2012 Fun Playing With Fish in Destin FL, P.2: Marie's Bistro

We return now to Florida, specifically the town of Blue Mountain Beach. Last year, we'd discovered the newly minted Marie's Bistro (warning - music will start as soon as the webpage opens) located in a very small restaurant space on 30A. Our memories of that lunch (Best Shrimp of Trip 2011), to-go sushi, and the genuine hospitality of the place were so strong, dinner there would end our first full day. In December 2011, the restaurant grew from 1,208 square feet to 3,000 square feet, adding a full bar and entertainment space along with a more contemporary room, and we couldn't wait to visit. 

However, a word first about the term "fresh" as applied to shrimp in this blog. I believe that about 98% of shrimp available in the United States is frozen, most on the boats where the shrimp is harvested. The only place where any of that 2% or so of never-frozen shrimp has ever been consistently available at retail is on the Gulf Coast. I've enjoyed it in New Orleans (where I had my "shrimp epiphany" at Brigsten's in 2005) and occasionally the Emerald Coast. The reality is that shrimp is so perishable, and the supply so effected by financial and environmental issues, that almost none of the shrimp we tasted this year was "fresh" in the sense of "never frozen." Therefore, please read the term "fresh" to refer to shrimp that may have been previously frozen, but is otherwise pristine - good quality to start with, handled properly, and neither treated with the nasty chemical sodium tripolyphosphate, nor ammoniated (old and smelling of ammonia). The element that distinguishes never-frozen from frozen shrimp is the texture - never-frozen shrimp melts in the mouth, frozen shrimp requires a little more chew. We found only one never-frozen shrimp on this two week search, at the very end. We'll get to that!

Meanwhile, we enjoyed Hanie and Marie Nasri's hospitality on four occasions this year, which is why Marie's is getting its own blog post. That first meal, like all dinner entrees at Marie's, began with a choice of soup or salad. Bob and I both selected the soup, the name of which didn't make it into my notes, but which you see below.

Pristine pieces of shrimp predominated the tomatoey goodness, together with some crab meat and other goodies. By the time we'd gotten a few bites into our soup, Hanie remembered us from our sushi pick-up on the way to the airport last year, and it was as if we were old friends. Watching Hanie in action this year, it became quickly apparent that he and his staff treat all of their customers like family.

Ah, the joy of shrimp that doesn't smell or taste like soap. We'd see as soon as the next day, and throughout our trip, that the Gulf shrimp industry is hurting badly and lots of lousy-tasting shrimp is being sold. But not at Marie's, where they take great care when selecting their fish and seafood purveyors.

Bob selected sauteed Triggerfish topped with lump crab meat and finished with Ginger Orange Hollandaise. The rice in the photo must have come from my plate; Bob's garlicky mashed potatoes are under his fish. We had the same veg, which obviously was NOT from a food service bag of pre-cut vegetables, and therefore didn't have any of that "triple wash" bleachy flavor or wooden texture. But the fish and crab played the starring role on the plate. The sauce combined eggy richness with tangy citrus, with the ginger bringing the two happily together. The fish and crab were so fresh and well prepared that they didn't even need a sauce, though this one was most worthy. 

My seared gulf tuna barely kissed the grill, and wore a tangy-savory Apricot Apple Chutney. The rice accompaniment was delicately spiced, and crunched from bits of pistachio, which contrasted with tart currants. I loved the combination of flavors and textures in the rice, but again, the fish was the star:

Everything served at Marie's, except the bread, is made in-house, with love that you can palpably experience when you eat. As my plate became disproportionately empty (the zucchini in the veg was the last item standing; it's just not my favorite), Hanie asked if I disliked zucchini and would like another veg, and began rattling off options. Heavens no, as the tuna, rice and other veggies had done their job wonderfully. Nevertheless, after clearing the plates, Hanie insisted that we must try a dessert, and brought this plate to the table:

Marie's flan melted in the mouth with the succulence of fresh eggs whipped and cooked just so. Most caramel we taste is so full of heavy corn syrups and artificial flavors; Marie's "from-scratch" caramel delicately complemented the other ingredients without overwhelming them. Topped with freshly whipped cream, Marie's caramel and custard was like a vacation on a plate, and our taste buds floated away to a happy, happy place. 

