Sea Salt (Berkeley, CA)
Our Christmas gift to my (Wm.'s) parents for 2005 was a day of sake tasting in Berkeley and dinner at a nearby restaurant.
Earlier in the week, we had arranged a time and picked a place for dinner. However, this morning we felt the need to wed our sake tasting a bit better to our dinner selection. We had originally selected Eccolo as it came highly recommended by Meriko. However, their Italian bent seemed at odds with an hour of sake tasting.
After doing a bit of searching and online inquiring, we hit upon a restaurant that seemed to fit the bill: Sea Salt on San Pablo Ave. in Berkeley.
Sea Salt is a fish and seafood restaurant tucked away into a nondescript block of San Pablo Ave. Well, as nondescript as having the Berekely branch of Good Vibrations and a Cafe Trieste on the corner...
What impressed us right off the bat from searching online was their menu: lots of innovative dishes (large and small), and equally innovative ingredient mixtures in lots of them. We were set...and Sea Salt was it...
...and being just under a mile away from the Takara Sake Company (and Tasting Room) made it even better. The restaurant doesn't take reservations for parties under 6 so we arrived for an early dinner. The room was minimalist and pleasant.
We started with oysters which are a chef's choice special from 4 to 6 pm. A dollar an oyster picked from five different varieties was a deal especially since we had designs on several of the dishes. We started with 8: four Quilcene Bay and four Effingham. The Effingham were the clear winners: plump and deliciously briny.
We continued with a bigeye tuna tartare and a plate of grilled sardines. The tuna was dressed with olive oil, orange bits, basil and diced olives. It came with housemade potato chips. The tartare was light and lively and chips were greaseless. The two went well together. The sardines were plump and grilled perfectly. Dressed with a pesto-like salsa verde and accompanied by roasted, marinated red peppers, they were amazing.
For mains, we had their fish and chips, the salt cod croquettes and pan roasted Alaskan cod. The fish and chips came with a malt vinegar aioli which was an interesting twist on the trad F&C accompaniment. Like the housemade chips, the fish (cod) and chips were greaseless, crisp, golden brown and delicious.
The salt cod croquettes were pretty amazing...three golf ball-sized balls of cod and potato with a lemon aioli and a parsley "sauce" which was more like a pesto: fresh and fragrant. This might have been the sleeper dish of the night...
The pan roasted Alaskan cod was set in a light broth surrounded by cockles and half-moons of chorizo from The Fatted Calf and strips of pequillo peppers. The mix of the light cod and chorizo with the cockles was clever creating a rich, slightly spicy and briny mouthful.
All of this was mated up with a bottle of 2003 Nina Albariño from Rias Baixas which was light enough for the tartare but could stand up to the salt cod.
For dessert, we chose the pear and huckleberry crisp and the trio of sorbets. The crisp had a creme fraiche sorbet and was mostly pears and not too sweet. The slightly sour sorbet went well with it but I wished it had more huckleberries. The trio of sorbets were green apple, pomegranate and clementine (orange). All good, perhaps a bit too icy, the green apple was the best with a nice tartness.
Sea Salt was a real find and their menu was so chockful of other things that we need to plan a trip back there in short order.