Swan Oyster Depot: You’ll Actually Feel Your Brain Growing Inside Your Head
Written: Aug 19 '03
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Pros: Fresh oysters and cold Anchorsteam
Cons: The bar, the wait
The Bottom Line: Eat there. Because it's good.
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| Mr.Eyore's Full Review: Swan Oyster Depot |
May I wax poetic for a moment about the joys of fresh seafood?
I’m not talking about the seafood you get in fancy restaurants, all plated up, resting atop a perfectly executed beurre blanc with a side of nice baby vegetables, still crunchy, but warm after a light saute. Nor am I talking about the giant, steamed, Maine lobsters you can find at great steak and lobster joints anywhere in the country. Nor am I talking about the sweet flesh served on small beds of rice and wasabi at a million wonderful sushi bars. All of these I love, but I can’t think of anything in the world more satisfying – more life affirming and rejuvenating, mentally and physically – then unadorned fish and shellfish, a few hours off the boat.
Swan Oyster Depot, a San Francisco institution on Polk Street near Nob Hill, is rightfully regarded as the finest seafood shack in the Bay Area. And it would have to be, to garner the crowds this place draws from all over the country, waiting in 40 minute lines along the more colorful end of Polk to sit at the world’s most uncomfortably crowded bar, on the world’s most uninviting bar-stools, pressed up against a bar that seems to have been designed without the idea that people should have knees.
But once you’re inside, you may quickly forget the uninviting seats, given the incredibly inviting attitude of the boys behind the bar. A family affair, almost everyone working there has been there since they were kids. They shuck oysters by the hundreds like it was second nature, while chatting with patrons. They toss fish and bread to one another like pro ballplayers tossing one around the horn after an easy out. They smile and ask how you’re doing and do everything with the clean, beautiful efficiency of restaurant lifers. They smile and wave at the patrons waiting outside the window. They plan menus for people coming in to pick up packages for a dinner later that evening. And they thank you, in everything they do, for your business.
The name suggests that the restaurant’s specialty is oysters, which I suppose may be accurate, but it is a serious underestimation of what they are great at, which is almost anything fresh. A chalk board lists the oysters available on any given day, usually four to six selections. That’s a small choice, considering that many good oyster bars in the city regularly offer a dozen or more different oyster types. But I have to believe the reason Swan offers so few choices is because they are limiting themselves to the very best, very freshest available.
For people visiting from the East Coast (which is many), a word about oysters in the Bay Area. I know you may be accustomed to east coast, or gulf, oysters: those giant, nasty, boogers of the sea that you may swallow down two or three or six at a sitting. You may even enjoy those oysters, especially fried up and served in a nice, fresh Nawlins style Po Boy. But the oysters of the Pacific Northwest are an entirely different – and to my mind, better – animal. They are typically smaller – sometimes so small that frying them would be a complete waste – and less packed with nasty black gut-stuff. I believe they are also sweeter and their brine less “fishy.” But that may well be because most of the Gulf oysters I’ve eaten have been shipped to California, so aren’t quite as fresh. But even those I’ve eaten in Philadelphia and Baltimore and New Orleans haven’t been as good as those I find on the west coast.
I don’t think I’ve ever been to Swan Oyster without them having Kumomoto’s on the menu. Tiny and firm, they are the perfect oyster to eat plain. But there is also usually a nice selection of Tomales Bay oysters, a little larger and wetter, delightful with a small topping of mignonette.
While I have never been a great fan of raw clams (much though I live for steamed cherrystones) I have tried the clams at Swan Oyster a few times, and thought they were wonderful. Chewy but soft, they have that briny heartiness, and indescribable aftertaste that no other shellfish can boast.
Cold Dungeness crabs, right off the boat, are served by the half or whole, in heaps of sweet leg meat piled inside a short parfait glass with a pool of cocktail sauce, or on salads of mixed seafood, topped with nasty light orange Louie dressing.
My favorite thing at Swan Oyster is their house made smoked salmon, cut to order in paper thin slices right off the carcass of a glistening whole fish. There are no bagels or cream cheese, or even capers, to down it with, but a few fork-fulls of the stuff – or a thin slice wrapped around a piece of bread – and you will be able to feel your gray matter start to spark again after the deadening effects of whatever you did the night before.
The one thing that Swan Oyster does not do terribly well is Clam Chowder. Theirs, New England Style, tends toward the watery, with more potato than I care for, even if the whole clams swimming at the bottom are a nice treat. Overall, though, it’s a thin, bland concoction. Which isn’t to say it’s inedible. I usually get a bowl anyway, if only to fill me up a little without spending 60 bucks a visit. But don’t expect to find full satisfaction there if soup is most of what you’ll be eating.
Everything is served with wonderful, crusty sourdough bread and chilled, but not rock hard, sweet butter. And I’m talking really great sourdough. Better sourdough than most San Franciscans typically buy, in the world’s home of sourdough bread. Nearly everything is also served with a bland, fresh cocktail sauce, and the first time I went there, the weak sauce was a major disappointment. Of course, that was my fault, because among the crowd of glasses and plates and napkins and bread and butter, I had failed to notice all the fixin’s for a made-to-taste cocktail sauce: Bowls of lemon; little terrine’s of fresh horseradish; two or three kinds of hot-sauce; vinegar. It was all there, I just hadn’t partaken. And since then, every time I’ve been there, I’ve enjoyed the offerings so much more.
Swan Oyster Depot isn’t cheap, at least not it you’re doing it right. You’ll spend dinner prices (maybe $30.00 per person) on brunch (and brunch is really the only option – they aren’t open after 5:00), but you’ll also be so sated, even hours after you’ve eaten a relatively small meal, that you’ll be happy with less come dinner time.
If you’re on a very short vacation to San Francisco, don’t bother coming to Swan Oyster. It’s great, but really, so much of the city is great, and it’s hard to justify waiting in line for an hour or more for a short mid-day meal if you’re only here for a few days and have lots you want to see. But if you’re in the City for several days, or can take the time out in the early afternoon during the week, it’s well worth a special trip to Polk and Sacramento. And it beats the hell out of anything you’re likely to get on Fisherman’s Wharf.
Recommended:
Yes
Kid Friendliness: No
Vegetarian Friendly: No
Best Suited For: Friends
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Mr.Eyore
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About Me:
I come for the pervasive sense of elitist self-importance and semi-witty expressions of faux camaraderie
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