We returned to Marie's for lunch on Valentine's Day and both enjoyed the Shrimp and Grits. The dish contained a perfect balance of creamy, buttery grits, sausage, sweated onions, and fresh tasting shrimps. I wish I could have this for lunch once a week for the rest of my life.

Meal number four came during our second week on the Gulf. The soup that evening again featured tasty shrimp, and also contained corn and bacon, which always pair well with shrimp.

By this juncture, Bob was ready to landlubber a bit, and so he sampled a Special - Pork Tenderloin (which had a nice ring of fat around it) with mushroom stuffing and gravy over rice, with sauteed veg.

My entree was grilled Cobia, with butter, garlic and lime, then topped with sauteed spinach and also served over rice, with another side of veg.   

Again, my fish was expertly cooked and a delight to eat. Only one of the four dinner entrees we enjoyed was over $20, and most price points were between $15 and $20 for dinner. Given the sizes of the portion,  we felt that Marie's offers a very good value.

But Hanie wasn't finished yet - he asked if we liked baba ganoush. When I responded in the affirmative, he said we had to taste some grilled eggplant spread Marie had just made for a wedding. Though we were stuffed, we agreed to a little taste. We were barely able to dent the plate he brought us, but it was so delicious:

The baba is front and center, and freshly made hummus is on the other side of the bread. For over 25 years before opening the restaurant, Marie and Hanie operated At Your Service Catering and Marie still does catering for all types of events.

The tradition we started in 2011 of taking sushi from Marie's to eat on the plane ride home continued in fine style in 2012. Our last tastes of Florida were among the best, from Marie's partner-in-kitchen, Chef Mike Tran:  

Spicier Tuna Roll (sans cucumber): Spicy tuna topped with Sriracha and Wasabi Aoli               

Da Bomb: Spicy Tuna, Crab Salad & Sriracha

Red Dragon: soft shell crab, avocado, green onions, tuna, spicy mayo

Christmas Roll: shrimp tempura, topped with avocado and tuna)

Of course, the soft shell crab was previously frozen, and the crab salad was at least partly surimi - though I could have sworn that it also was part real crab meat. The various sauces and toppings enhanced the flavors without overwhelming them. The sushi survived the afternoon nicely, and we started digging into them around 6:30pm, when it was announced that our flight would be delayed an hour. Even the tempura held up surprisingly well. We ate 2 rolls during the boarding delay, and finished our dinner during the first flight segment, savoring every fish-flavored bite.

As we had prepared to pack up the sushi rolls with frozen fruit to keep them cold during the journey, Marie handed me this loaf of frozen cranberry nut loaf that she had baked - the better to keep things cold,  she explained, and to enjoy for breakfast at home tomorrow in Cleveland. Thank you Marie!

Though the bread wanted to crumble once it defrosted, good ingredients in skillful hands always lead to yumminess, and it paired nicely with simple scrambled eggs and butter for Thursday breakfast. We still have some of this bread in the fridge; once crumbled, it made a wonderful addition to pancake batter on Sunday.

Sorry, you really can't see Marie's bread in there until it's cut open, and I'd already put the camera away - but you get the idea! Marie and Hanie (and their kids who sometimes work in the business with them) are all about having fun with food, which makes them my kinda people!

You will not find anywhere on the Emerald Coast a more honest plate of freshly prepared food containing freshly sourced and delicious ingredients at fair prices, and delivered with genuine joy, as you will find at Marie's Bistro, 2260 West Hwy 30a, Santa Rosa Beach, FL 32526, 850.278.6856.

The next post will begin with lunch at the barely one-year old Nick's on the Beach, also on 30A. Would their seafood live up to the never-frozen shrimp and crabs we've savored at their sibling restaurant Nick's Seafood Restaurant in Freeport? Stay tuned.

