I wasn’t sure it was fair to review a new seafood restaurant in Meridian immediately after spending 10 days in Key West, Fla.
And just to be safe, the first time I visited Lucky Fins Seafood Grill, I passed on the Key lime calamari, the shrimp and scallop ceviche and anything else too reminiscent of the yellowtail, grouper cheeks and conch that I had been scarfing down over the holidays.
A salmon cake sandwich on special for ($8) seemed Northwest enough, and it came on toast, cut into four little triangles — a pleasant portion surprise for a guy who had just packed on six pounds in less than two weeks and wasn’t super excited about heading back into the front lines of a restaurant industry seemingly intent on packing more fat, more sodium and more calories into every meal.
The salmon cakes were tasty, crispy on the outside and with a little kick. My friends were equally sucked in by the specials board, and the blackened catfish salad ($9) and linguini with clams ($10) were devoured with similar relish.
I tried the blackened catfish twice. The second was at dinner, when my wife ordered it over rice on a Tuesday night — a Cajun-themed Fat Tuesday is celebrated here every week. The farther you get from Paul Prudhomme, the more likely it is that “blackened” means “tastes like charcoal,” but done well, the “black” is a blend of peppers and quick-seared butter that locks in the juice and flavor of the fish. This, to my mind, was done pretty well. Sometimes, chef Mark Ballan will add huckleberries to his blackening spices for a uniquely Idaho feel.
Lucky Fins is locally owned, and that’s nice to see in this tough economy for new restaurants. It opened in November in a comfortable space near the corner of Eagle Road and Fairview Avenue, a little south of the Krispy Kreme. And you can feel good about enjoying the flavorful dishes; Ballan (who had been doing high-end catering) grills, blackens, sautes and poaches most of his seafood.
The place dabbles in sushi, which is available most days, and Ballan cooks up cedar plank specials on Wednesdays. On weekends, he brings in an ever-changing list of exotic fish. The menu is broad, but outside of a couple of diversions (like the $12 Italian-tinged tilapia piccata, with lemon, capers and wine), he seems to stick to Southwest-colored Mexican, Asian tastes and the flavors that surround the Gulf.
The shrimp nachos, $8 for the appetizer, combines the sweetness of the shrimp with fresh tomato salsa and a tangy chipotle mayo that echoes the ranchero and poblano cream sauces in a handful of dishes that, to keep the celebrity chef metaphor alive, are less Prudhomme than Bobby Flay. Our friends that Tuesday night enjoyed the Baja seafood enchiladas ($11, with shrimp and scallops) and the fish tacos ($9 and with a pleasant surprise for folks like me: They’re flavored with a bacon ranchero sauce).
My wife and I were excited to see char-grilled oysters on the menu ($18 for a dozen), because we had heard that a cook at one of our favorite spots in the Keys had been experimenting with the same idea (unfortunately a few hours before we showed up that day). Ballan’s version melts parmesan on top, and the shells come out hot and ashy (and the meat delicious).
And seeing as how it had been a few days since getting home from the islands, I was ready to put this place to the true test: I ordered the whole red snapper. Outside of some steamed snow crab platters, this $17 dish is on the upper price end of the menu — but it seemed like a good deal compared to the $18 going rate in Key West for a filet of yellowtail, the red’s snapper cousin.
Ballan cooks it “escavitch” style, which is a Jamaican technique that uses some of the same hot peppers and spices as the more well-known “jerk,” but includes a healthy dose of vinegar (a sweet and tart secret ingredient that I am deeply into at the moment). The fish was perfectly cooked, with a burst of flavor in its crispy skin, and it came off the bone easily in meaty chunks. It came on a bed of rice pilaf, which is not a menu item that fills me with excitement, but once the rice soaked up the fishy sauce, I had a hard time offering up bites to my wife.
I’d go back and eat it again tomorrow, if it wasn’t for this one thing on the menu I didn’t get a chance to try: the $9 shrimp-steer burger. A half pound of beef topped with popcorn shrimp. They call it their kind of surf and turf. I call it my kind of fusion. If you check out Lucky Fins soon, you may catch me in the corner with my fists full of this.
Email Gregory Hahn: scene@idahostatesman.com
