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I was also excited at the possibility of that oxymoron, a good seafood place in Fisherman's Wharf. Why not? There was a time when one steered clear of hotel restaurants, too: no longer. Some of our best can be found in hotels. In fact, on its Web site the Kimpton Boutique Hotel Group (owner of the Argonaut) boasts of its chef-driven restaurants.
On my first visit to the Blue Mermaid, I entered through the hotel, which is, in what architects term an adaptive reuse, housed in a four-story brick structure called the Haslett Warehouse, built in 1907 and once the largest fruit and vegetable cannery in the world. It's now owned by the National Park Service, and part of the Argonaut's deal with the Service involved sharing its space with a snazzy new Visitor Center for the Maritime Historical Park, which is clearly visible through a long glass wall that lines the entrance to the hotel's lobby.
The lobby is pretty snazzy, too, evoking all manner of boats -- cruise ships, sailing schooners, luxury liners -- in mixed-metaphor décor: chic floors striped in sleek light-and-dark wood, massive glowing saillike light fixtures, and witty seating (including armchairs slipcovered in bright red and embroidered with an "A" and teak deck chairs with crisp navy blue cushions piped in white). Neon-ringed portholes separate the elevators.
So I was somewhat taken aback when I turned a corner and entered a soaring space that seemed more like a high school gym than the intimate, upscale restaurant I was expecting. Pastel-painted picnic tables and casual tables and chairs filled the room, somewhat haphazardly. Sure, a bar lined one side of the room, which one doesn't expect in a gym, high school or otherwise. But I couldn't shake the strange feeling as I persuaded the perky hostess, who seemed pretty high-school herself, to seat me in one of the two booths in the place, unhappily located between the front door that opens onto Jefferson and a side door that leads to a patio with outside seating. The fog was rolling in -- seemingly right into the restaurant. Huge murals of vintage food-can labels adorned the wall, like nightmarish prom decorations. I looked at the open kitchen, alongside a display of baked goods and a list of desserts carefully printed on a board, and I suddenly got it. It wasn't a gym, but a cafetorium.
As soon as I sat down, I squirmed: Several of the many bright lights on the ceiling were aimed directly at my eyes, making me feel like James Cagney under close questioning in a '30s prison picture. The lights were lowered, eventually, but they were still unfortunately placed. By the time Bernice and Sharon joined me, I needed a drink.
One of us ordered a Pirate's Punch (Captain Morgan, Grand Marnier, "blended juices"), another a Dark 'n' Stormy (Gosling's Bermuda Rum, ginger beer, lime); it didn't really matter who got which, because both cocktails were weak and rather dull.
The centerpiece of the menu was, indeed, an array of eight chowders, including New England clam, Manhattan clam, salmon and fennel, and California clam (which, our server told us, was New England clam chowder with the addition of artichokes and asparagus). All were available in a cup, a bowl, or a bread bowl (a dreadful idea and a waste of bread). We ignored a wide selection of shellfish and other starters (spicy grilled chicken wings, cornmeal fried oysters, iceberg wedge with blue cheese dressing) -- we were, after all, in a Chowder House -- and ordered cups of crab and sweet corn chowder, oyster and leek chowder, and shrimp and red pepper chowder ("That's my favorite!" enthused our waiter. "It's got a kick to it!").
I found them all rather insipid (though commendably flourless): sweet and characterless, tasting pretty much alike.
We moved on. Bernice and Sharon are both food-mad, what once would have been called "gourmets" and, later, "foodies," neither a word I much like: Anyway, they're good eaters. We spoke of our favorite food writers, and a little about our favorite foods; I was not happy to be treating them to this meal. The jumbo lump crab cake Sharon ordered was large enough (and it should have been, at $17.50), but it was also sweet and characterless, and the term "lump" was an exaggeration. I thought, longingly, of the crabmeat timbale that was a specialty of a vanished restaurant in Los Angeles, simply lump crabmeat, seasoned and shaped in a ring mold and carefully turned out on a plate. I was no luckier with my choice of entree. If the battered rectangle of firm cod in my sandwich had not recently been frozen, it tasted as though it had. I steered Bernice away from the spaghetti with shrimp, tomatoes, and basil (fearing an assemblage of ingredients rather than a dish), and she was rewarded with the best plate of the night: Her grilled salmon with lemon butter was perfectly acceptable, and came with creamy mashed potatoes that unexpectedly enhanced the fish.
We asked, in time-honored foodie fashion, which of the many desserts and baked goods on the list were house-made; not many, as it turned out, and I disremember which, because the three we tried were equally undistinguished: too-sweet chocolate "earthquake" cake with vanilla sauce; gloppy peach and berry crisp; drab, stale orange poundcake.
I didn't rush back. And when I did return, I enticed my mom with the idea of steamed Dungeness crab (always the best bet at the Wharf in the old days, if you could get one right out of the pot). We were seated in the same booth near the door, by a friendly young host; the other booth, directly behind us, served as a kind of way station for a cocktail party of hotel guests, one woman dressed in a bright red uniform like a Canadian Mountie. The party had dispersed by the time Anita showed up, festively attired herself in a beautiful embroidered shawl. I was sipping a syrupy Old-Fashioned, and Anita decided to have a Mojito, like the one my mom was enjoying.
When we ordered -- the large cold seafood platter for two, oysters Rockefeller, Dungeness crab, cioppino, and the fried fisherman's platter -- our waiter said, "You're going all out!" "Well," I said, "it's Columbus Day." "Indigenous People's Day," Anita corrected me.
Whatever. We felt increasingly less festive as the sad parade of indifferent food arrived. The two-tiered seafood platter looked generous: heaped with more clams, oysters, mussels, shrimp, and cracked crab than we could eat, especially since their only accompaniments were lemon and containers of ketchup dolloped with a spoonful of creamed horseradish (no mignonette, no mayonnaise). But nothing sparkled. The oysters were big, the mussels innocent of their promised marinade, the cold crab carelessly drained. Though the presentation was glamorous, the components were just lackluster.
The oysters Rockefeller was missing the Pernod the dish requires; the steamed Dungeness crab was soggy; the sea creatures in the cioppino seemed recently introduced to each other and quite separate from the thin, not very garlicky tomato broth lurking in the bottom of the dish. Once again I felt that all the food on my fisherman's platter -- the battered cod, the calamari, the "popcorn" shrimp, the remarkably uniform clam strips, the thin french fries -- had been frozen in some relatively tony factory. Much of this food was not being eaten.
Which continued with the brownie sundae, the cheesecake, and the lemon meringue pie that brought our repast to a thudding conclusion. I walked my guests out through the lobby, where we paused to gaze at the stunning lighthouse topper in the Visitor Center, a crystalline art deco masterpiece that looks like a mad prop from Metropolis or a Russian constructivist film. "Damn," I said to my mom, "I should have had that fisherman's platter wrapped up to go. You could have fed it to the cats."
Anita, whose husband cooks professionally, sent me a carefully worded thank-you e-mail the next day: "And the food reminded me of how very lucky we are, how well we eat. How incredibly fresh and delicious almost every meal. The stark contrast was instructive." I was reminded of Pollyanna the Glad Girl, who said she was glad she'd broken both her legs because now she appreciated how lucky she'd been when they weren't broken.
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