Worth The Trip: Saltaire Oyster Bar Port Chester

Worth The Trip: Saltaire Oyster Bar Port Chester: Fans of historic preservation will find the ambience of the new Saltaire restaurant, in a hundred year old grain warehouse along the banks of the Byram River in Port Chester, worth the trip. Pure foodies in the ABC towns will want to motor up for the raw bar and fish happy menu that recently earned Saltaire the New York Times’ highest Excellent rating.

Two great rooms 

The restaurant is divided into two spacious, fully bricked rooms. The well-timbered dining room sports a wood paneled cathedral ceiling, high-backed wood banquettes, original wood windows and four double wagon wheel chandeliers. Adding to the historic ambience is a black metal sprinkler system that we thought was the building’s original heating system. One way or another it belongs in a museum.

In keeping with the restaurant’s sea-faring theme, one wall of the dining room is filled with nautical maps and there are heavy loading ropes and metal vases filled with old fishing rods instead of flowers scattered throughout the room. We ate in the dining room but want to go back for the tin-ceilinged bar (that looked like serious fun) where you can pick your own oysters from the raw bar and the wine is just a twist away.

A family history of aquaculture

Owner Les Barnes calls aquaculture his passion. That means he learned the craft of fish buying before the age of 12 from his father, a fisherman and owner of several fish and chips joints in London before he came to America to open London Lennie’s in Queens. Les is still buying seafood from the best fishmongers and oystermen in the Northeast that he met at the Fulton Fish Market when he was a child.

Chef Bobby Will works with Les to present a straight from the docks menu. Chef Will has a delicate touch with the fish, favoring light and natural cooking preparations with interesting flavor combinations that show European and Asian influences.

Mix and Match Menu

Saltaire’s layered menu, which changes daily, offers a number of possible ways to order that makes it easy to try lots of things. You can order oysters, crab legs or claws and shrimp cocktail one piece at a time. Or you can order Towers of lobster, shrimp, clams, oysters, mussels and crab claws, affectionately named Hook, Line or Sinker, for 2 to 6 people.

Next you will want to order some cold or hot small plates that range in price from $13 for cured New Zealand King Salmon (cold) or Yellowfin Tuna Crudo with blood orange pickled chilies and toasted pumpkin seeds ($15) to the Grilled Spanish Octopus with chickpea stew, pomegranate and mint ($16) and Maine Steamers ($24).

We saved just enough room to split one Saltaire Seasonal Special entrée. When we were there the offerings included a Butter Poached Maine Hake, Seared Mako, Rare Seared Yellowfin Tuna and a Seafood Bolognese with Maine Hake and Gulf Shrimp sausage, oyster mushroom, Spaghetti Marinara and Parmigiano- Reggiano.

What We Liked

We liked the flexi-menu options and took advantage of it to order a mash up of oysters, shrimp cocktail, King Crab Legs and Jonah Crab claws for the table. This is a great place for oyster lovers and we ordered a selection from New England, Fire Island and Kumamoto, WA. All good but the Kumamoto oysters were the headline grabbers without a doubt. They were the smallest ones – a great starter oyster for neophyte slurpers. We ordered just one shrimp apiece – which was kind of nice – as all we wanted was a taste. The raw bar features five signature sauces, a house cocktail sauce, a spicy pear and cucumber relish and a sorrel verde salsa, offering more foodie fun, as we like to say.

Things got even better when we got to the small plates menu. Here the standout was the mussels in a Thai carrot coconut broth with grilled lime and white sesame cilantro. We loved it. Also liked the grilled Spanish octopus with chickpea stew and pomegranate and mint.

The chef does a great job of surprising with different flavor combinations and still manages, somehow, not to get in the way of the natural flavors and freshness of the seafood. We had to throw in some turf to our surf-obsessed meal so we had the roasted pork belly with parsnip puree, kumquat-cranberry chutney and hazelnut. The small plates menu batted a thousand. How did we miss the clam chowder and the lobster pot pie?

Worth The Trip: This is an easy one. Armonk, Bedford & Chappaqua foodies will want to add Saltaire to their bucket list for the fresh seafood, eminently shareable menu and two great environments. The dining room is suitable for special occasions or serious food tasting. The bar is very appealing for hanging out and noshing and quaffing your way through the raw bar menu.

(Saltaire, 55 Abendroth Ave., Port Chester, 914.939.2425; www.saltaireoysterbar.com)

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