Alice's on Bayview
For combination Fathers Day, Mothers Day, Birthday, on Thursday evening, Malinda and Kristen took us out to dinner and our first time at StAndrews long awaited new restaurant Alice’s on Bayview. It was perfect, just perfect.
It is a marvel what Alice did gutting and totally renovating the old shambles of a building at 10th and Bayview that had been Pappy’s German, then Four Seasons which was pleasant enough and enormous plates of eggs and cheese grits and biscuits and wonderful all you can eat jams on the breakfast menu but closed with the flies still crawling the windows like the Thai restaurant behind it at 10th and Beck.
Alice’s on Bayview is a delight, and for us at Harbour Village a walk across the street treat. Our dinner, supper, was spectacular. I ordered fried seafood platter, which was served to me as an unexpectedly piled high generous platter of crab claws, oysters, bay scallops, shrimp, and grouper. The frying, which I suppose could vary evening to evening depending on the duty chef, was a delectable light and crispy fry closer to the tempura we so loved half a century ago when we lived in Japan, closer to real Japanese tempura than to the heavily over-breaded and clumped together that is too often served in southern seafood cafes (and that stopped us, for example, from, after many years of eating there, stopped us from returning to Frog Level, currently Boss Oyster on Water Street in Apalachicola). I like lots of fried seafood, lots of places. Another favorite is Stinky's out beyond Seaside, but I only go there with Frank.
No, my supper at Alice’s on Bayview was delicious, delicate, perfect. Even the finger slices of grouper reminded me of that tempura restaurant where Linda and I often went, with the Murphys, or the Giordanos, or the Hahns, or the Hatchetts, or mostly just the two of us with Malinda and Jody at the Navy keep-the-kids place for the evening, those long ago years in Yokohama.
Will we return to Alice’s on Bayview? You betcha, but I’m in a rut now, a creature of habit who will be looking for and expecting more of exactly the same.
No, my supper at Alice’s on Bayview was delicious, delicate, perfect. Even the finger slices of grouper reminded me of that tempura restaurant where Linda and I often went, with the Murphys, or the Giordanos, or the Hahns, or the Hatchetts, or mostly just the two of us with Malinda and Jody at the Navy keep-the-kids place for the evening, those long ago years in Yokohama.
Will we return to Alice’s on Bayview? You betcha, but I’m in a rut now, a creature of habit who will be looking for and expecting more of exactly the same.
It was scrumptious.
DThos+