Letdown at the Locks ; Hiram's is fine dining - but just `fine'
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Seafood
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$$$
Hiram's at the Locks
5300 34th Ave. N.W., Seattle
Reservations: 206-784-1733
Hours: Lunch 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday-Sunday; dinner 4 p.m.-10 p.m. nightly.
Prices: Lunch: starters $2.95-$11.95, entrees $8.95-$14.95; dinner: starters $2.95-$11.95, entrees $16.95-$48.95; three-course Sunset Dinners (served 4 p.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Friday) $18.95.
Parking: Private lot.
Full bar/Major credit cards/No obstacles to access/Smoking in bar only
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Remember the last week of school, when you looked longingly out the window onto an early summer's day, and it was all you could do not to jump up, toss your books in the air and yell, "May I pleeeaaase be excused!"? Well, dining at Hiram's, with its intoxicating view of the Ballard Locks, had me doing the restaurant-critic's version of exactly that.
Hiram's menu reads, and all too often eats, like a '70s cliche, complete with surf-'n-turfy combos, overpriced Australian lobster tail, and crab-stuffed prawns. When paired with a dining room that shrieks "Trendy '90s makeover! Already dated!" the sum of its parts is a retro no-no that scores a heartfelt "so-so."
Some folks will beg to differ with my assessment of this reincarnated Seattle landmark, which re-opened as Hiram's in January after its five-year run as Pescatore - a pseudo-Italian seafood restaurant that never quite got it right. Early birds arriving before 6 p.m. to take advantage of weekday "Sunset Dinners" are sure to call me a culinary curmudgeon. That meal allows diners to sample clam chowder or salad, choose among five best-selling entrees, and finish with a choice of sweets, all for less than 20 bucks. Admittedly, that's a deal.
Arrive in time to actually see the sunset (as backdrop to pleasure craft, work boats and a passing freight train, or illuminated through a pair of clinking martini glasses), order right, and you, too, may beg to differ.
What's right? The velvety Dungeness crab bisque, for one thing. Spring for a bowl ($7.95) to prolong the pleasure. Enriched with a properly made shellfish stock, hinting of cayenne and smoothed with heavy cream, this is required eating. The same can be said of "gathered greens" with Gorgonzola ($5.95). The bits of cheese on this fruit- and walnut-garnished salad play a salty tune, complementing the perfect pitch of sweet pear vinaigrette; these are fresh greens with character, unlike the crisp whole-leaf romaine ($4.95) whose creamy blue-cheese dressing was flat and whose brioche croutons tasted musty.
Order finfish, perhaps the Alaskan halibut ($20.95), mesquite-grilled and brushed with lemon-herb butter, and you should be duly impressed. Like the Copper River king salmon that upped the ante this month as fish of the day ($29.95 for an 8-ounce fillet, $39.95 for 12 ounces), it is the essence of quality seafood treated simply and respectfully.
Dungeness crab cakes may be had as starter course or entree at dinner and at lunch (served weekends only, along with a handful of brunchy dishes, burgers/sandwiches, fish tacos and several other seafood options). They're also available on the bar menu, where you might eat them while watching the game on TV. Plump with crab meat and blessedly little else, these cakes are served with a yin-yang pool of ginger beurre blanc and plum sauce (yikes!) sweet as candy-apple coating. Order the appetizer trio ($23.95), and you can have your cakes and eat calamari and teriyaki, too. I dutifully crunched my way through the fried squid ($7.95 a la carte), and dispatched my fair share of tender, mildly sauced beef strips ($9.95 a la carte), if only to prove what my tastebuds kept telling me: It's ordinary, it's ordinary.
And that, it seems, is the trouble here. We're promised fine dining and getting "fine"-dining. As in, "How was that New York peppercorn steak?" "You mean the 14-ounce, $31.95 cut, heavy with crushed black peppercorns. The one whose boring brown sauce was devoid of any flavor from the promised cognac? It was fine." "Well then, what about the $28.95 Filet Mignon and Dungeness Crab Oscar?" "Absolutely fine, if you like your steak in pieces, covered with crab and swimming in tarragon-laced Bearnaise." "Surely the Prawns Delmonico, one of Hiram's old-time signature dishes, with its crab-meat-stuffed butterflied prawns and once-famous rice pilaf, was a treat?" "Fine. If you say so. But for my money ($24.95), I'd ask that the bread crumbs be crunchier, the hollandaise brighter - or ditched altogether for more of the crab sauce on which those five fine prawns lie."
As shouted from billboards and bus boards, Hiram's is back. But given the lack of excitement within, the price one has to pay to look out, and the fact that the best part of the meal is the outsourced desserts, I don't think I'll be rushing back real soon.