The Lunch Menu

Lunch ran every day from half past eleven until half past four, which made it the longest service of the day and, for a harbour restaurant, the busiest. People came off boats, off the sand and out of the shops along the wharf, and the menu was built to absorb all three.

What made it a lunch menu

Structurally the lunch card was the dinner card with two adjustments. First, prices ran about a dollar under the evening's on comparable dishes — enough to be noticed, not enough to feel like a different restaurant. Second, the evening's meat specials section was replaced by sandwiches, which is the single change that tells you who was eating.

Everything else carried over: the same appetisers, the same soups, the same salads and louies, the same six burgers, the same wall of seafood specials, the seafood pastas, the house specialities, the harbour favourites and the tacos. The three-course prix-fixe ran at lunch too.

Appetisers

The rest of the card

The lunch menu then followed the evening's order. Soups were the New England clam chowder and the chilled gazpacho, by cup or bowl, with the green-salad-and-bowl combination that a lot of tables ordered as the whole meal. The salad section carried the Harbor Grill cobb, the caesar with grilled shrimp, the spinach salad with ginger lime dressing, the seared ahi with sesame honey mustard, and the three louies — prawn, Dungeness crab and bay shrimp — which are as period-Californian a piece of menu writing as exists.

Burgers ran from a plain hamburger up through the guacamole and salsa burger and the blue cheese burger, with John's mesquite grilled fish burger sitting in the middle of them. Tacos came three ways — Caribbean spiced seabass, grilled shrimp, and shredded pork — each with rice pilaf and a house salsa. Fish and chips and fried calamari held down the harbour favourites.

The full seafood specials list is set out on the dinner menu, where the prices are the evening ones; at lunch the same dishes ran a shade under. Most of the species involved have profiles in the NOAA Fisheries species directory.

Eating on the terrace

Lunch was the service the garden terrace was made for. The dining room, with its piano, belonged to the evening; in daylight the tables outside had the view of the sails and most people took them. The restaurant's own copy leaned on this — the view of harbour sails, it said, encouraged a leisurely meal — and at lunch on a warm day that was less a claim than a description.

It also explains the shape of the menu. A long lunch on a terrace wants small raw things and cold soup and a salad with crab in it, and the card obliged. The heavier end — the étouffée, the gumbo, the bouillabaisse, the lobster and filet combination — was still available, but it belonged to the room after dark.

Elsewhere

Sunday replaced lunch entirely with the Champagne Breakfast, which ran until two. Thursday added the oyster list to both services. The standing offers, including the daily prix-fixe, are collected under specials, and the harbour that supplied the view is described under location.