Legal Sea Foods

My favorite restaurant on the planet thus far is Legal Sea Foods, or as we know it affectionately, Legal’s. There’s one right by the Kendall Square T stop adjacent to the MIT campus, and some 20-30 more along the East Coast, mostly in the Boston area. It was certainly expensive for a college student, so I only made it there about once a semester.

Well, now I’m back in Boston, and gainfully employed. It’s still a bit expensive, so I don’t know how long I’ll keep up my current 2-week trend of visiting once a week. But I figured I could log my iteration through the menu items, and help myself remember what was fabulous and what was merely good. Step three: Mankind derives value (*1).

Restaurant Theory

Many restaurants have extensive menus. When you go to a restaurant for the first time, you can’t really help the fact that you’re going to judge the restaurant by that one dish you choose. I suppose we use hints like “Specialties of the House” or “Our Famous XYZ” to get something that should really be representative of the peak of their art. Or maybe a friend or food critic has recommended something to try. Still, there are obviously going to be places out there where you don’t like the first thing you try, and thus never come back, and thereby miss out on something else that you would have returned for again and again. C’est la vie.

Sometimes you love that first dish. Either the recommendation was a good one, or you were lucky, or the restaurant is just really good. Sadly, what is good for us and what is ‘good’ are not the same. So it’s quite possible that you are sucked in because of the ridiculous amount of sugar or fat in a particular dish. A great case in point would be the Fettucini Alfredo at the Olive Garden.

So you are hooked – how often are you going to be back? Well, this largely depends on how often you eat at restaurants. As a well-paid fellow who’s inept with women, I can afford to eat at a restaurant every day for lunch, and have never bothered to get in the habit of packing a lunch. This qualifies me to talk at an unhealthy length on this topic. I like variety, and go out to lunch with coworkers, so we tend to have an ad hoc rotation of 5-10 main places we go. As we get tired of one, it drops for a while and we find another. So keeping up the variety keeps me from going to a particular place too frequently.

The best restaurants tend to be more expensive, so financial discipline also keeps me from visiting the best places too often. The point I’ve been meandering toward making for a few paragraphs now is that sometimes I notice that I’m always ordering the same thing whenever I get to a particular restaurant. It’s because that one thing is so good, I can’t afford not to get it – I won’t be back soon, and what if something else wouldn’t be as good? In taking so long to get to that point, I’m embarrassed by noticing just how Wooster (*2) it is to consider this a problem worth discussing in the first place. Hopefully my secondary goal of amusing myself and others makes it more palatable.

How does one overcome this horrible fate? When I sit back and consider it so formally, having written down the thought process, it’s unspeakably obvious that one must go to the restaurant repeatedly. It’s also obvious that one does not have enough time in life to do this with every restaurant with a good dish. Thus, as my answer has become for everything, one must call upon the web to assimilate the collective intelligence of the masses, then rely on my particular imagined ingenuity to filter that data down to what a particular individual would consider good advice. And ultimately feed it back to the restaurants so that they can concentrate on what is all the battle (*3). Yet another website to expect on mitwhiz.com after a delay of unforeseeable length.

I first stumbled on this idea when I had the Indian Curry for the fourth time at House of Lamthong, a Thai place in Hillsboro, Oregon. A friend had originally taken me there for that dish, and I only went a couple times a year, so I always stuck with it. Someone else recommended another dish, and I tried it, and it was even better. So I convinced a couple friends to go with me every day at lunch for 2-3 weeks, before they soured on the plan. I had items 1-13 or so on the menu (out of maybe 20), sequentially. Some were quite hot, and that short-term regimen gave me the stamina for spiciness that now characterizes my home cooking. Anyway, this certainly let me try other things on the menu, although ultimately that place is not so great, and since Thai Orchid arrived on the scene, with its classier environment and extensive use of my favorite vegetable, broccoli, I don’t think I’ve been back. But I did find other things on the menu I liked better than the (albeit yummy) Indian Curry, so my plan had succeeded.

In any case, as Legal’s is my favorite restaurant, I am willing to sacrifice myself to the challenge of trying to get beyond the lulling borders of its menu. For those who aren’t in the know, Legal’s Clam Chowder is the primary thing that you are missing out on. And, very similar to the dish named previously but which doesn’t deserve mention in the same sentence, the secret of Legal’s Clam Chowder is, I suspect, a gallon of heavy cream in every cup. But this is one of those things which I may see is going to kill me, and yet I’m content that I’ve done right. (Apparently the Rosetta stone to this post is the Sean Connery classic The Untouchables.)

Historical Observations

I’ve only had lobster at Legal’s once, early in college when someone’s adult relative was paying. It was certainly good, but if I remember right it was steamed, something which I would suspect other places to be adept at as well. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if Legal’s chooses the finest cuts of British Lobster (and ham) (*4).

A college-induced classic is the Baked Bluefish With Mustard Sauce. This is one of the few cheapest things on the dinner menu, which is undoubtedly how we found it, and yet it is phenomenally good. The first time I had it, I described it as like eating a steak, which was an entirely new experience for me with a fish. I don’t quite know how to explain what I mean – it just has such a substantial, full flavor that is like no other fish I’ve had.

One time during college I had grilled shrimp as the main course, maybe the first time I was bold enough to try something other than the bluefish, and it was terrific, cementing my suspicion that Legal’s was the perfect seafood restaurant.

