Third Coast Provisions.
Third Coast Provisions delivers special experience
It would be easy to go overboard, in the best sense, at the new seafood restaurant Third Coast Provisions.
King crab bruschetta ($19) piles sweet crabmeat in lemony cream on three thin tiles of lightly toasted sourdough, and then showers it all in trout roe. The colors, the flavor, the roe — it’s a dish that pops, the kind you wish wouldn’t end. I was tempted to order another.
The chargrilled oysters? Same. Chef-owner Andrew Miller gives diners three options (at $21 for six oysters): classic Rockefeller; topped with the house kimchi, made of fennel; and his Milwaukee style, incorporating pastrami, shallot, garlic and beer.
Even the parkerhouse rolls ($7), warm and snug in their little cast iron pan, stir wish-I-had-another, want-to-split-the-last-one? feelings. Third Coast’s version doesn’t have that telltale parkerhouse fold, but the rich, yeasty flavor is on the mark. (They’re served with honey butter that’s cultured in house; good as it is, butter that’s about salt would serve them well.)
Miller, who opened the casual burger-and-small-plates den Merriment Social in Walker’s Point in 2015, headed downtown to open his ambitious Third Coast Provisions in November. The restaurant is fittingly high design; it makes the most of the space vacated by steakhouse Carnevor (which moved down the block).
There’s a porthole at the front door, making it feel like the entry to an adventure. The restaurant’s sleek, modern look and touches of raw brass and gold all but promise a special experience, and Third Coast delivers.
Besides raw staples such as East and West Coast oysters on the half shell ($19 for six) and chilled-seafood plates ($48 and $78), Third Coast serves gorgeous big-eye tuna crudo ($14), thin rounds in deep red arranged with thinner-yet jalapeño slices and avocado, mingling with flavors of coconut, cilantro and aji amarillo. The raw bar quirkily includes steak tartare ($15), a rich, stylized version topped with a sort of custard incorporating bone marrow, and showered in grated, cured egg yolk and crisped capers.
The menu is filled with musthave plates. Even when it’s something familiar, like lobster mac and cheese ($19), it goes beyond the usual — the deeply flavorful sauce deploys intense lobster stock to ratchet up flavor.
Other small plates like oyster sliders ($15 for three) succeed, too; crunchy fried oysters with pickled pepper slaw, pork belly pastrami and remoulade are a potent, compelling combination, even if the oysters’ flavor gets a little lost in so much other deliciousness.
But for pure seafood pleasure, there are plates like lobster potholes ($17), named for the divots in the cast-iron escargot dish it’s served in: Chunks of lobster and bits of crab, drenched in garlicherb butter, with brioche to drag through any buttery puddles that remain.
Entrées showcase fish to great advantage. Snowy-white halibut ($37) stands out against a bed of pea puree and asparagus, garnished with thin crisps of fingerling potato and a vinaigrette of pickled pepper; Midwestern sensibilities take the plate with potato puree, cabbage, dill pickle vinaigrette and toasted breadcrumbs to support walleye, lately ($29) — it was whitefish when I first had the dish.
Lobster pot pie ($39) comes garnished with a mound of tail meat, glazed in sauce flavored with lobster stock; it’s a wonder the ethereal, thin crust of house phyllo dough, the layers brushed with black truffle butter, can support it. This is a glorious pie. (And lobster Cobb salad, at $16, makes a great light dinner.)
Beef makes a few notable appearances in main dishes, as in the surf and turf — tender short rib with shrimp, spaetzle and chanterelles ($29) — and the 6ounce filet mignon ($35) with hollandaise sauce, chanterelles and whipped Gruyere potatoes that must be half cheese. That’s not a complaint, that’s a love note; it’s a dream of a side dish.
Third Coast does mind the details of making each dish as delicious as possible; the broccoli alongside Wagyu hanger steak ($46) nearly stole the show from a plate on which cheddar grits were no slouch, either. The vegetable had been poached in butter, charred, marinated in fermented honey and caramelized shallot vinaigrette, and capped with grated pecorino.
Pastry chef Ariel Welch’s desserts make traditional sweets as modern as the rest of the restaurant. Key lime pie would be expected in a seafood restaurant; here, the same flavors appear in Key lime semifreddo ($7), a creamy semifrozen dome, playing peekaboo with thin shards of meringue.
Cubes of carrot cake ($7) are served warm, so dollops of cream cheese frosting are piped alongside them here and there, with flutters of thin candied pineapple and a scattering of maplepecan streusel. Finding carrotginger sauce beneath it all was like striking unexpected orange gold.
Even the drinks match the feel and the food of the place, a lighter, brighter aspect — as in Freya’s Potion ($11), in which aquavit meets sparkling wine, Pernod and lime; or the rye whiskey-based Crown of Thorns ($10), with blackberry, lemon, sage and the bitter liqueur Cynar.
Wines run nearly 100 bottles strong thus far, and Miller said the list will grow. Naturally favoring white wines, the list carries bottles from a number of smaller producers, including organic vineyards.
Seafood restaurants have been with us for a long time, but everything about Third Coast Provisions feels fresh and fun. What delicious dinners, served in style.