Alaska Day 9: Halibut Cove and The Saltry Restaurant

For dinner this evening, Ann had long planned to go to The Saltry Restaurant, a fine dining restaurant on tiny Ismailof Island in Halibut Cove situated across Kachemak Bay from Homer. Open since 1984, the restaurant has become something of an institution that has garnered nationwide press and acclaim. Diners sit on the boardwalk and eat with some of the most gorgeous views anywhere. We were both very excited for our experience there especially because it is the one thing that our innkeeper, Michael, had insisted that we must do while in Homer.

Because of its location, Halibut Cove is reachable only by boat or floatplane. To get to The Saltry, we booked round-trip tickets on their ferry, the Danny J, which runs between Homer and Ismailof Island twice a day, once for lunch and once for dinner. I thought it was pretty neat that we had to catch a ferry to dinner.

Knowing that the parking situation in late afternoon down on the Homer Spit across from the harbor is extremely difficult, we left the inn at 3:30, an hour before we needed to check in at 4:30 for our 5:00pm departure time. Naturally (and thankfully) we found parking immediately. After checking in and receiving our ferry passes, we spent 45 minutes walking the marina where I took a bunch of photos, the best of which I posted previously.

Kachemak Bay Ferry, the Danny J

At around 4:35 or so, the Danny J came puttering into the harbor and with all the loading zones full of charter boats letting off fishing clients, moored a few slips away. The Danny J is a 42-foot wooden, immaculately maintained, white-over-Kelly green fishing boat built in 1941 by Olson & Winge in Seattle. It has been in service as a passenger ferry and as a tour boat since 1966.

Among the last to board, Ann and I headed for the stern, where we could duck out of the wind behind the small, perhaps 6-passenger, cabin. It was also the ideal place from which to take photos as we made our way across the bay to Ismailof Island, perhaps 6 miles distant.

Masked Up and Ready to Back Away

Just about 5:00 we backed away from the dock and after a quick safety briefing, we got underway for the approximately 55-minute trip. Compare this with a 20- or 25-minute trip in a water taxi equipped with twin 250 or 350 motors. The Danny J putters along slowly: it is after all a historic boat with an old motor, but with the majority of the riders deckside and exposed to the elements and seas, slow and steady is the order of the day.

USCGC Hickory

As we pulled out of the harbor, we motored past the 225-foot USCGC Hickory buoy tender, aka Bull of the North, home ported in Homer. As a buoy tender, the Hickory is primarily tasked with maintaining aids to navigation, but serves multiple roles as do most Coastie boats. We also passed the 110-foot USCGC Naushon moored dockside in the deeper water inside the harbor.

Motoring along ever so sedately across the water, we had really good visibility, a vast change from our trip over to Halibut Cove yesterday. Our pilot would slow every now and again to show us several sea otters as we passed. I also managed to catch a few sea birds in focus while we were underway.

Red-necked Phalaropes

Poot Peak and Grewingk Glacier

Water Level View of Homer Spit

After about 50 minutes of sedate motoring across the bay, we arrived at the opening of Halibut Cove, a secluded waterway sandwiched between Ismailof Island and the mainland and Kachemak Bay State Park. The opening to the channel called The Narrows was flanked on the mainland side by a bald eagle and on the island side by a retired lighthouse, now high-end lodging.

Halibut Cove has a small contingent of year-round residents whose number swells in the summer months. Many of the residents make their living fishing or raising oysters. Along the raised boardwalks, several artists have galleries. The Saltry gets its name from extensive herring salting and packing operations in the 1910s and 1920s, before the herring fishery died. Most of the village was torn down and the lumber repurposed in building the town of Homer.

We pulled in to the dock just below The Saltry and climbed up the gangway to the boardwalk above. Everyone from the Danny J was seated at once, first come, first serve for the tables. Ann and I selected a round two-top right on the railing and just outside the open, covered seating area bearing an oval Saltry sign and a pair of shed moose antlers.

Seating with a View

View over Ann's Shoulder

The Danny J, Just Below Us

After the initial chaos of getting a boat load of diners situated at tables, servers started to come around with silverware and menus. As I understand it from speaking with a couple of employees, most of them work the ski resorts in the winter and The Saltry in the summer, bumming around in the shoulder seasons. Sad to say that our server was just phoning it in, having a captive audience and not really needing to compete for business.

After Ann and I got drinks, we started looking at the very limited menu. This is not a criticism of the menu in that if the crew can focus on fewer dishes, they should be able to execute them extremely well. Also sad to say, three of our four dishes we could not recommend. The halibut seviche was nearly unseasoned. The pickled salmon was tough, crudely executed, and would have made a Scandinavian pickled fish lover cry.