2012 Fun Playing With Fish in Destin FL, P.1: RIP Mr. Ferrell Shipp

Our winter trip to Destin, Florida enables us to consume a disproportionate amount of fish and seafood. We are just returned from the tenth edition of this trip, and we were fortunate to have fun playing with several species of water creatures at a variety of venues. This report will be broken into several blog posts, and won’t be entirely chronological this year, but stick with it and you won't regret it!

Tasty Crab Cake Sliders from Obrycki’s at the BWI Airport

Kindly note the usual disclaimer – though we return annually, we generally eat at each establishment only once per year. Great restaurants can have bad days, and mediocre spots can have stellar days; this blog simply seeks to share our experiences as we perceive them, and to bring some positive attention to those that we enjoyed the most. 

We arrived in Destin a little later than we’d planned on Wednesday February 8, due to a GPS [operator] error when leaving Panama City Beach's airport. The original plan had been to hit a restaurant on Route 30A on the Alys Beach/Rosemary Beach side of the world on our way west to Destin, but Bob wanted to check in at the condo first. So here it was after 8pm, and we needed dinner. With my inner ear still clogged from flying, and with me still adjusting to maneuvering and parking the massive Lincoln Town Car we'd rented (don't ask), I committed the most quintessential sin a traveling food lover can make in this smart-phone enabled age – picking a dining destination on sight alone. 

As we’d headed west on Route 98, around the Cross Bay Bridge, we passed a place that for years had been a ubiquitous chain dinner house; the sign atop the restaurant at 34906 Emerald Coast Parkway now read “Miller’s Destin Ale House.” “How could an independent restaurant survive the rents in this strip,” my brain wondered, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to make a new locally-owned find so close to our lodgings. My first instinct proved unfortunately correct. It became quickly apparent once we stepped inside that despite “Destin” in the neon name, this was indeed part of a chain, called "Miller's Ale House" and which apparently inserts the city name into most units, whichever city it might be. Founded in Jupiter, Florida in 1988, the brand is primarily located throughout Florida, but also has outlets in seven other states. I asked the fellow who seated us whether any of the fish was from that part of the world, and he said yes and described the local supplier they source from, so we decided to stay. 

Indeed, some of the fish served here is locally procured, though they were out of Grouper this evening. We accepted the remaining choice of Mahi, and each ordered the grilled fish plate.

Grilled Catch of the Day (Mahi) with french fries and cole slaw, plus choice of sauce (I got roasted red pepper, Bob tried Red Thai Curry) on the vegetables. Wait - where's the cole slaw?  

Oh, there it is - we had to ask for it.

Had the fish not been cooked to within an inch of its life, it would actually have been quite good. At $13.49 for the above platter, no harm or foul occurred (except to the fish, which was dry from being overcooked), though the roasted fresh vegetables served in a canned-tasting sauce were inedible. Fries and slaw, as at most places we visited, were food service pack but enjoyable. We returned to Sundestin and prepared to meet the morning.

Morning turned to mourning almost immediately. Our “go to” breakfast for ten years has been the Silver Sands Breakfast at Harbor Docks. Something looked wrong before we even got into the parking lot – no sign of the sign (pictured below, from an earlier visit), and no cars. The Silver Sands’s proprietor, Mr. Ferrell Shipp, was in his 80s when this article was written about him in 2010. He always made the Silver Sands’s biscuits, which were like no others we’ve ever tasted, even as he seemed older and more arthritic every year. The locked front door at Harbor Docks all but confirmed my suspicions. A quick Google search told me what my heart now already knew – Mr. Shipp had passed away July 5, 2011 at the age of 86, and his family decided to shut the breakfast business down in October 2011. We will miss you and your wonderful biscuits – Mr. Shipp, you cannot be replaced.

Mr. Shipp makes his Exit.

This discovery left us sad, but also wondering where we’d eat breakfast at this early hour. We meant to head to The Donut Hole, but in another feat of operator error, turned left instead of right onto 98, out of Harbor Docks. After driving west across Okaloosa Island and into Fort Walton Beach, and finding nothing that looked appealing for breakfast, we turned around and headed back towards The Donut Hole. Then, just across the Destin Bridge, a sign caught my eye: The Florida House of Destin. 

