The Brooklyn: A Taste And Feel For Yesteryear

Apr 8, 1994

John Hinterberger

Restaurant review

XXX The Brooklyn Seafood, Steak & Oyster House, 1212 Second Ave. ($$$) Lunch ($7-$13) 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday. Dinner ($13-$21) 5 to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday; until 10:30 p.m. Friday, Saturday. Lounge, full bar. Major credit cards. Nonsmoking area. Reservations: 224-7000. -----------------------------------------------------------------

The Brooklyn: the look of old Seattle.

The "old Seattle" look has been popular here ever since Jake's was established on lower Queen Anne with an artificial allusion to the city's gold-rush days.

But the Brooklyn's look (and antiquity) was genuine. The seafood and chop house in the former Brooklyn Hotel (now a restored, quaint adjunct to the Washington Mutual Tower) dates to 1890, although the restaurant itself dates from the '80s (the 1980s).

The look and feel is reinforced by the circular copper bar and the cascade of cracked ice behind the bar, with its daily selection of oysters in season (seven varieties at last inspection) and a nightly gathering of characters huddled around them.

The Brooklyn was taken over five months ago from Larry Hamlin, its founder in 1988, by chef Tony Cunio and general manager Alon Aleshire.

Simplifying the menu

What followed, says Cunio, was "an attempt to refocus. The menu had been all over the place. We were never sure just what the Brooklyn was - or was trying to be."

The focus, at this point, seems as much a menu simplification as anything else. Don't expect 41 varieties of "fresh" fish on a daily sheet. Do expect choice fillets of "wild" (not farm-raised or frozen) salmon and halibut expertly prepared, along with Dungeness crab (in cakes and salads), grilled chicken, and prawns in various applications.

The steaks (around $20) include centercut New Yorks and filet mignon. They are cut from Nebraska corn-fed loins and available in two fairly rich presentations: A green and black peppercorn sauce finished with brandy, cream and demiglace, or a garlic, wild mushroom, port wine and bleu cheese sauce.

You can, of course, simply order them seasoned and grilled.

Other possibilities are pastas (which I found to be uncommonly fine) and a couple of silky seafood soups.

Most seafood houses feature their oysters freshly shucked on the half shell, but Cunio has an appreciation for baked and roasted oysters, which I occasionally favor. The Baked Oysters Brooklyn ($7.99 for a half dozen Pacifics) are topped with mixed wild mushrooms (shiitakes, criminis and sliced portabello), brandy, cream and grated Parmesan cheese.

Oysters Florentine (same price) are layered over with spinach, chopped onion, mushrooms and cream. Purists who insist that the only good oyster is a live one may howl in protest against both, but the Brooklyn does a great job with them. The flavors are intact, the oysters still fully plumped and moist, and the texture more suitable for a thoughtful bite than a precipitous slurp.

The Dungeness Crab Cakes ($5.99 for five 2-inch rounds) needed more crab in larger pieces and less filler. They are quite bready, although the accent of grated horseradish went well with an undersauce of roasted red pepper mayo.

A Seafood Pasta ($12.99) on the nightly special sheet was a terrific bowl of Northwest fish and shellfish over red, green and yellow elbow macaroni that appeared to have been freshly extruded. The light creamy sauce was exceptional: white wine, fish stock, cream and herbs. Along with a chewy slice of Como Loaf from the Grand Central Bakery and a chilled glass of Hogue's inexpensive but satisfying Fume Blanc, it was the hit of a recent dinner.

Never overdone

Chef Nunio sees to it that the seafood - whether in sauces or from the grill - is never overdone. You won't get any dried-out, chewy sections of salmon or halibut here. We particularly cheered the preparation of an Alder Planked Wild Pacific Halibut ($17.99; are there any tame ones?), served with slightly sweet spaghetti squash.

Daringly close to underdone (parts of it were quite soft), the fillet, which could have been cut more generously, was served with a smoked tomato butter sauce.

Seafood Pasta in Parchment ($13.99) is a rousing combination of lobster tail, scallops, prawns, fresh basil, garlic, wild mushrooms, tomato and zucchini tossed with extra virgin olive oil and linguine, then sealed in parchment before oven roasting.

Grilled Vanilla Prawns ($5.99 as an appetizer; $15.99 as a main course) come over a salad of julienned jicama in a lime juice dressing. They're dressed with a clam juice-vanilla bean sauce that is perhaps more novel than complementary. The prawns themselves had been oversalted.

The house Tiramisu is garnished with multicolored (pink, green, yellow) chocolate shards that were as novel as the aforementioned vanilla beans.