Pearl Oyster Bar

Last night we had dinner at Pearl Oyster Bar on College Avenue in the Rockridge area of North Oakland. We had been there perhaps a dozen times over the last three or four years, but had forgotten how wonderful this restaurant is. We had:

Spicy Tuna Poke

Thin slices of seared tuna on an avocado sauce base with fresh shredded horseradish on the side.

Fish springrolls with pickled chile-mango dipping sauce.

Crispy calamari with Thai slaw.

Coffee, cardamom, and cacao crusted sturgeon with sunchoke-cauliflower puree and red wine sauce.

Accompanied by: 2005 Cougar Crest viognier, Walla Walla Valley.

As you may have guessed, this is an Asian fusion restaurant. It could very well be the best of that gendre in the Bay area. The seafood was impeccably fresh and cooked with a deft hand. As we finished dinner we realized to our surprise that when we compared Pearl Oyster Bar to the four highly rated and expensive restaurants we had visited in New York City, Pearl was head and shoulders above any of them. In particular, the meal, ambiance, and service at Pearl was better than Esca - Mario Batalli's fish restaurant. And, not surprisingly, our meal cost about half to two thirds of what we paid in New York.

(This week the New York Times reported that Trader Joe's sells "Two buck Chuck" for $3.00 in New York City.)

Santa Fe, New Mexico at Christmas Time

If you have been to Santa Fe, you have probably eaten at Cafe Pasqual's. It is a wonderful place and there is almost always a long line waiting outside to get a table. This is one of the rare times that there was no line.

A St. Patrick's Day Story

My great great great grandfather was John Hogarty. His granddaughter, Mary Ann Pew Cornish, described him in the following letter:

"My grandfather, John Hogarty, was born in 1796, I think in the central part of Ireland, near Dublin. When 14 years old, he was celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with other boys in the village when the press gang, a company of British soldiers, surrounded them and forced them into the Army. As he was too young & too small to be put in the ranks as a soldier, he was put into the band and was also made an officer’s valet. He never saw his father nor his mother nor his home again.

Like all those of true Irish blood at that time he had an inate hatred for the British; moreover he had never enlisted and since he hated army life he determined to escape. In 1813, after three years in the British Army, he succeeded in his 3rd attempt and reached an American vessel engaged in the War of 1812. He entered the American Army against the British and again served in the band.

He was with Commodore Perry at the Battle Lake Erie and after the American victory on Sept. 10, 1813 at Put-In-Bay when the British officers marched by to surrender their swords, his old Colonel saw him and exclaimed, “Ah, John! I never thought you’d leave me that way.”