Halibut Seviche

Pickled Red Salmon

For entrees, we ordered halibut collar (a special offering made in the same manner as their regular halibut dish) and sablefish. The halibut collar was well executed and the only dish that met our approval. The halibut collar has a higher fat content and is therefore moister than the fillet flesh, which tends to be drier. The crew did a great job with the halibut and the carrots underneath were perfect.

Halibut Collar

As for the sablefish, the portion was small, on the order of 4-5 ounces, which was not a good value for the $30 asking price. I'm not a big eater, so portion size is neither here nor there in my evaluation, but I am big on proper cooking. I have always told my line cooks that sablefish comes with training wheels; that is, anyone can cook it well because it has enough fat so that it will not dry out if you overcook it a little. Moreover, it comes with its own figurative pop-up timer: the flesh will start to flake apart when it it nears readiness. In short, it is a chef's dream fish. I never knew that you could overcook sablefish, but congratulations to The Saltry crew for dispelling that silly notion.

Terribly Overcooked Sablefish

After our exceedingly disappointing dinner, we consoled ourselves that at least we had a great time sitting and dining in one of the more stunning locations that we have ever visited. Before the Danny J boarded for the 2100 trip back to Homer, we had about 40 minutes for a brief walk along the boardwalks and trails of Ismailof Island, taking in more wildflowers and vistas of this special place. I would have liked to have spent more time walking about, but we were constrained by our ride back home.

Bells-of-Scotland Grow All Over on Rock Faces

Bells-of-Scotland Detail

Alpine Forget-Me-Mot, Myosotis alpestris, the Alaska State Flower

The return trip took about 50 minutes into the setting sun which cast a golden glow on everything around us.

Sea Arch on Islmailof Island

Salmon Purse Seiner

Common Murres in Glow of Setting Sun

10pm Homer Harbor

We returned to the harbor just before 10:00, tired and disappointed by what we had hoped would be a meal stellar enough to compete with the off-the-charts scenery of Halibut Cove. After being in the bustling harbor three days running when it was overrun with people coming and going, it was a bit strange to be the only ones making our way out of the harbor, up the ramps, and across the now deserted highway to the parking lot where we left our car, now sitting all alone in a mostly vacant lot. Even more surreal was the sensation of having to wear sunglasses at 10:00pm as we drove back home, the setting sun low on the horizon and directly in our eyes. These Alaska summer days are truly long.

Sablefish with Pimentón White Beans and Piquillo Salad

We brought home a gorgeous piece of ultrarich sablefish recently, but the rest of the cupboard was pretty bare promising some difficulty in coming up with a presentation for the fish. When ideas are hard to come by, I know just what to do. My food ideas flow best when I have my hands on food, such as at the market or farmers market. At the restaurant, I would often go into either the walk-in or the pantry and paw my way through the inventory to start the idea flow.

Naturally, I started rummaging our home pantry to get an idea for what to do. I spied a bottle of Sherry vinegar and that was all it took to get the ideas zooming about my head. The association went something like: Sherry vinegar, Spain, Spanish ingredients, that leftover half a jar of piquillo peppers in the fridge, a nice garnish of a piquillo salad, peppers, smoked paprika, smoked paprika wants some kind of neutral foil to let it do its smoky thing, white beans, white bean purée, fini.

Including salt and garlic, this dish comprises seven ingredients. One thing that I continually impressed on my line cooks in our daily menu meetings was to simplify dishes and not to add items just because they might be cool. Each item in a dish should be there for a specific well-founded reason. A hallmark of a veteran chef is knowing when enough is enough.

Sablefish with Pimentón White Beans and Piquillo Salad

That said, I would have made a couple additions to this dish at the restaurant. First, I would have made two deep red-colored oils for an additional plate garnish, one meat-based and the other vegetarian. The first would have been made by steeping chorizo in warm olive oil and the other by doing the same thing with just pimentón, smoked paprika. In this way, I could garnish the plate to look the same for people who do not eat meat and people who eat meat, but just not pork.

And no doubt, for the second addition, the piquant bite of some micro-arugula would add a complementary color and taste. It's just that at home, I don't have flats of micro-arugula sitting on the counter awaiting my scissors. I do miss that about the restaurant: the ability to cut herbs and put them immediately on the plate before it was whisked off to the dining room.

