In light of a birthday, a special celebratory dinner was called for to reign in my 24th year on earth. My cohort and I chose one of our Newport, RI faves, The Mooring; a classic downtown seafood restaurant overlooking the wharf. We began our event by ordering a bottle of moderately priced Vouvray and gulping down two I.P.A. oyster shooters. For those of you poor souls who are not familiar with the so-called oyster shooter, it is pretty much a verbatim interpretation of the title; a shot (usually vodka) in an oyster. However, The Mooring gives us a little twist on the original and conveniently serves the open faced oyster with cocktail sauce and then provides a generous glass of I.P.A. to wash down the shot. Delicious and different- I liked it. For our main appetizer we sampled the seared Ahi tuna with fresh greens and wasabi mayonnaise and their famous lump crab cakes. Both were excellent. The tuna was perfectly seared and well presented on the bed of greens with swirled aioli on the plate. My only suggestion for the tuna would be to add more aioli, but I am biased in the condiment department. The crab cake, which I have had in the past, was delicious as always: a lovely plump cake full of crab, no annoying fillers and extras—just pure tender crab lightly fried.
For my main, I had the pan seared Scottish salmon with green lentils and sweet corn broth. My salmon was perfectly cooked as I requested; almost rare. However, I found the broth to be rather dull and lacking of seasoning. My dish was accompanied with grilled asparagus, roasted red peppers and a tarragon aioli, which had the perfect light crunch. My cohort’s chili cornmeal crusted scallops with mango barbecue sauce was out of this world. Large fist-sized scallops, perfectly seared and flavored with a powerful zest and “pow.” We finished our feast with complimentary glasses of raspberry champagne and dragged ourselves home perfectly content and delightfully buzzed.