Located where Another Broken Egg had been for years, at 104 Harbor Boulevard, the independent-looking restaurant promised breakfast, lunch and dinner (the menu refers to a website at www.thedestinfloridahouse.com, but it doesn't appear to be working). This menu item caught my eye: “Crabcake Benny – two poached eggs served on top of two pan seared crabcakes and topped with a creamy hollandaise sauce and served with homefries or grits.” I asked our server about the fish and seafood on the menu, and he said it was all fresh and local. 

While we waited for our breakfast to be served, we chatted briefly with the owner, Charlie. A native of Connecticut, Charlie had owned a restaurant in Vermont for 13 years, then lost everything to a hurricane that flooded his property (you don’t buy flood insurance in the mountains of Vermont). He and his Alabama-born wife re-located to Destin about three years ago, and the Florida House was in its second full year of operation. Everything, he said, was made from scratch, and the menu emphasizes comfort foods like burgers, sandwiches, pot roast, meatloaf, roast turkey and steak. He and his wife also own the pizzeria located in the former Miss Chen’s across 98 (Crust), and he promised that the thin crust pizza there would satisfy this New York ex-pat.

Breakfast is served:

Bob's pancakes, served with sausage

Bob’s pancakes were nicely done, though to my palate, there was a “mix” flavor and texture to them. The sausage tasted typical. But what about the crab cakes? They were pretty darn tasty, though I honestly couldn’t tell you if they were freshly made from local product or not (and our later lunch experience would suggest not). The hollandaise, probably from a food service pack, was flavorful and the eggs perfectly poached (sorry, no yolky porn shots). The only problem was that the grits on my plate were ice cold. Charlie’s wife (who’s name I didn’t note; I apologize), was in the vicinity, and got me a fresh, extremely hot bowlful (which, like the cold ones on my plate, also lacked salt). The flavors and textures of crab cake, runny egg, hollandaise, melty cheese and grits, now combined together in the bowl, made for a completely satisfying breakfast, far better than a similar breakfast had been at The Donut Hole a few years back at about the same price point. 

The Florida House is offering 2-for-the-price-of-1 dinner specials throughout dinner service for the remainder of the winter, though we did not partake, and they also boast a full bar. We did return for lunch during our second week, and I’m very sorry to say that we just weren't impressed with the “Fish and Chips” plate, which we'd been told used the same "Golden Fried Grouper" as the Fish Sandwich. During our first visit, and again on our second, I asked each server about the fish – both insisted it was fresh, local Grouper. Judge for yourself:

Mine

Mine - featuring the noteworthy potato salad

Bob's

The potato salad was deliciously fresh and obviously made in house – if only the other items on the plate were also house-made! You can see from the size and shape of the fish that it isn’t a Grouper filet (I’d guess tilapia); I didn’t photograph it after I cut into it, but to my eye and tongue, it was a previously frozen product (and previously breaded, as well). At that point in the trip, having already wrassled with a couple of places over quality issues, we just let it be. The potato salad did dazzle.

Our overall experience at Florida House was very pleasant, as was the crab cake in my breakfast – but I can’t recommend the fish, period. As with La Famiglia Ristorante a few doors down, land and vegetable based comfort food seems to be delivered well for a fair price, but avoid the fish and seafood if that is what you crave. The pizza at Crust will be addressed in a later post, but it is worth your trouble if you enjoy New York-style pizza (and the meatballs and tomato sauce on it were fabulous).

So - did we find any worthy fish dishes in Florida? Of course we did - and it didn't take very long. Cue Harbor Docks, which now serves lunch until 4pm daily! After a few uneven years, Harbor Docks seems to have stabilized itself, though the "restaurant group" now extends to seven restaurants in multiple states. The dinner price points remain a little high for what is offered, but we've enjoyed several recent lunches there. After taking our seats, we were delighted to learn that Harbor Docks's owner Charles Morgan had decided to bring breakfast service back at Harbor Docks, and that some of the Silver Sands Breakfast's staff would also return. Service would commence on Valentine's Day.

