One more Pismo post, more or less. On our last day at the beach, the entire family got together for a good long beach walk.
I had been jonesing for clam chowder - the place is the home of the famous Pismo Clam, for heaven's sake - and for a variety of reasons hadn't been able to get any. We rectified that on our final evening, by going to Mersea's Restaurant at Port San Luis. This place is out on a pier. One can drive to it, and maybe find a parking spot, but we didn't know that at the time. We walked out, wishing we'd brought more warm clothing to protect against the ocean breeze.
Mersea's is the sort of place where you go up to the bar to get your own beer or wine, and get a very generous pour for very little money. You go up to another counter to place your order when you're ready, but they bring the food to you. The floor is sturdy wooden planking. There are glass windows at strategic intervals in the floor, so you can look down into the water below. At that time of night there was nothing to see, but it's probably pretty neat in the daytime.
I got my clam chowder. I opted for what they called "Nolan" style, with bacon and croutons added. I don't think they added much to it, but the chowder itself was good...exactly what I'd been wanting. As usual, my darling opted for fish and chips. My sister and cousins also opted for chowder, or for fish and chips. The fish and chips came with a tartar sauce that I thought terrific and my darling thought disappointing: it had dill pickle relish instead of sweet pickle relish.
The real star of the show, as far as I was concerned, was the garlic fries. Oh, my! They were crispy and garlicky and I couldn't get enough of them. How was it they were so crisp, and the topping so crisp? It turns out that their topping included finely grated parmesan cheese, along with parsley. I'm not much into frying things, but this would be worth trying at home. They came with a very nice aioli...accentuating the garlic flavor, and ensuring that we all needed to be eating the fries out of self defense.
The portions were generous and there were a lot of garlic fries, as well as sauce, left over. Everyone else decided they wouldn't be worth reheating, so they were going to leave them behind. I took them all, and reheated them in the microwave later. They were still fine...perhaps not quite as crisp, but with that topping they still weren't limp. I was well rewarded for carrying the stuff home.
Happy and sated, we worked our way back along the pier, listening to the barks of the sea lions. What an amazing sound they make!
