It was a long way off from a nice, flaky walleye fillet.

I had salmon, cooked to perfection. Salmon is so easy to get right and yet it seems that somehow almost everybody overcooks it. Not the case here. My salmon was nice and crispy outside but soft and smooth as cream inside.

John had hangar steak with fried oysters; he said the steak was good but that he liked the oysters more.

For dessert, Becky and I each ordered a slice of the richest chocolate pecan pie I’ve ever eaten – five stars! It was so very rich that Becky could get only halfway through hers. I’m not the sensitive flower that she is, though; I garbaged mine down toot sweet and rubbed my happy belly. B had the key lime pie. She loved it. John had the apple rhubarb crumble and it was delicious, too.

I think we all gave the place A-pluses with a big, happy smiley face, and I already know I want to take B back for a special treat some time.