McCormick & Schmick's

Legal -- Boston's most famous seafood chain -- gets a competitor in the Park Plaza

Dining Out by Robert Nadeau

DINING OUT

McCormick & Schmick's (617) 482-3999 34 Columbus Avenue (Park Plaza Hotel, Park Square), Boston Open daily, 11 a.m.-11 p.m. AE, MC, Visa, CB, DC, Di Full bar Valet parking via the Park Plaza Hotel ($10) Sidewalk-level access to some tables

Here the story is almost as good as the food. The Park Plaza and Legal Sea Foods couldn't agree on a new lease. Legal moved

across the street. Nyeh. The Park Plaza brought in an upscale seafood chain out of Portland, Oregon. Nyeh, nyeh. Now we've got a face-off in Park Square. The restaurant duel of the century. The local mini-chain versus the West Coast hotshots. Dungeness crab versus Jonah crab at 20 paces.

The crowd loves it. In fact, you all love it so much I couldn't make dinner reservations for two weeks running and had to settle for two lunches.

In general, McCormick & Schmick's does not outdo Legal Sea Foods on what Legal does best, and this includes important categories like chowder, seared scallops, local flatfish, grilled bluefish, and -- surprisingly -- service. The newcomer is more like an upscale restaurant, and right now it outdoes Legal on trimmings, sauces, composed dishes, desserts, and certain specialties like raw oysters. McCormick & Schmick's also builds a lot of local initiative and marketing into its system, and will learn what Boston diners have come to expect. The competition may be healthy, and the Park Square Legal Sea Foods is likely to respond.

That said, there is a calculated quality to McCormick & Schmick's that will play against it in a head-to-head contest with Legal. There really are a McCormick and a Schmick, and they've been in business together for 28 years, but the restaurant feels like something assembled from a catalogue. They have finally exorcised the ghost of Trader Vic's from the restaurant space, but their restaurant is oddly generic. It has the dark wood and leaded glass of a Chicago fish house, but the ship models are from Chesapeake Bay, the fish on the walls are ocean game fish, and there are a series of framed covers from old Fortune magazines and the soundtrack of big-band jazz. Oddly, their flagship is a century-old Portland fish house, but it is called Jake's.

Menus are printed daily, and start with a "fresh list" of 35 to 40 species tagged by location. Almost half the fresh list tends to be shellfish, and you can choose from about a dozen species of oysters and clams ($1.75 each, $6.65 to $12.90 for six) on the half shell. The lunch-menu combination plate (around $10) offers one each of the top six oysters plus a clam, and when I tried it the server could point to each one and tell me what it was. More important, all seven were fresh and sweet, which made for an unusual chance to compare Atlantic and Pacific oysters fairly. Much of the variation was on the salty-sweet axis, although coppery-creamy calculations were also possible. A couple of the pretty Washington and Vancouver species were as tasty as our local Wellfleet, and it was a lot of fun.

Clam chowder ($2.90/3.90) was short of clam meat but not really bad, made in the creamy-smoky style. This, however, is an area where Legal has greatly improved in recent years, and McCormick & Schmick's does not even try the more difficult fish chowder. The bargain appetizer, bruschetta ($4.95), brought four large sourdough toasts topped with lots of peppery tomatoes and a little basil. For splurgers, Scotch-cured Scottish salmon ($9.85) was exquisite, although on our day the promised toasted brioche failed. Seared yellowfin tuna ($9.95) was a neat job, but the dish has become a cliché.

Popcorn rock shrimp with Cajun rémoulade ($7.70) was a lunch appetizer big enough for some people's entire midday meal; the frying was very dry, while the shrimp were still tender and had some flavor. Bluefish ($7.75) from New Jersey came broiled and wrapped in bacon. Bluefish is a serious test of the shipping system, since it ages distinctively by turning bright blue-gray, softening, and developing fishy aromas. Legal has built a clientele for bluefish through its very good buying and handling, and McCormick & Schmick's comes pretty close to that standard. The bluefish was delicious, if somewhat blue and soft, and the bacon wrap didn't harm it any. So we know the newcomers can grill and fry. Vegetables were underdone green beans and carrots cut into long, spaghetti-like strands, but then over-sautéed in butter. But this is a notorious Legal weakness too.

Seared sea scallops ($14.65 at lunch) also came wrapped in bacon, which seemed superfluous with seafood this good. But the searing was a char on one surface, lacking the flavor and elegance of Legal's wood grilling. Baked beans are an interesting garnish (used on the bluefish as well), but undercooked, as though Portland guys had decided that Bostonians liked beans, but hurried the recipe. Gray sole, another local fish, came baked with a parmesan crust and lemon-caper butter. The latter was a breakthrough against Legal sauce-o-phobia, but the crust was too much for a delicate fish. A "Fresh Maine lobster roll" ($16.95) was just average, not as sweet as we are used to, and at these prices it should be made from live lobster. "Jake's Etoufèe" ($6.95), like Legal's gumbo, shows the inability of Northern fish houses to reproduce New Orleans food and, in this case, to spell "étouffée."

The wine list at McCormick & Schmick's is featured, as is the bar generally, but most of it is at steakhouse prices. Advantage Legal, though the newcomer does offer the comparatively priced Stoneleigh New Zealand sauvignon blanc ($23). The beers are better, but not what I hoped for from Portland, a major microbrewery scene. Desserts are an unqualified success, and moved well at post-Nutcracker hour. A chocolate truffle cake ($5.50) and a crème brûlée ($5.50) were solid, if uninspired. Bread pudding ($5.50), based on the brioche, was better, as was a mixed-berry cobbler ($5.50) with very good vanilla ice cream. Upside-down apple pie ($5.50) was tasty but soft, as when you use McIntosh apples instead of baking apples.

Decaf ($1.95) was quite good, coffee ($1.95) okay, but tea ($1.95) combined all the common errors: metal pot, bag on the side, slow service while the water cools. Two dollars and four cents for lukewarm water. Most other service errors we encountered could be attributed to an untrained staff at 3:30 p.m., but there were a lot of errors -- very slow kitchen, a stick of butter cut into a ramekin, no bread without requests, failure to clear between courses, failure to reset spoons for dessert, and refusal to abet valet parking ("The hotel handles that, there's nothing we can do").

If you have always wanted Legal Sea Foods to do more with desserts, vegetables, sauces, expensive Scotch and cigars, and roomlike private booths -- this is your restaurant. If you have been corrupted by the brilliant puritanism of Legal Sea Foods to love super-fresh seafood, broiled or fried above all else, this is a harmless interloper.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com.

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