I Cook Sablefish Skin Side Down

After the Skin is Crisp, Finishing the Fish

For the white bean purée, I wanted to go rustic, so not totally smooth. To do this, I cooked a bit of garlic in olive oil, then added cooked beans, and a touch of pimentón. The beans cooked for a few minutes with the addition of some water and then using the back of my wooden spoon, I mashed them roughly, adding water and salt as necessary.

White Beans Cooking, Before Mashing

Pimentón is one of the great contributions of Spain to the culinary world. When I say pimentón, I don't mean just any smoked paprika, but the famous name-protected Pimentón de La Vera from Spain. There really is no substitute for it, and while it is expensive relative to other ground peppers, a little pimentón can go a long way. Often I have tasted dishes in which the cook has been heavy-handed with the pimentón and the dish has become a bit acrid, bitter, and overly smoky.

Pimentón is available in dulce (sweet), agridulce (bittersweet), and picante (hot). I have always bought the agridulce version as it seems most versatile to me. If I want the dish to be picante, I have lots of other weapons in my aresenal to add to the pimentón. From having been smoked over oak, the pimentón adds both a smoky flavor and a haunting smoky aroma to any dish to which it is added.

I use it often to build richness and a sense of meatiness into vegan and vegetarian dishes. In fact, a woman who was eating a vegan diet excoriated me in my dining room and in a subsequent on-line review. She insisted mistakenly that I had added bacon to her dish that contained only pimentón. She refused to eat the dish that I had gone out of my way to prepare for her. But such is the power of pimentón to convince people that a dish contains meat when in fact, it does not. For that, I love pimentón and will always have it in my spice cabinet.

Piquillo Salad

I have talked previously about the need for something acidic to complement the super rich and fatty sablefish. This is the role that the piquillo salad plays for this dish. More specifically, it is the sherry vinegar that helps cut the richness. The salad is utterly trivial: sliced piquillos, a touch of minced garlic, salt to taste, and a sprinkle of Sherry vinegar to taste.

Piquillos are another of the great gifts of Spain to the world. Their inimitable flavor, both sweet and rich at the same time, is a true joy. They are best served simply so that they can take their starring role at the table.

This was a wonderful way to experience an awesome piece of sablefish. Besides having beautiful flavors that complemented each other tremendously well, the dish took no more than 15 minutes to execute! This is my kind of dish.

Sablefish with Balsamic-Roasted Onions and Quick Pickles

One of the best, most luxurious fishes on the planet is the sablefish, locally known as black cod, though it is not a cod at all. It is a fish that I have worked with sporadically over my career. We would get some flown in to the restaurant in Virginia from our purveyor in Alaska, but it would come in only infrequently along with our salmon and halibut, most of my fisherman's catch being sold to Japan.

Because it is so good, it wants to be treated simply so that it can be the star of the show. Moreover, because it is so high in fat (good fish fats), it wants something acidic to help balance it. In this case, I decided to use two different vinegars to help balance the dish: balsamic and rice.

Sablefish with Balsamic-Roasted Onions and Quick Pickles

I decided to plate the sablefish on a bed of onion slabs first marinated in and then roasted in balsamic vinegar. Then I decided to quick pickle some cucumber slices to garnish the top of the fish. The two sources of acid complemented the unctuous fish.

Onions with Balsamic Vinegar, Prior to Roasting

I slabbed a big onion and poured on a bit of balsamic vinegar and let the slabs stand for twenty minutes, turning the slices once, to marinate. After I sprinkled them with salt and pepper, I put them in a moderate oven until the onions were soft, but still holding together, and the balsamic vinegar reduced to a syrupy glaze.

Cucumber Slices in the Pickle Brine

Quick pickles are just that: pickles that take no time. They pick up a bit of the pickle brine, yet they retain the fresh snap and crunch of the raw cucumber. I make my brine by taste. I start with a bit of rice vinegar and then dilute it with water until I am happy with it. Then I stir in salt and sugar, tasting as I go, until I am happy with the flavor of the brine. In go the cucumbers for a short stay, an hour or less. These were in the brine just about an hour.

Searing the Skin Side of the Sablefish

Sablefish is among the easiest fish to cook for two reasons. First, because of the fat content, it is very hard to overcook it to the point where it is inedible. And second, because it has a built-in timer. When the flesh starts to flake apart, it is ready to serve. You can see the very visible flakes in the top photo.

I always serve sablefish with the crispy skin attached. It is a treat on par with and perhaps surpassing salmon skin. One day, perhaps I will make sablefish skin hand rolls as a special treat for Ann and me; I suspect it will be far better than the same sushi made with salmon skin.

As always, hats off to Northwest Fresh Seafood for impeccable fish.