An Oyster Without A Pearl

[March 1st, 2006] "Oh, hurrah, I never met an oyster I didn't like," I clapped happily when the sign in front of the Alberta Street Oyster Bar & Grill went up last November, and after a handful of visits I can say that I love eating them here. Owner Peter Hochman has succeeded in creating a great casual restaurant where one can ingest the briny delicacies as nature intended: simply.

But the Oyster Bar's kitchen seems to be on a different track, offering a majority of meat entrees with high-end styling. Now, I've nothing against turf as opposed to surf—or beautifully plated food, for that matter. But when inconsistent cooking emerges, pretty plates mean little.

The oysters (market price, $10-$17 per half-dozen) are wonderful: About six to eight Northwest and California varieties are available along with dipping sauces, from a tart champagne mignonette to a vanilla bean-infused black-pepper sauce.

A long list of tantalizing first courses also beckons. A quail starter ($8) caught my eye, but when I dug in I found my meat very rare in some places and its accompanying celery-root purée marred by overzealous squiggles of pomegranate molasses. The beet salad ($7) amounted to six tiny slices of bland, crimson beets buried under a tart, salty haystack of julienned apple and bleu cheese. There wasn't enough of the promised beets to merit the salad's name. The saving grace of my non-bivalve choices were perfectly crisped veal sweetbreads ($8), inventively paired with a rich, sweet-tart, golden-raisin sauce.

The entree menu includes some bright spots as well. Chef Eric Bechard's braised short ribs in a luscious beef jus ($16) were fork tender, and the aroma of truffle did the rich sauce justice. Likewise, a juicy burger dressed with bleu cheese ($9) was excellent. But I didn't hold the same admiration for the roasted monkfish ($18). When it's cooked correctly, monkfish has a rich, melt-in-your-mouth quality. On two separate visits, the fish was very overcooked and the braised oxtails served alongside it yielded approximately two bites of tender meat. The highlight of the dish was the generous portion of meaty king oyster mushrooms. Sadly, my companion's risotto ($13) with "chanterelles, goat cheese and braised leeks" was strangely devoid of those promised mushrooms on two visits, save a few slivers buried in the slightly undercooked rice.

Desserts are nothing to write home about, either. The flourless chocolate torte ($7), crowned with a half-inch of dry cocoa and a tiny scoop of gelato, seemed perfunctory. Cinnamon doughnut holes ($6), which were paired with a silky pot de crème, tasted like a run-of-the-mill product trucked in from a doughnut shop down the street—and as our waitress confirmed for us, that's exactly what they were.

Don't get me wrong—this restaurant has a charming, convivial feel to it, the staff is friendly and efficient, the oysters are fresh, and its bar's classic cocktails are well-crafted. It's just the sort of neighborhood place I'd go for a bite to eat and a drink. But until the kitchen finds a groove and some consistency, I'll be sticking to the simple raw items on the menu.