Once or twice, we had steamed clams as an appetizer; also good, although again I’d say this is hard to do wrong, and I’ve been to other places since with comparable steamed clams.

And the bottomless cup of coffee, such a critical staple of an MIT education, was quite good as well.

In 1999, I had a job interview back in Boston. I was only there for a day or so, but I found time to make it to Legal’s. I had, of course, a bowl of the chowder I had been dying for, and bluefish with mustard sauce. Perhaps it was then that the wistful thought that I might never get farther into the menu was born.

Visiting Boston last March with my friend James from work, I insisted we go to Legal’s. We tried the Calamari appetizer; it came in two styles, and we chose Thai with pineapple if I remember correctly. Anyway, that was wonderful. Of course I had to have the chowder, but I was brave enough to try Halibut I believe.

For the current reviews, which I can make with more authority and confidence, I will post separately.

Clam Chowder

I have always loved clam chowder. Oregon has a place with a few locations on the coast called Mo’s with “famous clam chowder”. I loved it when I was a kid, but when I tried it after Legal’s it tasted like a cup of milk with a couple clams in it. Legal’s doesn’t skimp on clams and uses cream, that much I know. Beyond that, it’s a mystery how this perfect food is so corrupted by so many. This prompted a search for any other decent clam chowder. I consider myself a semi-connoisseur of clam chowder now, and I’ve identified two chief failings which keeps 99% of clam chowders from being Legal’s. One is the watered-down taste, presumably of wimpy milk instead of artery-clogging good stuff. The second is a certain sourness. I’m not enough of a chef or chemist to know what that comes from, but it is IMHO a grave chowder sin.

Speaking of grave chowder sins, the HowToGAMIT (How to Get Around MIT) book, which I was presented with upon matriculation, defines New England Clam Chowder as (quoting roughly) a cream-based soup made with clams, and Manhattan Clam Chowder as (quoting precisely) tomato soup. If I remember correctly, it suggests that you should not get it started about Manhattan Clam Chowder. Well, similarly, don’t begin to think that even enters the concept of what I’m talking about here.

Anytime I go to a new restaurant and notice that it serves clam chowder, and can establish that it is at least attempting to do so and cost no tomato its life, I have to try it. I realize now I should have been taking notes, but perhaps I can start now. I can say that easily none of these perhaps 20 pretenders has approached Legal’s thus far. If I remember correctly, the version at Camp 18 on Highway 26, mile marker 18, in Oregon was not bad. One other in Lincoln City or so was surprisingly good, but the rest of the food was so wretched that it’s not worth it.

The Search for Sea Foods

In 1996, I was finished with college and moved back to Oregon. I now had a job, so I eventually started seeking out a decent seafood substitute. I lived close to a Newport Bay, and found it to be so-so. I asked around for what was supposed to be the best, and was told McCormick and Schmick’s. I went to a few, including Jake’s in downtown. Decent, but no Legal’s, not by a longshot. And in the case of Jake’s, way overpriced. This was when the fear set in. The Chart House is another place that I find overpriced, for seafood which is just average once you’ve had Legal’s. That might have been the first place I had coconut shrimp, though, and that’s some good stuff.

Mo’s on the coast — yikes! Everything there is breaded and deep-fried. So the clams taste exactly like the oysters, which taste exactly like the fish, which tastes exactly like a breaded, deep-fried… shoe. This is when I decided that breaded, deep-fried anything isn’t my thing. The first few calamari rings are okay that way, though. Only known exception: “Golden Squid” at Thai Orchid (lightly breaded, big pieces of calamari – yum).

A place called McGrath’s Fish House in Milwaukie is good, but that was pretty far from the west side. They just opened a new one up in Beaverton, but I haven’t been there yet.

Then there’s a place in Lincoln City called Kyllo’s which I have found to be quite good, although since I have forgotten anything about their clam chowder, that clearly was no exception to the not-quite-Legal’s rule.

A few months ago, I went to Newport Bay for a birthday party, and I had a fabulous meal. The sugar snap peas, which I had never had before, are what I really remember, but I think I had blackened halibut or something as the entree, and it was quite good as well.

In passing, I’ll note that Oregon can never truly be home now, without Legal’s. This is the horrible aspect of discovering what is good in life (besides the obvious crushing your enemies, having them flee before you, and hearing the lamentations of their women (*5), which you can take with you anywhere). I hope to someday have enough investment capital to propose to Legal’s an expansion into Portland. I cannot but imagine that it would quickly become the premier local seafood restaurant. And it would be nice to beat California to having something for a change.

Key To In-Jokes Above

• (*1) I would think everyone knows this one now, but I love it. It’s a reference to the Step One: Whatever you’re proposing, Step Three: Profit. Step Two: ???. Otherwise known as the dot.com business model.
• (*2) Reference to the layabout socialite anti-protagonist of P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves stories.
• (*3) Reference to the Kevin Costner speech in the bridge scene in The Untouchables.
• (*4) In college, I stumbled upon a GIF of a can of Spam, an older one than I had probably seen. It said on the can, Made from the Finest Cuts of British Pork and Ham. For spam-happy Monty Python afficionados like us, it stuck.
• (*5) Reference to Conan the Barbarian. I was clued into this classic line by Wes only a few years ago, but it immediately became part of the repertoire. An answer to the question: Conan, what is good in life?