The Barking Crab

Hearty fare in an appealing crab-shack setting

by Robert Nadeau

Barking Crab
88 Sleeper Street
(Northern Avenue Bridge), Boston
426-CRAB
Hours
Mon - Wed, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.;
Thurs and Fri, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.;
Sat, 4 to 11 p.m.
All major credit cards
Handicap access: up two steps from street level

This spot was first a summer-only restaurant called Venus Seafood. The tables were under a tent, like many seasonal restaurants in New England resort areas -- a lobster place, but right in the heart of the city. The fun of it was to eat lobsters "in the rough" with a clear view of the downtown skyscrapers. The two women who ran the place, now of Brookline's Zuxuz Café, did a good job on the food, with maybe a nod and a wink about the rustic format.

When the joke got old for Venus Seafood, they passed the lease to Barking Crab. Now Barking Crab has developed the other side of the building, a former wholesaler called Neptune Seafood, into a year-round restaurant.

The tone is still quite home-spun, with hanging lamps made by filling wire crab traps with white Christmas-tree bulbs. And the fun is kind of the same. Forty feet from where we sat in the tent over the summer, the view out the back windows adds the old Northern Avenue Bridge to the perfect view of International Place. It isn't the Brooklyn Bridge and the lights of Manhattan, but it is a view both grand and funny. Shift your eyes around, and you are in a kind of seaport shanty -- live lobster and crab tanks, exposed beams and wiring, masonite walls, menu specials chalked on slate -- but warmed by the heart as well as an antique parlor stove.

The food aims a notch higher than at the old summer place. For one thing, there is an effort to promote crabs in several forms, although the crab cake is unpretentiously served as a "crab burger." And although there are numerous fried platters, there is also a shark steak worthy of, well, Zuxuz Café.

This is not to accuse the Barking Crab people of anything like a self-conscious style. If a sailor wandered in, he or she would feel right at home, and so would a Harvard professor on a date with a stockbroker. On a cold quiet evening, the staff here was roasting chestnuts on the parlor stove and passing them around, and letting kids toast marshmallows.

Appetizers are frankly good without elegance. The dense bread and butter is terrific. And then come the plates of fried things, such as shrimp ($5.25), clams ($6.95), and calamari ($6.25). If you like belly clams, the clams are outstanding. The calamari, with garlic and fried pepper flakes, are likewise excellent. And the shrimp are perfectly fried. In fact, you could go right on to a fisherman's platter ($11.95) and add a fried cod fillet, coleslaw, and french fries with a lot of salt and pepper sprinkled on -- and that would be that.

On another kind of evening, the spicy shrimp salad ($7.95) is a gentler version of a Thai salad. And there is even a crab spring roll ($7.95). Yet it is hard to resist clam chowder ($3.50), served in one of a vast collection of motley mugs, rich and creamy, though mine tasted more like celery than seafood. The other soup our night was a credible beef barley ($3.50). And for lobster-shack nostalgia as well as flavor, a bucket of steamer clams ($6.95). Ours were unusually large and juicy, and authentically a little sandy.

The main-dish crab choices are the "lonely crab" (seasonal, currently $5.95), which is a whole boiled stone crab; and the crab burger ($9.25). The latter is an excellent large crab cake in a hamburger roll with coleslaw and the seasoned fries. The former is served like a New England lobster, with the claws partially pre-cracked, and usual kit of bib, fork, nutcracker, and bucket. That isn't enough for stone crabs, where the classic kit adds a mallet, and rightly so.

There is also a lonely lobster (currently $10.75 for a one-pounder), and a less lonely clambake with lobster, steamers, corn on the cob, and such ($18.95 with a one-pound lobster). The menu includes a New England boiled dinner (we are technically in South Boston on this side of the channel), chicken, pork chops, and so on, but it would be a travesty to order such things under the eyes of wooden mermaids and lobsters.

No harm in a shrimp scampi, on spaghetti with plenty of garlic. Nor in that grilled "thresher shark," ($9.95), marinated in vinegar and served with a salad of beans, carrots, and cinnamon which I can only describe as "Moroccan."

The beer list is outstanding, with all the top local brews, such as Samuel Adams and Tremont Ale. The localest of all, Harpoon, is on draft. We split up a pitcher ($11) of the "winter warmer," and it was well-made ale with a useful, not-cloying hint of cinnamon. And snuck in a big glass of Harpoon IPA ($3.25) that was as clean and sharp a brew as Harpoon has ever produced.

The Barking Crab also has good coffee and decaf, and very promising desserts for a fish house. Again, the desserts are a short list that manages to please all comers, from a very good pear sorbet ($2.95) to a large, crumbly marble cake ($4.25). Only the gummy apple cobbler ($4.25) needed some reform, possibly to be served hot, but the vanilla ice cream patched it nicely for now.

It's hard to break down why the surroundings are so convincing. The room is a barely converted shack on the docks, with oilcloth tacked over the tables as in any crab shack. Only the oilcloth has an abstract-expressionist design that suggests San Francisco (also a crab destination, of course). And the background music is broadly rooted in the mid '70s. Some disco, some jazz, a lot of early Elvis Costello, a little salsa. The atmosphere is contagious, and that makes something like the illustrated chart of North Atlantic crustaceans in the bathroom into a big attraction. (They let people smoke, and it does affect the air quality, I should warn you.)

We had great service, hearty and fast, and this can bring a lot of disparate elements together. With less spirit in service and food, this could be a dive. But the way it is now, it's an island of humanity in the Puritan city.