Thursday, December 30, 2010

Elliot's Oyster House - Revisit

During my xmas visit to Seattle, the only thing I was looking forward to besides my mother-in-laws home cooking was Elliot’s. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again – Elliot’s friggin rawks and you can’t get anywhere near this quality of oysters in NYC. We sat at the oyster bar as usual and the oyster shucker picked some phenomenal ones for us. Then, kinda like a sushi chef he was figuring out our flavor profiles and the ones at the end were 100% in my strikezone finishing with the best one last. He was very friendly and chatted us up mentioning the head oyster dude only wants oysters that are very local - nothing from the east coast which is why the quality is so high.

Even the waiter was right on point recommending great local microbrews to go with the oysters and giving us some bread to cleanse the pallet in between tastings. Unfortunately, we ordered a non oyster dish that was average to below average. Salmon, eggs, and onions were pretty shite - overcooked eggs and mediocre salmon flavor. They need to visit barney greengrass to figure out what a proper l.e.o. (lox, eggs, and onion) tastes like, but it didn’t matter since the oysters were king.

Here were my top 3 picks – although they all pretty much kicked massive ars (kushi, deer creek, and humboldt bay were honorable mentions).
#1 - Little Skookum
Comments – Huge oyster flavor with a nice sweetness behind it. Crisp texture leading to a nice creaminess.
#2 – Penn Cove Select
Comments – Mammoth sized oyster that I thought would be kinda gross due to the size, but the texture was soooo creamy and it had a huge oyster flavor behind it.
#3 – Cranberry Creek
Comments – oddly mellow at first, then had a great lingering oyster aftertaste.



1 comment:

Porthos said...

Agreed. Best in the nation.
But some of the oysters served at Eastern Standard in Boston were pretty amazing as well.