Austin: Perla's

A California couple of my acquaintance enjoys eating dinner at the bars of fancy restaurants rather than at the tables. After visiting Perla's restaurant on busy, popular South Congress on the spur of the moment on a crowded Saturday night, I think I know why. Perla's is a new seafood restaurant next to Guereo's, scene of a visit by chowhound Bill Clinton some years ago. The Perla's folks took a modern building that used to house a Nissan dealership and turned it into a large, open room featuring walls of glass and tile, white tablecloths, and touches of blue, providing a clean, Mediterranean look. Last year Esquire Magazine named it one of the top new restaurants in the U.S., and featured a picture of the umbrellaed patio nesteled under large oak trees with the a neon "Perla's" in blue script at the entrance in the background.

As for the poured concrete and tiled bar inside, it's like sitting at a sushi bar, except that the view consists of dozens of different kinds of shelled seafood on a bed of ice being prepared by the staff. The menu changes daily, featuring fresh fish and shellfish flown in from both coasts. (Since our selection didn't taste like oil, we assumed that BP brand fish was not on the menu.)

Carol and I arrived at 7:30 on a very crowded Saturday night, and was told that the wait for an inside table would be two hours. The wait on the patio was a more agreeable 45 minutes, but we were hungry, so we opted for dinner seats at the bar, and we were seated immediately. The menu and our drinks came promptly, and sitting close together at the bar allowed us to hear each other in spite of the din around us. We also got to chat with people on either side of us at the ample, winding bar, something that doesn't happen when seated at a private table.

Although there was a selection of 16 different oysters from the Prince Edward Islands to British Columbia, we decided to split orders of items added to the online menu: halibut with mango salsa, chipotle roasted corn off the cob, and asparagus with mayo-based remoulade spiked with hot sauce. It was all good, and the waitress had no problem dividing the fish onto two separate dinner plates without any additional charge. The man on our left had a dozen assorted oysters on ice with a flute of champaign. The women on our right had Coriander grilled Ahi Tuna and Texas Bouillabaisse. Although the menu changes daily, it's so deep and so varied that many future visits are need to sample all of Perla's attractive offerings.

Perla's website

Esquire Magazine review