Alison Cook’s Patio Report, seasonal beers and venison dishes.
Somewhere between watching the sundown colors ebb over Galveston Bay and diving into Pier 6’s dramatic fried seafood platter, I realized I might be sitting at my ideal Texas coastal restaurant.
That’s a slot that has been wide open since my beloved Clary’s closed after restaurateur Clary Milburn died in 2016.
Perched over Galveston’s back bay, Clary’s always breathed exactly what I was looking for in a seafood destination spot — one close enough to Houston to make for an easy drive but far enough away to provide a whiff of adventure. Clary’s boasted a stirring water view; distinctive takes on Gulf Coast seafood standards (oh! those pan-griddled oysters!); local sourcing that might turn up scarce speckled trout in season; and a certain x-factor charm, in this case a combination of oldschool service in a genteelly ramshackle setting.
At only a few weeks old, Pier 6 Seafood & Oyster House checks many of the same boxes. Set right on the water near Eagle Point, at the tip of the ax-head-shaped peninsula that is home to the raffish fishing and shellfishing community of San Leon, Pier 6 is the project of talented young oyster guru Raz Halili, whose Kosovan family has deep roots in the business. Under his stewardship, Prestige Oysters — a short walk away — has become a major supplier of Gulf oysters to businesses nationwide.
So oysters, one of my enduring food loves, are a big deal at Pier 6. So’s the glorious view, past gravel piers and boat docks, across the bay to Smith Point, La Porte and Baytown, where industrial lights twinkle like a faux fairyland once the blue hour fades into darkness.
An expansive covered patio that looks out upon all this is a powerful draw. The windows opening out onto a lower concrete deck are enormous, allowing salt breeze in to circulate unhindered, a source of comfort in pandemic times. These socially distanced outdoor tables fill up fast, even this early in the restaurant’s life, and the online reserva
tion system does not yet allow guests to specify indoor or patio, although it will allow you to reserve a hightop or a seat at the long, welcoming bar.
So if you want to sit on the long, roomlike covered patio — and you do — you had best call ahead. Same deal if you’d like to have cocktails (or a supper with Fido) out on the vast polished concrete deck, which is fitted out with bamboo double swings, lounge chairs, heat lamps and a scattering of dining tables and destined to grow in the coming months.
That outdoor space shelters under a high, industrial roof lined with strings of Edison bulbs, and it’s where I see myself basking once Pier 6 opens for lunch and brunch. Those menus are coming from talented chef Joe Cervantez, who has headed the kitchens at both Killen’s Steakhouse and Brennan’s, two stalwarts of Gulf Coast cuisine. Cervantez lives in the older, southeastern end of Pearland, and he told me his heart skips when he first hits the coastal waterways opening out with a flash and sparkle along his backroads drive to San Leon.
Here, in a 5,000-square-foot building crisply remodeled from the former Bubba’s Shrimp Palace, Cervantez already seems to be doing the food he was meant to do. I was bowled over by his Tide to Fried platter, a sophisticated take on the much-loved favorite in which, as my dining companion observed, “even the french fries are good!” Competing for top honors were huge Gulf shrimp impeccably fried in a pankolike crust and a spectacular hunk of snapper fried with a filigreed-potato crust that crackled in contrast with the dewy fluff of fish.
Add to this snappy versions of tartar and cocktail sauces: some fresh-grated horseradish you only have to ask for; delightfully stretchy little hushpuppies; and oysters fried with a soft crumbed crust, and you have a classic I look forward to eating again and again, right down to its lively slaw of shaved red cabbage. We didn’t leave a shred of it.
This feast cost $23.99. “Can you imagine what it would cost at a Pappas place?” asked my friend rhetorically. Yes, I could. Somewhere in the $30s, I’d wager.
It takes skill to reinvent a fried seafood platter. It takes a slightly different skill set to deliver an perfectly pan-sautéed slab of grouper, its large flake slip-sliding beneath its bronzed crust, set in a charred tomato and coconut sauce that was unexpectedly haunting. Delicate, even. Cervantez’s fine-dining background showed in the artful sides, with broccolini, cauliflorets and fingerlings poised on a field of cauliflower purée.
The oysters, you ask? Quite splendid. The halfshells coming into their best season were meaty and popping with saline flavors, cleanly opened with a technique that needs only a bit of honing to sever each and every adductor muscle while preserving more of their brine. Halili said that night’s shellfish were from Matagorda Bay, and they were fine representatives of what Texas oysters can be.
So were the grilled oysters Rockefeller and Bienville, the Rockefellers particularly finely wrought with ribbons of soft spinach and a note of anise. I could make a meal on nothing but halfshells chased with Rockefellers, to savor with any one of Pier 6’s well-chosen oyster wines by the glass or bottle, including one of my all-time favorites — a mineral-driven Aligoté with just the faintest soft note of oak.
There’s a grilled oyster version with Parmesan and shallot butter, a riff on the garlic-butter woodgrilled oysters from Gilhooley’s, the funky biker oyster bar a few blocks from Pier 6. That’s where the Houston area’s current craze for wood-grilled oysters had its roots, back in the 1980s, and to see the trend come full circle at a new kind of seafood restaurant in San Leon is one of life’s delightful small ironies.
Then again, you really had to bring your own wine to Gilhooley’s, if you could talk them into it. No worries about that at Pier 6, where there is, ahem, a genuine beverage program, capably overseen by the Ladies of Libation, Laurey Harvey and Kris Sowell. The duo has devised some serious cocktails to go along with the menu — and a lighthearted flight of beachy frozen drinks in rainbow hues capable of lifting spirits even now, in our Gulf Coast winter.
So can the enormously promising Pier 6 Seafood & Oyster House itself. Its appeal even at such an early stage of development convinces me I’ll be making the 40-mile drive to San Leon, and those beckoning waterside patios, for years to come.