The Price Is Right At Seaside Shanty

Moby Doug's Seafood Restaurant: 22531 Marine View Drive S., Des Moines. Fish, burgers, sandwiches. Lunch and dinner, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, noon to 9 p.m. Sunday. Beer and wine. 878-8140.

The tree-obscured sign on the front of Moby Doug's Seafood Restaurant says Salmon House, and while Doug's looks like a house and does serve salmon, it could be accused of overstating its case.

At first entrance, Moby Doug's seems to be not much more than a glorified fish-and-chips house. The surprise is that its grander aspirations are in fact its greater successes.

Moby Doug's is a little seafood shanty perched on the side of the road overlooking some buildings, the Des Moines Marina and Puget Sound. It's painted Cape Cod blue on the outside and has enough rough wood paneling, petrified blow-fish, fish netting and glass floats on the inside to keep it well above the waterline should the Sound ever make it up the rise.

It appears, in theory at least, to be a fast-food restaurant. You place your order at a counter, grab your number, utensils, condiments and table all by yourself and wait for a server to bring your food.

What separates it from the concept of "fast food" is the menu, which includes such fare as alderwood barbecued and/or grilled salmon, halibut and chicken.

And the pace of delivery, on a fairly quiet day, was slow.

The Alder Barbecued Salmon Steak and Deep Fried Seafood Combo finally arrived.

The fried-fish combo, $6.99, was a goodly selection of cod, halibut, shrimp, scallops, clams and oysters. As dishes-in-a-basket go, it was what you'd expect, hot and heavily-breaded but inoffensive. The massive and very tasty French fries demanded to be finished one and all, and were.

But the real revelation was the salmon. At $4.99, it was a decent-sized piece of fish, surprisingly moist and tasty, well-smoked but not overpowered by the alderwood treatment. The salmon fillet, $5.99, that mistakenly made its way to the table looked promising, but was removed before it could be tested.

The dishes ordered come with a choice of cole slaw or "health salad" - a kind of cole slaw with a slice of cucumber - and rice or potato. One of each side dish was ordered. The cole slaw was fine, the "health salad" dressing was more tart than the lemonade but not as tart as the lemon concentrate that you get for the fish, and the rice never showed.

A small cup of the clam chowder, 95 cents, was sampled but not finished, as it had a scorched taste.

Moby Doug's intentions seem good but uneven. Still, for the price and the taste, you can't go wrong with the upscale items.

But as view spot - funky or not - somebody ought to swab those windows.

Restaurant reviews are a regular Wednesday feature of the South Times section. Reviewers visit restaurants unannounced and pay in full for all their meals. When they interview members of the restaurant management and staff, they do so only after the meals and services have been appraised.