Armed with this happy information, we asked about the lunch menu; particularly, the mullet. I'd never had mullet, but was game to try it. Our server started to describe it, then said - "wait a moment, I'll be right back." The next thing we knew, this appeared for our consideration:

Two strips of fried mullet in "regular" batter, with tarter sauce

Hot and crispy, and exploding with intense, yet fresh fish flavor - these bites immediately convinced us to try the Panko Crusted Mullet lunch special. While we waited, the internet informed me that mullet is primarily used as fish bait, but is on the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch list as a "best choice" for human eaters also.

Pretty succulent fish bait! Mullet tastes a bit more of the ocean than the "milder" white fishes, and it's size does not lend it to grilling, but neither of these considerations mattered. The freshness shined through every flaky bite. The cole slaw and hush puppies as usual were of the food service variety, but serviceable, as were the grits.

Our next visit to Harbor Docks would be for breakfast on Friday, February 17. It definitely felt strange. Morgan was smart to change some things up, while trying to keep other things the same.

New Harbor Docks Breakfast Menu

Harbor Docks kept the Fisherman's Platter (a Shipp invention, and now named for him), biscuits, sausage gravy and grits. Fried chicken, which used to be a take-out item only, is now on the eat-in menu, together with waffles, which are new. Gone is the ham steak, which Bob enjoyed though it was an acquired, salty taste, and the plain gravy I was so fond of. Alcoholic beverages are now available. And some new omelet combinations and breakfast sandwiches have been added, together with sauteed apples and fresh fruit.

Breakfast began with this complimentary basket of food service muffins and butter.

Biscuits and Sausage Gravy

A mixture of old and new - the biscuits were split oven and smothered in the gravy instead of being served whole with a bowl of gravy. Less waste must surely result - I could never finish the contents of a gravy bowl with two biscuits. But the gravy lacked the peppery freshness I remembered, and the biscuits lacked profundity. I also enjoyed a side of cheese grits.

Bob's Breakfast - Mr. Shipp's Fisherman's Special with sausage, and

Biscuits

For as long as he'd been working, Mr. Shipp had never allowed anyone else to make the biscuits. We wondered if he'd left any of his recipe or technique for another to follow. These biscuits probably wanted to be baked a bit more. Even with more browning, though, their made-from-mix character and lack of great biscuit texture (flakiness) would have been apparent. Hopefully, with practice, whoever is making these will improve - Mr. Shipp had decades of practice before we ever tasted a one of his (and we'd noticed the last couple of years that they weren't quite the same). Mr. Shipp's biscuits inspired us, on more than one occasion, to carry home a 5# bag of White Lily flour in our luggage, the better to try to duplicate his biscuity goodness - while Bob is a good biscuit-maker, they are never quite as light and flaky as Mr. Shipp's. (BTW - White Lily Flower can now be acquired in or near most cities.) 

I hoped to get back for another breakfast, to try the Chicken and Waffles, but it just never happened this trip. We will definitely try them again next year, since they'd only been operating for three days when we ate there; it was too early to really judge it fairly.

Our last visit to Harbor Docks came on Presidents' Day (Monday, February 20) and was largely a repeat of  our first lunch, though with a different start:

Freshly baked corn muffins

I would suspect that we weren't served any muffins at our first lunch due to the late hour; they may have run out of them. At the time, I didn't even remember this usual start to lunch at Harbor Docks. These specimens were hot and toothsome. 

Country Fried Mullet, Cole Slaw, Grits, Hushpuppies

Both mullet lunches were a veritable steal at $8 dollars a plate. The comparable plates of snapper, grouper and tuna were $13-15 (all offered with a choice of sides, including cucumber salad and ginger rice). Of course, taste is everything. The impeccably fresh, well seasoned, crispy mullet satisfied on both occasions.  

Yes, fun playing with Florida Panhandle food was off to a great start indeed. More to come in the next post.