Perla's Seafood & Oyster Bar

A view of the ocean from South Congress Avenue

By Mike Sutter
AMERICAN-STATESMAN RESTAURANT CRITIC
Thursday, June 04, 2009

When I wrote a short item in April about Perla's Seafood & Oyster Bar opening on South Congress Avenue, I didn't have Perla's phone number or Web site to put in print. But my work number was at the bottom, like it always is, and I've gotten dozens of wrong-number calls since then, people looking to make reservations or ask about the menu. If a caller starts out by saying, 'Oh, I'm sorry,' I just say, 'You looking for Perla's?' They almost always are.

All that's just a long way of saying that the interest level's been high, and it comes from a few possible sources. First, Perla's took the place of Mars, the Asian-flavored bistro that thrived in its little bungalow of a birthplace but died on the high-profile South Congress vine.

Second, Perla's is the navy of the restaurant empire being built by chef-owners Larry McGuire and Thomas Moorman Jr., who also operate Lamberts Downtown Barbecue and share an ownership stake in La Condesa. Third, Perla's adds a seafood component in a dining district that includes Italian (Botticelli's, Vespaio, Home Slice), classic American (the Woodland, South Congress Cafe, Magnolia Cafe, Fran's Hamburgers, Doc's Motorworks), Mexican (Güero's), even a robust trailer court of eclectic food vendors (the Mighty Cone, Cornucopia, Hey Cupcake).

I profiled McGuire in March, and I saw him shucking oysters at Perla's front bar during one visit. I knew from our past conversations that the restaurant is bringing in 17 varieties of fresh oysters and that he's hired Ben McBride (formerly of Parkside) and Josh Sacco (Jeffrey's) to help run the kitchen while he and Moorman split time between Perla's and Lamberts.

The menus are printed new every day at Perla's, depending on what comes in the door, our waitress said. That seems to be the idea here: seafood as an ever-changing bounty, not a fixed commodity. The kitchen has to adjust along with the menu.

We tried oysters fried and raw, and they showed that Perla's knows two important things about seafood: how to spice and cook it and, just as important, how to leave it alone. Briny-fresh raw oysters from Virginia called Old Salts ($12 for six) came with saltines, cocktail sauce, shredded horseradish and a vinegary mignonette, none of which they needed. We ate them at the bar with cold Hoegaarden and Stella Artois beers, our conversation swallowed by the cacophony of the main room - an echo chamber sparsely decorated with weathered wood, white tablecloths and concrete floors - while we waited for a table on the sprawling outdoor deck.

Once seated at our picnic table under blue-and-white striped beach umbrellas and three giant oak trees, we ate oysters and clams fried crisp and tender in salty cornmeal batter, a $12 meal-size portion with slaw. It was a breezy street-watching retreat even at the end of a day in the 90s, with good service and a sense of humor. With a beach-club vibe, a little something raw, a little something cooked and a bowl of Mexican-spiced pozole verde with hominy and a handful of petite scallops ($8), we could have stopped there, really.

In that sense, Perla's is a make-your-own dinner experience: For $40, two people can fill up on small plates and a few cold beers. Spend an extra $21 for firm, striated striped bass with slightly bitter endive and sweet figs, then maybe $26 for a whole grilled red snapper (eyes and all), and you can put together something truly memorable. The trick with the snapper was to start at the backbone, pulling the fork down parallel with the rib bones, freeing the silky meat for dipping in garlicky green salsa verde and spicy red chimichurri.

Building blocks for that memorable dinner also might include oak-grilled Brussels sprouts ($6), an option I loved because when we cook the little cabbages at home, the kitchen smells like the campfire scene in 'Blazing Saddles.' Over the campfire at Perla's, they're cooked on skewers, a heaping plate of almost-raw, jaw-confounding green golf balls with a light char and big flavor. Five more minutes over the fire, maybe?

For $8, we ordered velvety, overpriced cheese grits because they were made with lobster stock and because there's a crustacean-loving sucker born every minute. In fact, we almost ordered a grilled strip loin steak with half a grilled lobster for $38, because that sounded like a truly good deal. And for the most part, we got good value for our money at Perla's all the way through dessert, where an amorphous mini-mountain of an ice cream sundae killed two sweet tooths for $8 with banana, vanilla and chocolate ice creams, topped with caramel, chocolate and whiskey-soaked cherries.

I lurched in for a lunch visit, drenched from a hot walk and appreciated how cool it was inside Perla's. Not just the temperature, but the cool way the waiter called me 'brah,' the cool idea of a champagne cocktail for lunch (sadly, not on a workday) and the cool daikon and jicama slaw with my soft-shell crab BLT.

The $14 sandwich came with house-cured bacon on white toast, and the crab had a light-battered crispiness and tasted fresh, even if the shell reminded me of eating shrimp tails. The menu said "soft-shell," not "no-shell," so what the shell did I expect? I could have ordered pan-roasted grouper for the same price, or crispy snapper with lemon spinach, but the crab had that beach-spa appeal of something you eat only on vacation.

And Perla's feels like a vacation, or at least a visit to a seaside village in the middle of town, with good food, sweet drinks, pretty people, designer-distressed decor and best of all, no sand.

msutter@statesman.com; 912-5902

Perla's Seafood & Oyster Bar

1400 S. Congress Ave. 291-7300, www.perlasaustin.com

Rating (fine dining):

Hours: Lunch 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. Dinner 5:30 p.m. to close daily. Brunch 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Bar opens at 3 p.m. daily.

Prices: Raw oysters $12-$13.50 for six. Starters $10 (seared scallops) to $14 (crab cake). Soups and salads $6-$9. Sides $4 (sauteed spinach) to $8 (steamed artichoke). Main courses $17 (Atlantic salmon) to $38 (steak and lobster), averaging $24. Desserts $8. Lunch sandwiches and main courses $10 (burger) to $25 (lobster roll), averaging $15.

Payment: All major cards

Bar: Full bar service, with a menu of nautical-themed specialty cocktails (Passenger, Undertow, Pelican), four draft beers (Lone Star, Real Ale rye, Blue Moon Belgian white, Live Oak Pilz) and 16 in cans and bottles, including Hoegaarden and Chimay ($3-$9). The wine list includes more than 50 bottles ($28 to $80) and 25 by the glass, from $7 (Charles de Fere sparkling, France) to $16 (Byron chardonnay, California).

Wheelchair access: Yes